On a more serious note

It didn't occur to me to post this sooner, mainly because I'm guessing a lot of my readers are colleagues here in Taiwan who already know what I'm about to report. But for those of you back home and elsewhere who are wondering about local reactions to the news about the Iraqi prisoners, well...

There isn't really that much shock as far as I can tell.

It's more or less being greeted as just more of what the rest of the world expects in the wake of George and Dick's Excellent Adventure. As an American overseas, from a strictly selfish point of view, I guess this is a good thing for my personal safety anyway. Since the outrage was already at such a high level, this isn't kicking off any Yankee-Go-Home sentiment that wasn't already there anyhow. (And I haven't run into any overt anti-Americanism yet, for what it's worth - remember, the rest of the world is more aware than most Americans of how illegitimate George W.M.D. Bush's "win" in Florida really was, so perhaps they don't blame it on the voters who, after all, didn't really elect him.) But looking beyond the tip of my own nose, it is, in a word, humiliating. Apparently this is what the rest of the world has come to expect of my government.

I'm tempted to launch into a silver-lining type analysis of how this could help turn the tide more solidly against Bush and solidify our chances of getting rid of him in November, but I find all that too distateful. There is no silver lining when it comes to stories like this, even if some good does come as an indirect result of it. To any Americans who are thinking of switching their allegiances from Bush to Kerry as a result of the news, I say, Welcome to our side, but why on Earth did things have to come to this? That's the bottom line for me - things really shouldn't have gotten this bad before people finally woke up to the truth of what they got us into in Iraq. Of course, as some of my non-American friends will remind me, most people beyond the reach of Rupert Murdoch's media were already aware of that long ago. To the Jim Inhofes of the world who would try to justify this, I can think of nothing to say.

In any case, if I might toss in a bit of solution along with all my thoughts on the problem, here's my drop in the bucket for the cause: for any other Americans overseas who want to vote absentee but need help getting a ballot, this website is a good resource. I finally got the ball rolling on my ballot last night, but it wasn't a fun experience. Here's hoping that link makes it easy for some others.

As for what all this does for American credibility in general...let's just say I have stopped correcting locals when they assume I'm Canadian (which does happen quite often for some reason).