In his Thursday column, Thomas Friedman drilled down to one of the core truths about the Bushies: There is something even more important to the Bush crowd than getting Iraq right, and that's getting re-elected and staying loyal to the conservative base to do so. It has always been more important for the Bush folks to defeat liberals at home than Baathists abroad.

Kudos to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R - SC) for his pursuit of the inquiry into the prison abuse scandal and for recognizing that “[w]hen you are the good guys, you’ve got to act like the good guys.”

I cannot begin to fathom how President Bush can claim that Rumsfeld is doing a “superb job” given the bungled investigation of abuse at the Abu Gharaib prison. “Superb” does not begin to describe a job performance where highly damaging acts were concealed from the President and Congress until they came out in the press.

But then, Bush has long had a problem with the truth. At a recent campaign event in Cincinnati Bush appeared before a banner reading “America: Safer, Stronger, Better.” None of those appear to be true. How are we safer when Bush’s war in Iraq has emboldened our enemies and alienated our allies? How are we stronger when our military is overextended and our government is operating at a deficit? How are we better when we have been operating an extra-judicial prison system that has drawn criticism from our allies and has created a situation where prison abuses could flourish and embarrass us around the world and at home?