If anyone out there is wondering what I thought of the President’s speech last night about the present and future of Iraq, I have to be honest: I didn’t watch it. I don’t know what he said and I have no opinion about it at the moment. I spent the evening stuffing myself with Italian food in honor of my friend Amber’s birthday, and, aside from a little good-natured ribbing of the one and only fan of GeeDub who was present at our table, politics was the farthest thing from my mind. This morning, however, I have heard that Bush called for the demolition of the Abu Ghraib prison and the construction of a new facility, untainted by the memory of either Saddam’s atrocities or our own. That’s absolutely the correct move to make, symbolically speaking. It’s just too bad that it’s being done now instead of a year ago when the symbol would have been seen as a proactive gesture instead of damage control. Now it’s nothing more than a classic case of closing the barn door after the cow has escaped.