Sorry but I will not accept your assumptions, which are really ill-informed value judgments, without factual supporting argument -- and I am certainly not going to do your research for you.
"........The damage to USA credibility. There have always been anti-Americans who did not believe the American version of the facts. And sometimes they were right (most often, they were wrong, and even they knew it). But never has the credibility of the USA been so damaged as by the Bush administration. It has not been a deliberate act of lying to the world, but the result has been worse than if they had done it deliberately. It will take generations (if ever) for the USA to regain the credibility it used to enjoy (at least within the free world).
First, there was Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to acquire nuclear material from Niger. That was quickly proven to be false. Powell was wise enough to omit that statement from his presentation at the United Nations. Nonetheless, that presentation was (in retrospect) an absolute disaster: almost nothing of what Powell showed as "proof" proved to be accurate. It is not the first time that a president "lied" (or exaggerated) to the nation in order to justify going to war: Johnson fabricated the "Gulf of Tonkin incident" to justify the full-fledged invasion of Vietnam, and Bush senior used the false testimony of a Kuwaiti girl (who was not even in Kuwait during the time when she claimed to have been raped by Iraqi soldiers) to justify the first invasion of Iraq. But this time the government did not just "lie" to the nation: it lied while speaking to the entire world.
Now comes the news that USA soldiers tortured (at least psychologically) some of their Iraqi prisoners. The real victims are not the Iraqis (presumably, the prisoners were members of Saddam's militias, who deserve very little sympathy): the real victims are, again, the USA and its credibility.
The damage done by the Bush administration is colossal. There is no question that the commander in chief (Bush) is ultimately responsible for what USA soldiers do. There is no question that the president (Bush) is ultimately responsible for the statements that its government makes. The sensible thing to do would be for George W Bush to resign, admitting his responsibility in defaming the USA. This could help prove to the world that he "didn't mean it". If Bush does not resign, Congress should impeach him: if we impeach presidents for having an extramarital affair, what should we do to presidents who damage the reputation of their country in a way that will cause more anti-American sentiment around the world and therefore more American deaths? If Congress does not impeach the president, the American people should vote them out: a massive vote against the Republican party would remove any doubt on where the American people stand on these issues.
Unfortunately, all of these are unlikely to happen. Generations of USA citizens will pay the price..........."
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