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Does anyone still remember the unfortunate Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf? As Saddam's information minister, he heroically would deny the most evident facts and stick to the Iraqi line. Even as U.S. tanks were hundreds of yards from his office, al-Sahaf continued to claim that the television shots of the tanks on Baghdad streets were Hollywood special effects. Once, however, he did strike a strange truth. When told that the U.S. military already controlled parts of Baghdad, he snapped back: "They are not in control of anything-they don't even control themselves!" When the scandalous news broke about the weird things going on in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, we got a glimpse of this very dimension of themselves that Americans do not control.

Thus, Bush was wrong. What we get when we see the photos of humiliated Iraqi prisoners is precisely a direct insight into "American values," into the core of an obscene enjoyment that sustains the American way of life.

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