It's become clear that every last reason the Bush administration gave for taking us to war with Iraq has turned out to be bogus.

The weapons of mass destruction we wrote off long ago. Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, the administration's main point man for the argument that the weapons were there, somewhere, and would eventually be found, is now claiming that he was misled about them.

That left us with their second reason for going to war: that by toppling Saddam Hussein, we'd bring American-style democracy and values to the Iraqis. Well, let's see now, what kind of values are those? As evidence of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib continues to trickle out, the size and scope of those human-rights abuses grows. Along with pictures of naked and hooded Iraqis being sexually humiliated, we now have evidence that prisoners were set upon by attack dogs, brutally beaten and forced to scrounge for food in toilets. There may also have been rapes, and murders. By the last count more than two dozen prisoners had died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the causes of their deaths are still unclear.

Apparently this wasn't all the work of seven sadistic knuckleheads who should never have even been in the Army in the first place, but was done on orders from, or with the approval of, higher-ups - including a few generals and perhaps even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Both NBC News and investigative reporter Seymour Hersh have reported that Rumsfeld approved the use of methods of interrogation that are banned by international rules, and that these methods started during the war with Afghanistan and were transported to Baghdad.

George W. Bush claimed last month that because we toppled Saddam Hussein "there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq." But Abu Ghraib sure looked to me like a place with torture chambers and rooms for sexual humiliation.

The prison abuses say the most about our broken promise to bring democracy to Iraq. Because few things are more inconsistent with democracy than torturing and abusing prisoners who are legally under your control. Rumsfeld keeps saying these abuses were an aberration, and were not American, but he still hasn't admitted that they violated international laws.

As for mass graves, no, they don't exist on the same scale as under Hussein. But, if you think the wedding party reportedly decimated by U.S. forces last week didn't look like a mass grave to the Iraqis, then you have no concept of how they feel about Americans these days.

A third reason this administration gave for going to war was to turn the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people. This meant turning it over to sleazeballs like Ahmad Chalabi, the main guy on whom the Bush administration placed its hopes for rebuilding Iraq. Problem was Chalabi was a known con man at the time the Bush administration reinstalled him in Iraq. So when his home and office were raided last week, why did it come as a surprise to anyone that he was still a crook, might even be a spy, and had squandered millions of American dollars in return for feeding us bad intelligence?

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) says the Iraq episode could turn out to be "the worst blunder in the entire history of American foreign policy," and I'm ready to agree with him. It's certainly one of the biggest con jobs that's ever been pulled off by any administration, and the Bush administration's loftiest claim - that it's brought democracy and American values to Iraq - no longer rings true.

If it turns out that Rumsfeld gave the go-ahead to the abuses at Abu Ghraib, he should be forced out. And George Bush, who led us into this morass of empty promises, deserves to be turned out of the White House.

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

###