But there is another, more immediate, reason why Bush and his Neocon war-party feel the need to stay the course. If authentic Congressional oversight is empowered by this year's mid-term elections all kinds of hell could break out, occasioned by the hellacious thirst for truth: truth about the intelligence being fixed to market the war; truth about rendition and torture and who ordered it; truth about high tech domestic surveillance; truth about treason of outing intelligence officers for political reasons; maybe even truth about 9-11 itself.

It turns out that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld have to stay the course to prevent the truth from "coming out". These three chickenhawks are confronted with the necessity of sending more young Americans to their death, and delivering more debt to unborn Americans, because if the wheels come off of their Mess-o-Potanian amusement park, they may not escape with their hides.

As a post mentioned in the foregoing discussion, Post WW II's Nuremberg court found that

To initiate a war of aggression is ... the supreme international crime.

A second lesson drawn from Nuremberg is that when it comes to war crimes, the winners of wars always get to prosecute the losers. So, as long as Bush and Cheney and Rove can lead the American people on about light being at the end of the tunnel, (just around the next bend), they can hope to delay the day of reckoning. Even a Neocon, Max Boot, admits, Win Baghdad and we'll forgive Haditha!

.... What matters most to most folks back home is whether their "boys" are fighting for a just cause and whether they are winning. If the answer to both questions is yes, the public will forgive a great deal of misconduct. Thus, celebrated war-crimes cases did not prevent American victory in the Philippines or British victory in South Africa. Nor was the My Lai massacre a turning point in the Vietnam War. By the time it was exposed in late 1969, support for the war was already in freefall because victory did not appear to be in sight.

Today, Americans' (and Iraqis') verdict on the war will not turn on what happened in Abu Ghraib or Haditha. More important is what is happening in Ramadi and Baghdad — major cities where the security situation has deteriorated over the last year. The Bush administration can weather the excesses of some soldiers; it cannot survive the perception that we are losing. Instead of indulging in excessive self-flagellation, therefore, the Pentagon and the White House would be well advised to take decisive steps, such as sending more troops, to restore law and order.

Victory diminishes the significance of war crimes; defeat magnifies them into defining events.

Do not, gentle reader, ask for what noble cause we fight; we fight on only for the ignoble purpose of saving some miserable and guilt-infested political skins.