I don't like John F. Kerry. But I will vote for him.

I feel, now, that I must. To do otherwise is to endorse the horrors of Abu Ghraib. (The picture is from a site whose opinion here differs from mine, called Enter Stage Right. Consider it a form of equal time.)

I'm hearing a lot of rationalizations for those horrors, and the rationalizations, if anything, disgust me more than the horrors. The conduct was by "only a few." (No, it was systemic.) Our troops have performed heroically and selflessly. (Accepted, but this makes those sacrifices worthless.) The Geneva Convention doesn't apply to "terrorists." (The victims here were not proven terrorists.) What about Fallujah? (It happened many months later.) What about 9/11? (Iraq had nothing to do with it.)

You can't just fight fire with fire. You need water.

These attempts to rationalize horror and wipe the blood off our hands reminds me of nothing less than how Japanese patriots excused the militarism of their own country in the 1930s, a militarism that resulted in Pearl Harbor and, then, Hiroshima. MIT professor John Dower made this link explicit in a recent lecture.

There are many issues before this country but I can't consider them when I vote this fall. The economy, the underlying war on terror, social and tax issues, a host of things. On some issues I agree with Democrats, and on others with Republicans.

But if I vote for George W. Bush, I'm endorsing what happened on his watch. The Secretary of Defense says he accepts full responsibility. The President says he stands behind the Secretary. I take them at their word, but I'm their boss. So the buck stops here.

The blood and horror of Abu Ghraib will remain on my hands, on all our hands, even after November. But the cleansing process must begin.