I don’t know how it is playing in country, but I can easily imagine that Rudy Giuliani is being castigated by all sorts of people for having suggested that US soldiers may have been the ones who fucked up on the missing explosives issue and that, ultimately, the responsibility may lie with them.

The funny thing is, it has been fascists like Giuliani who have banged the “How DARE you criticize OUR troops?!?!?” drum for the past 25 years.

To borrow from They Might Be Giants (“Stand on Your Own Head”), Rudy has made my day and now he has to sleep in it.

I hope he, and by extension, Dubyah, gets beaten to a pulp with his comments.

Ironically, he may very well be right. It may indeed have been some of the “troops” (anyone from CENTCOM down to squad level) who fucked this up. God knows they fuck things up all the time (Abu Ghraib?). But in George Bush’s America, you aren’t supposed to say that, so let’s let em stew in this latest hypocritical broth.

This is as good a time as any to say that I consider anyone from non-coms up to the top to be perfectly capable of being held responsible for anything that happens as a result of their command decisions. That’s why Calley was at least partially responsible for Mei Lai, and why SSgt. Fredericks (?) was at least partially responsible for Abu Ghraib. And furthermore, the “I was just following orders” defense should hold no water in cases of atrocities (see the Nuremburg precedents).

But ultimately? I’d like to hold Bush responsible for it all, as he is the final authority.