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Dave said:

Yet again, Dave, you are comparing American democracy to Nazi Germany, totalitarian China and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.



No, yet again, you are deflecting the true issue, by boxing my statements into a dismissive category.

I am comparing well-known atrocities over the last hundred years, and saying:
these Abu Ghraib harassments by a few unauthorized U.S. soldiers, while a serious crime, are overblown by the media and partisan liberals and other anti-American groups worldwide, who falsely overstate the significance of these lesser crimes, hyperbolically calling them "atrocities".

Well they're not !
They're harrassments, they're abuses by 7 U.S. soldiers, that are being prosecuted and punished by the U.S., not by some outside power that had to come in and clean up some massive genocide that the U.S. perpetrated.

As opposed to slaughters, mass systematic abuse of authority, and mass graves evident in historic war crimes, and historic complete lack of disclosure and accountability in the other well-known atrocities, true atrocities, of the other nations listed.

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Dave said:
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Running an argument which says, "Look, compared to that, we're clean!" doesn't work.



That's not what I said at all.

I said these are crimes by these 7 U.S. soldiers, 6 superior officers, and 4 civilian intelligence officials.
And that they are being prosecuted, and were being prosecuted, by the United States, well before CBS made these events public, and that while these Abu Ghraib harassments are crimes, they cannot fairly be labelled the same as the well-known genocides and atrocities ( true atrocities) that I listed.
The U.S. military investigated and stopped these abuses itself.
To allege they are the same as real atrocities, and not just crimes, un-authorized and abberant within the U.S. military system, is just so much anti-American liberal partisan spin.

I didn't say '"we're clean".
I said that these 7 U.S. soldiers, and those 4 interrogators and 6 officers who enabled and encouraged them, indulged in abberant and unauthorized crimes, not representative of the United States. And these acts are an embarassment and an outrage to the military, people and government of the United States. Reported by U.S. soldiers, sent up the chain by U.S. officers, condemned with outrage and shame by everyone in the U.S. government and military.

Crimes, but not atrocities, not genocide, and not lowering the United States to same level as Saddam Hussein and other rogue governments that have perpetrated real atrocities in the well-established definition.
The Abu Ghraib prison abuses are an embarassment to the U.S., it's an abuse that fell through the cracks, for a few months.
But unlike rogue governments that commit real atrocities, the United States, far from encouraging such abuses, took full blame for the abuses, is prosecuting the guilty, and has revised policy to be sure the abuses are not repeated.

so... it does not lower the United States to the same level of governments that commit real atrocities. The two are not the same.
The United States takes responsibility and punishes the guilty.
The other governments do not.

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Dave said:
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The US holds itself to higher moral standards.



Yes, it does.
But apparently to yourself and anti-American elements, taking responsibility and adhering to those standards is the same as being a rogue nation that commits atrocities with impunity.



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Dave said:
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As for the "premature disclosure" by CBS.... how could any reporter worthy of the name not report a news story with those photographs? This is blame shifting: you can't blame CBS for reporting something the fault of which lies in a breakdown in the chain of command.



CBS could have waited until the investigation was complete before making a disclosure. They know the rage those photos will inspire in the muslim world, in the half-investigated, half-defined context in which they were released a week ago.
Responsible journalists, patriotic journalists, with a greater sense of responsibility and the damage their release could have outside the context of final, full disclosure, post-investigation, would have waited until the full investigation was concluded, before releasing inflammatory pictures that will only inspire more rage and violence against U.S. troops in Iraq.

Instead, it's another case of journalists going on the air, saying "We don't really know what happened, but here we are on the air reporting it first and exclusively."

That's sensationalism, not journalism.