After making obligatory condemnations of the prisoner abuse scandal, Midge Decter declares it a "tempest in a teapot." Her New York Post article proclaims: "This new scandal is no more than an election-season opportunity seized by certain serious opponents of the war, along with many more unserious opponents of the Bush administration."

Reports of prisoners killed in U.S. custody, sodomized by guards, and attacked by vicious dogs aren't an "ersatz scandal." This is a real scandal. To find the truth, the charges need to be investigated--by elected officials, the military, the media, and others. The American people aren't tricked, they're disgusted--and their disgust manifests itself in the falling esteem in which they hold the leader that got us into the mess in Iraq.

The Arab world's feigned horror at the abuse of prisoners is hypocritical. They've yawned at far worse. But the disgust in the West is real. The United States is, and should be, held to a higher standard than Iraq's previous ruler.