A reader sent a link to me awhile back to a news story that described how Macedonian policemen staged a raid on “terrorists” to impress the United States, and murdered 7 illegal immigrants in cold blood so that they’d have a trophy that demonstrated their dedication to fighting terrorism. The minister that ordered the murders has fled Macedonia.

I find the overlap between the group of people who demanded Howell Raines’ head on a platter when the extent of Jayson Blair’s plagiarism was discovered and the group that thinks that Donald Rumsfeld should stick it out despite the torture revelations interesting. Raines was right to resign, and should have done so long before he did. Howell Raines had to resign because he didn’t know about the horrible thing that was going on in his organization; I don’t understand why Rumsfeld isn’t being held to the same standard.

There’s a pretty good chance America is going to elect this man to a second term as President.

It’s worth keeping an eye on the list of people and groups who now claimed to have warned people about what was going on at Abu Ghraib and went unheard. (Or, in some cases, mentioned it before 60 Minutes II ran the horrific photos that I’ve seen too many times.)

• Spec. Joseph M. Darby (unknown timing)
• Colin Powell (via Kevin Drum)
• Paul Bremer (last fall)
• General Antonio Taguba (late February) (Taguba has now learned, it seems, that no good deed goes unpunished.)
• David Kay (before leaving Iraq)
• the Red Cross (November 2003 at the latest)
• Amnesty International (March 2004 and some initial warnings on June 30, 2003)
• the Department of Defense (January 16, 2004)

I’m going to try to keep this list up to date, so if you have any additions, send email, with a URL to a news story if possible.

What’s good for Republicans is good for America, no? And by Republicans, I mean the rich people who keep the GOP machine rolling, not the working people who are just along for the ride. You have to scroll down a bit to see the graph, which illustrates that corporate profits are going up, up, up, and labor compensation is going down, down, down (both relative to the overall size of the economy). If you combine that graph with one that shows the overall size of the pie, adjusted for inflation, you’d get a better picture of how labor is doing overall, but I don’t have the data or the Excel chops.

Andrew Brown explains why most interface design is bad in two sentences.

The Economist calls for Donald Rumsfeld to resign on its cover this week. The Brits are much bigger on people resigning in disgrace than we are, but as you know, I’m a big advocate for the principled resignation in general. Rumsfeld should definitely resign.

New York Times writer Seth Schiesel wrote a silly article on IRC. I’m sure everybody is going to be rebutting this one mercilessly, so I’m not going to bother. IRC is a communications medium and can be abused in the same way that any other communications medium can be abused.

The Secretary of Defense is not ultimately responsible for what happens in Iraq, the Commander in Chief is. And we get a chance to fire him in a few months. Let’s not let it pass us by.

Update: The Washington Post also editorializes that Donald Rumsfeld is to blame. Once again I say that the President is ultimately responsible. Why don’t mainstream journalists have the guts to make that call? People have been complaining about abuses at Abu Ghraib for months now, so there’s no question that the administration knew about them (or had the opportunity to know about them), and President Bush has known about Rumsfeld’s policies since he originally announced them. He stood by his man, and now he needs to be held responsible. That said, read the editorial, it provides a good capsule summary of how we got to where we are.

Fred Kaplan has a review of President Bush’s appearance today on Arab television. There’s a transcript here. Bush is Commander in Chief, and all of the things the military does are ultimately his responsibility. He owes the people of Iraq an apology, and he didn’t give them one.

Update: He may want to target an apology to the woman who was ridden like a donkey by US soldiers specifically. Somewhat ironically, my Arab neighbors always say, “Bush is a donkey.” Maybe it’s a harsh insult in Arabic.