Open Mouth, Insert Foot

The picture emblazoned across The Sun, a London tabloid, was quickly picked up by the international media. Saddam in his underwear. (At least Adolf Hitler had the guts and good sense to shoot himself before being publicly viewed washing his laundry). Rumors surfaced that the pictures had been leaked by U. S. Military Officials in an attempt to destroy the larger-than-life myth that loyalists to the former dictator wished to spread. The reported goal was to break up the long-running Iraqi insurrection. Could anyone in the U. S. military really be that naïve, that stupid, that obtuse?

The outrage of such public humiliation, following on the heels of the Guantanamo Bay Koran affair (retracted by Newsweek but long published elsewhere), has completely blackened the American image in the Middle East, already dangerously tarnished by those fun guys and gals who brought you Abu Ghraib.

The final blow was delivered by the Deus ex Machina himself. In his usual deft fashion, President Bush alienated the six remaining pro-western Arab Muslims by referring to the insurgents as "motivated by a vision of the world that is backward and barbaric." His selection of words resonated as a personal opinion on the whole of Islam.

Open mouth, insert foot, take action, and only then demand a complete investigation. The pattern is repeating itself.