PR Suicide: The Bush administration has shot itself in the foot so often it probably doesn’t even realize when it’s doing it. But this is a classic example: Colleen Graffy, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, told the BBC World Service the suicides were a “good PR move to draw attention” to the plight of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Let’s assume for a moment that Graffy is right, and the men were motivated by their desire for publicity. What strategic purpose is served by multiplying the effect of their gesture a hundred-fold by dismissing it those terms—using words that seem designed to enrage feelings in the Muslim world even more than the suicides themselves?

And this from someone who’s in the “public diplomacy” business.