Roll Call‘s Mort Kondracke, sober as always:

The abuse of Iraqi prisoners that is now coming to light was without a doubt despicable, abhorrent and illegal. But on the basis of presently known facts, these events do not justify the ouster of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld nor the political frenzy it has caused in Washington.

This was not the My Lai massacre, in which U.S. troops butchered hundreds of innocent Vietnamese civilians in 1968. And, contrary to the charges by Democrats screaming for Rumsfeld’s scalp, the scandal at Abu Ghraib prison was not “covered up.”

John Kerry responds: “Kondracke? What’s that, like a male duck or something? I don’t understand the question.”

—–