There’s nothing even remotely funny happening in Iraq these days, but judging from the gruesome images that have begun seeping out of the dungeons of Baghdad, irony clearly is in abundant supply. Photographs of unimaginable degradation make one wonder exactly when the heroic liberators of Saddam Hussein’s desert hellhole decided it might be fun to borrow a page from the Baathist playbook and hold auditions for “Coalition Fear Factor” and “America’s Dumbest War Criminals.”

Forget for a moment the damage done to Uncle Sam’s reputation in the world community, and the many serious political and legal implications of the systemic torture of prisoners. Forget, even, that what we’ve seen in the past few days likely is the tip of a very large iceberg. Forget, too, what Americans would demand of our leaders if tapes revealed that imprisoned U.S. soldiers were being similarly abused (indeed, the siege of Fallouja began only after the bodies of four murdered civilian “contractors” were desecrated by anti-coalition mobs).