Know Your Audience

It really doesn't matter how this story plays in swing congressional districts or how well its damage can be mitigated by distraction, spin, or false victimization on the part of pawns at FOX, NRO, or Powerline. It will only matter how it plays on the streets in Iraq. This kind of stupidity - desperate and sadly inevitable miscalculation - takes anything good an American soldier or civilian accomplished between Basra and Mosul in the last two and a half years and sours it in the eyes of those who could possibly otherwise be called on to champion it. Or at least disinclines them to defend it when their neighbors disbelieve.

It won't cause the same uproar because it's not as sensational as the Abu Ghraib catastrophe. But I think long term it will be comparably destructive in the country where it matters.