Speaking of the morally repulsive, here’s Andrew Sullivan on the abuse and torture of prisoners in Iraq:

“The only story in Europe and the Middle East right now are the images of some U.S. soldiers humiliating and mock-torturing some Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. The images are indeed revolting, appalling, and shameful. They are being used and will be used as further propaganda fodder to make democracy fail in Iraq and to neuter America’s moral credibility. But that in no way excuses them.”

Notice, first, the focus of this passage: namely, that the media “in Europe and the Middle East” is focussed on the abuse and “mock-torture” (how does he know it is “mock”?) of Iraqis. Why shouldn’t that be the main story? The U.S. invades another country, based on false pretenses and in defiance of international law and international consensus, and then, in addition to killing and maiming tens of thousands of human beings, again violates international law in its treatment of prisoners, and in ways shockingly reminiscent of the regime it deposed.

Now notice the second feature of this passage: inserted between the obligatory denunciations of abuse and torture (yes, that clearly shows how morally sensitive Andrew Sullivan is, he disapproves of abuse and torture, even “mock-torture”), we find the lunatic complaint that the pictures “are being used and will be used as further propaganda fodder to make democracy fail in Iraq and to neuter America’s moral credibility.”

What?

Unless “America’s moral credibility” is taken as an a priori truth, immune to empirical evidence, how could the fact of abuse and torture of prisoners–indeed, according to Amnesty International, widespread abuse and torture–not be concrete, and additional, evidence of America’s lack of moral credibility?

This is what is so sickening and scary about the American right these days, namely, that they take what is true and factual and demean and diminish it, preemptively, as “propangada” or “spin.” The only propaganda in evidence during this display is Mr. Sullivan’s. And what makes him more frightful than right-wing garbage mouths like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity is that Mr. Sullivan has an audience among the putatively “educated” and “refined.”

UPDATE: And more on the general topic from historian Juan Cole here.