A house divided

The divisions and indecision in Iraq have their counterparts in Washington, DC

May 6th 2004|

AT A press conference in the Rose Garden last week with Paul Martin, Canada's new prime minister, George Bush tossed into his list of the coalition's achievements in Iraq the assertion that “there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms” there. Not compared with those under Saddam, perhaps. But at that very moment the rest of the world was poring, horrified, over photographs of Iraqi prisoners abused in the Abu Ghraib jail—pictures which Mr Bush himself rightly condemned on Arab television as “abhorrent”. But that came later. His first reaction was the sort of “Doesn't-he-know-what-is-going-on?” moment that occurs when an administration is losing its grip on events.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “A house divided”