Moving from feared and loathed to just loathed.

Charles Hurt in the Washington Times...

Hope and Change has crashed upon the craggy shores of reality.

Gitmo is still open and open for trials - a perfect double backflip rare even by Washington standards.

And then there were Mr. Obama’s worldly-wise assurances that peace would reign and everybody would love us if only we had a sophisticated, multilingual president who had lived abroad, on other continents, with roots in the Muslim world.

Instead, he has shepherded us from feared and loathed to just loathed. And, of course, mocked.

He also notes the difference inthe press treatment of Abu Ghraib and our troops murdering Afghan citizens and posing for gruesome pictures with the corpses.

In the weeks after Abu Ghraib came to light, White House reporters took every opportunity to demand answers from the very top of command.

In the course of just two press briefings and one short “gaggle” on Air Force One with the White House press secretary, reporters asked 97 questions about Abu Ghraib. President George W. Bush was compelled to give two interviews exclusively about the photos, and he was pressed about it during an unrelated event in the Rose Garden. The scandal dominated news coverage for months.

For contrast ...

In the two weeks since the first photographs were revealed, just once has the White House been pressed publicly about the pictures. And that one time was just a “quick follow” to a question about another matter.

Has the press suddenly developed a belief that shining a spotlight on criminal behaviour by our troops would undermine the war effort?

Hahahahahah ... you had me going there .... you crack me up.