I want to vomit. I'f you like to be nauseated and depressed, too, click here.

Hey, anyone remember how "we" (we being our nation, our army, our race, take your pick) could never do anything like the contractor killings in Fallujah? How long did that last?

The one sticking point that I'd imagine the right-wingers would come up with about why we can still have moral superiority over the perpetrators of Fallujah are the numbers. If some folk started doing unthinkably horrible things to another, it's not like any portion of the U.S. would be radicalized enough to make excuses or cheer them on, right?

Wrong. Here's the Freepers' reaction. No quotes here, but there's not a shred of remorse for torturing men to death.

It's over. The humanity has been stripped from these people, and so I concede: There is a significant portion of the American public radicalized to the point of dangerous nationalist-fascism.

UPDATE: I give up. One quote, to get the tone. Remember that this is not a troll trying to satirize conservative excesses. This is an actual person with his actual spelling and argument:

What CBS (The 5th Column) is doing is causing more fuel to the fire, which will result in more GI deaths. They need to be STOP ! The religion of peace have there feminist witches
and there 5th column media working against us.

We got to protect our young boys and girls from these demons...If not, we will lose

You know, where I work, I'm one of the voices of political moderation, if not conservative in some ways. I can only imagine what they'd think of me in most of Texas, though, given my position on locking up old women for not updating their car registration.

Hint: Not a fan.

So Nightline, a major newsmagazine with all sorts of official backing, wants to honor the war dead by speaking their names. That's it, honoring Americans killed in combat. They're not going to do anything radical like mention the names of the thousands with severe injuries and missing limbs thanks to this excursion nor, God forbid, mention that lots of innocent Iraqis have died, too. But some stations don't want to hear even that.

I just can't be cynical enough.

Here's another statistic to consider: Which countries have the least abortion? Belgium has an abortion rate of 6.8 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44. The Netherlands, 6.5. Germany, 7.8. Compare that to the USA's rate of 22. Even better, compare it to countries where abortion is illegal: Egypt, 23; Brazil, 40; Chile, 50; Peru, 56.

Want to lessen abortion rates (and make no mistake, I really do)? A smart, pragmatic, effective policy of safe, legal, and rare is the only way to go. Supporting theocratic-esque policies like abstinence-only education might make you feel like a holy authoritarian bad-ass, but at the end of the day it only increases the levels of abortions.

This is why I feel the only widely used constructions for the sides that aren't Orwellian are pro-choice (pro-reproductive choice, if you want to be a fool and pretend that it might also be about such God-fearing choices as between a Hummer and H2) and anti-abortion. It's not perfect, but it reflects the actual situation far better than the parallelism the media feels we need to stick to for some reason. How could that not benefit the "pro-life" squad? There just aren't enough emo nihilists out there for a good anti-life faction. And I'm damn sight well not pro-abortion. I could understand that anti-abortionists might not want to be stuck with an anti- prefix, making them "the people who are against something," but I'd be very surprised if anyone could show me how, when boiled down to basic terms, that isn't their role in the debate.

UPDATE: I think we should really update the descriptors to "safe, legal, rare, and cheap." It seems to me that the main reason the intersect between economic policy and abortion policy exists at all is that abortion is essentially an issue of poverty. If you're relatively well-to-do (and this definition is wide enough to include even me) you ca get safe abortions no matter what U.S. law is. Not only will most of the anti-abortion policymakers never have to get an abortion, since most of them are men, but when push comes to shove, their wives and daughters would have an option. Most of the people on my block would not.

But don't believe that I think that making it safe legal and cheap would somehow also make it rare. I support all sorts of other policies to lessen abortion, but they're by and large demand-side policies. Supply-side hijinx aren't just for economic policy anymore. And this also ties into the poverty issue. In a lot of the countries above, issues like day care and child and reproductive health don't have the necessary funding, so women are squeezed on all sides. And, thanks to the Mexico City gag rule, we're doing everything we can to increase the vice grips. George W. Bush: Increasing unsafe abortions world-wide. There's a platform.

UPDATE UPDATE: This is what I get for trying to go to work on time. I thought I was being fairly original in my formulation, but just realized that the very entry I linked to also talks about demand-side reforms. Why do I bother when jmhm does better punditry before the rest of us wake up than we do all day?