The US's enervated propaganda efforts

The Bush Administration's war for "hearts and minds" is a stillborn effort. After five years, the Administration still refuses to call Islamic terrorism by its rightful name. Even now, the Administration refuses to forthrightly state that there is no equivalent between Israel and Hizb'Allah and identify Israel's struggle as our own.

Especially disgraceful has been the Administration's half-hearted efforts to defend its own policies regarding the detention and treatment of terrorist prisoners -- an effort it has outsourced by implication to the right-wing blogosphere and random interest groups that agree with the Administration's broad policies.

That's why the Pentagon's records of PRISONERS abusing guards at Gitmo has only come to light because the Landmark Legal Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act request for materials on prisoner-guard incidents and the Pentagon had to comply (or face a lawsuit under which it would have had to pay Landmark's attorneys' fees if it lost).

"Lawyers for the detainees have done a great job painting their clients as innocent victims of U.S. abuse when the fact is that these detainees, as a group, are barbaric and extremely dangerous," Landmark President Mark Levin said. "They are using their terrorist training on the battlefield to abuse our guards and manipulate our Congress and our court system."

Good thing someone outside the Administration wanted to make that public.