Moreover, it did so without an endgame strategy, and with a level of force so "underwhelming" that it made the outrageous behavior at the Abu Ghraib prison almost inevitable. By so doing, Bush's team left America's friends in Latin America - no less than in Europe and elsewhere - in a hapless situation: rightly unable and unwilling to support the US march of folly, and understandably reluctant to poison hemispheric relations in general with the type of strident criticism that local public opinion demands.