“The entire affair is a failure of leadership from start to finish. From the moment they are captured, prisoners are hooded, shackled and isolated. The message to the troops: Anything goes.
In addition to the scores of prisoners who were humiliated and demeaned, at least 14 have died in custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army has ruled at least two of those homicides. This is not the way a free people keeps its captives or wins the hearts and minds of a suspicious world.
How tragically ironic that the American military, which was welcomed to Baghdad by the euphoric Iraqi people a year ago as a liberating force that ended 30 years of tyranny, would today stand guilty of dehumanizing torture in the same Abu Ghraib prison used by Saddam Hussein?s henchmen.
(snip)
This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential ? even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war.”
Read this today in The Army Times.
Oh, by the way, Bush says he views the Iraqi atrocity photos “with disgust.”