Is there a reason Bush did not apologize for the torture at Abu Ghraib? Scott McClellan dutifully answered this question after Bush went on Arab television -- an event that only angered Iraqis even more, if such is possible. McClellan said his boss is "deeply sorry for what occurred and the pain that it has caused," but explained Bush did not apologize because neither Dubai-based al-Arabiya television nor US-based and funded al-Hurra had asked him to do so.

In short, the thought never crossed Bush's mind. Besides, he's the president -- and presidents don't have to apologize.

George Bush -- former drunk and frat boy who, as a child, liked to blow up frogs with firecrackers, and who, as governor of Texas, mocked the pathetic plea of a death row inmate -- does not have to apologize to anybody, least of all a few million Arabs.

Meanwhile, British legislator and envoy Ann Clwyd has discovered even more unpleasantness on the part of US soldiers in Iraq. It appears our heroic and freedom-loving boys strapped a harness on a 70 year old Iraqi woman and rode her around Abu Ghraib like a beast of burden. "She was held for about six weeks without charge," Clwyd told the Evening Standard. "During that time she was insulted and told she was a donkey. A harness was put on her, and an American rode on her back."

Instead of taking the heat for these acts of brutality against the untermenschen of Iraq -- as a British soldier characterized the attitude of many US soldiers toward Iraqis -- Bush may sacrifice Donald Rumsfeld.

According to Reuters, some senior administration officials think Rumsfeld may lose his job over the Abu Ghraib tortures. Naturally, nobody is actually calling for Rummy to fall on his sword, not yet anyway. "He'll be in the hot seat, there's no doubt about it," an aide said. "You rarely see people on both sides of the aisle this intense." I guess the last time we saw both sides -- or is it now one side? -- this intense was right before they decided to "shock and awe" the citizens or Iraq for something Saddam either did or did not do -- or was about to do or had no intention of doing -- with weapons Reagan sold him with a little help from that veritable salesman, Donald Rumsfeld.

Kerry wasted little time kicking Bush in the short pants. "The world needs to hear from the president that the United States of America regrets any kind of abuse of this kind or any kind of effort like this because we have to show the world we are willing to correct our own mistakes," said Kerry.

Never mind that Kerry engaged in more than a little abuse of his own during the Vietnam war -- standard atrocities and crimes against humanity like burning down villages and shooting civilians, war crimes Kerry admitted participating in before Congress back in 1971. But then that's the kind of stuff president's are made of these days -- or would be made of if they had not skirted "service" (i.e., partaking in generalized slaughter of Asians and other third world untermenschen) in Vietnam. Instead, Bush had himself one hell of a long lost weekend.

Is it possible Bush damaged a few brain cells during his days of boozing (admitted) and doping (denied)? It would seem his memory is shot. For instance, Bush claims he didn't know anything about the torture at Abu Ghraib. "First time I saw or heard about pictures was on TV," he told the Arab world via al-Arabiya and al-Hurra, the latter being the official propaganda outlet for the Bushites in Iraq.

For some reason this did not jive with General Pete Pace, deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who told CBS, "everyone was kept apprised orally of the ongoing investigation" launched after a guilt-ridden soldier at Abu Ghraib spilled the beans on January 13. "The fact that the paperwork did not get to Washington, DC, did not mean that the information did not; in fact, it did," Pace declared.

Either Bush is suffering from mental illness -- a common malady experienced by alcoholics, both reformed and active -- or he is lying again, the same way he lied America into killing more than 10,000 Iraqis, Dubya's contribution to the pre-meditated mass murder of his father and Clinton, who combined killed around a million people all told, give or take a few hundred thousand. But then, as Tommy Franks said, we don't do body counts, so get over it.

Instead of Bush's apologizing to the Iraqis for torturing their sons and fathers in Abu Ghraib -- and as we now understand, more than a few sisters, mothers, and grandmothers, at least one of the latter made to imitate a donkey for the perverted amusement of the brave American liberators of Iraq -- he trotted out Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the top US military spokesman in Iraq, and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander in charge of detainee operations. Both "profusely apologized on Arabic television," according to Fred Kaplan. "It seems the president is allergic not just to the words but to the concept of responsibility that underlies them. To apologize would be to admit he'd made a mistake. And mistakes are forbidden in the Bush White House."

But actually it is worse.

Bush and his coterie of murderous neocons believe there is no reason to apologize -- in fact they believe the CIA, the private mercenary corporations contracted to torture and humiliate, and the sadistic MPs inside Abu Ghraib did nothing wrong. For the Bush neocons in the Pentagon and nestled deep within "influential" foundations around Washington -- PNAC, AEI, JINSA, you know the rabble -- torture and mass murder is perfectly normal in the generational war they have planned against Islam and the Arabs of the Middle East. If they have their way -- and if Bush is re-appointed (or even if Kerry is) -- there will be multiple Abu Ghraibs scattered across Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, and anywhere else the demented Zionist neocons and their whacked Christian Zionist collaborators deem necessary.

Pre-emptive war means you never have to say you're sorry.

Kurt Nimmo is a photographer, multimedia artist and writer living in New Mexico. He is author of Another Day in the Empire: Life in Neoconservative America (Dandelion Books, 2003). To see his photo work and read more of his essays, visit his excellent “Another Day in the Empire” weblog.

Other Articles by Kurt Nimmo

* Abu Ghraib: Has the CIA Privatized Torture?
* Next on Sharon's Laundry List: Syria
* The "Central Hand" of the Resistance
* Moqtada al-Sadr: the Latest Neocon Excuse to Kill Iranians
* Responding to the Iraqi Intifada:Will Bush Flatten Fallujah?
* Reading al-Qaeda into Madrid
* Emma Goldman for President
* Tweedle Democrat Progressive Internationalists
* Mission Accomplished in Haiti: Is Venezuela Next?
* Richard Perle, Executioner
* The Sorrows of Bush's Endgame
* Bush Intelligence: Garbage In, Garbage Out -- On Purpose
* Inquisition in Iowa: Feds Go After Activists at Drake University
* The Perle and Frum Totalitarian How-to Manual
* Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating the Spooks

* Calling Dubya to Book on Neocon Lies
* The Sharon-Rumsfeld Plan: Going after Hezbollah
* Bush and the Supreme Court: Going After the Bill of Rights
* Saddam's Defense: Call Bush Senior to the Stand
* Bush's Police State: Going After the Left, Not al-Qaeda

* Bogus Terror Threats and Bush's Police State
* No More Mr. Nice Guy: Bush Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
* Newt Gingrich: Growing the Dictatorship in Iraq
* Bush Ministry of Disinformation Editor Gets "Freedom" Medal

* Zionism's Useful Idiots
* No Apologies for Wolfowitz the Microbe
* Sailor-Mongering Civil Disobedience: The Justice Dept.’s War Against Greenpeace

* Criticizing Zionism: Naked Anti-Semitism?
* Shock Therapy and the Israel Scenario

* Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites

* Imperial Sociopaths

* Bush's Speech: Internationalizing the Whirlwind
* The Imam Ali Mosque Bombing: Round Up the Usual Suspects

* Iraq's WMD: The Lie that Will Never Die

* UN Bombing: Terrorism or National Liberation?

* Saddam Hussein: Taking Out the CIA's Trash

* The Bug Exterminator Goes to Jerusalem

* Bread, Circuses, Uday and Qusay