In a story on Al Gore’s new book over at ABC News, Jake Tapper writes, “Gore has written an un-nostalgic look back at the previous six years that lays out his case as to how the world might look today had the chads fallen another way–a world where U.S. troops would not be fighting in Iraq, Abu Ghraib would just be a town’s name and the nation would have been better prepared for Hurricane Katrina, global warming, and, yes, perhaps even Sept. 11.”

The items on this laundry list that aren’t ludicrous are, of course, open to extensive debate, save one which is just completely factually inaccurate: Sans Operation Iraqi Freedom Abu Ghraib most certainly would not “just be a town’s name,” as the video available at this location makes abundantly clear. Long before U.S. forces arrived Abu Ghraib prison was the scene of bizarre torture and mass executions. It was even the rumored home of Saddam Hussein’s human being wood-chipper. None of this excuses the early excesses of American interrogators there or even necessarily argues in favor of the invasion, but since Tapper is fawning over a book called The Assault on Reason, which accuses a good deal of the country of living in a fact-denying fantasy haze, he might want to, you know, get some of the facts right himself.