Daily Op/Ed Wrap-up

Paul Krugman: Just Trust Us

"Yet Mr. Bush, despite all his talk of good and evil, doesn't believe in that system. From the day his administration took office, its slogan has been "just trust us." No administration since Nixon has been so insistent that it has the right to operate without oversight or accountability, and no administration since Nixon has shown itself to be so little deserving of that trust. Out of a misplaced sense of patriotism, Congress has deferred to the administration's demands. Sooner or later, a moral catastrophe was inevitable..."

Jim Lobe: Bush Circles Wagons, But Cavalry Has Joined the Indians

"While Bush praised Rumsfeld for "doing a superb job" during a rare visit to the Pentagon Monday morning, his words were somehow unable to overcome the distinct sounds of knives being sharpened in the hallways just outside, as well as across town on Capitol Hill and at the State Department, where Secretary of State (and former army general) Colin Powell compared the possible impact on U.S. foreign policy of the abuse photographs to the 1969 disclosure of the infamous My Lai Massacre in Vietnam..."

Robert Scheer: Thread of Abuse Runs to the Oval Office

"..The big lie that the United States is merely a selfless battler against terrorists, with no other agendas, opens the door for brutality against any who dare resist. Bush has exercised an arrogance unmatched by any U.S. president in a century and brandished God's will as his carte blanche. His unilateral, preemptive "nation-building" -- and the settling of old scores in the name of fighting terror -- grants license to treat anybody, including U.S. citizens, in a barbaric manner that cavalierly sweeps aside all standards of due process.."

Chridtian Science Monitor: Wage Rage

"Average weekly wages in 2003 for nonmanagement workers in private industry were actually $116 lower than 30 years before, in real terms, or about $6,000 less a year. This is according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data adjusted for inflation, and then calculated in 2003 dollars by the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan..."

John Nichols: Rumsfeld should quit a sinking ship

"Let's face it, Bush is the same disengaged, unprepared princeling that he was when the Supreme Court handed him the presidency. Cheney is the same self-serving schemer that he has been since the start of his long lunch at the public trough; minimally competent yet certain in his ideology and unyielding in his drive to implement it. Secretary of State Colin Powell is, as always, hustling to have it both ways: the insider who is not really on the inside, the responsible player who takes no responsibility, the "moral force" who compromises when the order comes from on high. And Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby and the rest of their circle are merely the flying monkeys to Cheney's wicked witch of the West..."

Cynthia Tucker: Getting rid of Rumsfeld won't change a thing in Iraq

"But it wouldn't change a thing. Rumsfeld is no errant incompetent in an administration full of hard-nosed realists, men and women dedicated to righting their policies when they discover that things have gone awry. No, indeed. The secretary of defense is a perfect representative of a group of people so convinced of their own righteousness that they can rarely be troubled with inconvenient facts..."