After refusing to apologize to the Iraqi people in television interviews broadcast publicly on Arabian-language networks, President Bush met with Jordan's King Abdullah II and told him he was sorry (from White House official transcript):
"I told him I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners, and the humiliation suffered by their families. I told him I was equally sorry that people who have been seeing those pictures didn't understand the true nature and heart of America."
This is an extremely awkward apology--far from straightforward. It's a report on an apology in private to someone who is associated with the victims of the offense only because both he and the victims are Arab.
It's also awkward because it's an apology for the "humiliation" that is caused, not for the wrong done. Torture and (quite possibly) killing are not problematic principally because they are degrading. They are wrong in their own right.
Furthermore, it is coupled with a statement that the President is "equally sorry" for the misunderstanding of those viewers who misunderstood our fundamental goodness. That's a pretty strange apology--and one that I doubt many people would find acceptable.
That radical leftist rag, the Economist's cover reads "Resign, Rumsfeld." Given the loss of our own soldiers lives over the past year, and the lack of proper supervision of the conduct of our war, that seems long overdue.
