On Monday, Brooks' Times colleague William Safire agreed that there was a catastrophic breakdown at the Pentagon, but avoided discussion of whether the torture was ordered from on high.

"The secretary testified that he was, incredibly, the last to see the humiliating photos that turned a damning army critique by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba into a media firestorm. Why nobody searched out and showed him those incendiary pictures immediately reveals sheer stupidity on the part of the command structure and his Pentagon staff ...

"Second only to the failure to prevent torture was the Pentagon's failure to be first to break the bad news: the Taguba report should have been released at a Rumsfeld press conference months ago.

"Now every suspect ever held in any U.S. facility will claim to have been tortured and demand recompense. Videos real and fake will stream across the world's screens, and propagandists abroad will join defeatists here in calling American prisons a 'gulag,' gleefully equating Bush not just with Saddam but with Stalin."

But Safire stoutly defended the man in charge, arguing that it would look bad to fire Rumsfeld.

"It is not in our political value system to scapegoat a good man for the depraved acts of others. Nor does it make strategic sense to remove a war leader in the vain hope of appeasing critics of the war.

"This secretary of defense, who has the strong support of the president, is both effective and symbolic. If he were to quit under political fire, pressure would mount for America to quit under insurgent fire."

A warning from the rank and file
In an editorial published Monday, the editors of Army Times Magazine fired a loud warning shot at the administration, as top Bush officials have sought to focus responsibility for the Abu Ghraib abuses on the foot soldiers and commanders on the ground.

"There is no excuse for the behavior displayed by soldiers in the now-infamous pictures and an even more damning report by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. Every soldier involved should be ashamed.

"But while responsibility begins with the six soldiers facing criminal charges, it extends all the way up the chain of command to the highest reaches of the military hierarchy and its civilian leadership. 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."

The Army Times is incredulous that the Pentagon leadership went AWOL at a critical moment.

"Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, also shares in the shame. Myers asked '60 Minutes II' to hold off reporting news of the scandal because it could put U.S. troops at risk. But when the report was aired, a week later, Myers still hadn't read Taguba's report, which had been completed in March. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also failed to read the report until after the scandal broke in the media.

"By then, of course, it was too late.

"Myers, Rumsfeld and their staffs failed to recognize the impact the scandal would have not only in the United States, but around the world. If their staffs failed to alert Myers and Rumsfeld, shame on them. But shame, too, on the chairman and secretary, who failed to inform even President Bush. He was left to learn of the explosive scandal from media reports instead of from his own military leaders ...

"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."

From Gitmo to Abu Ghraib
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who oversaw the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, was sent to Iraq late last summer to assist with operations at Abu Ghraib and reportedly said that he planned to 'Gitmoize' the detention operation there. Indeed, some conservatives are worried that the abuses at Abu Ghraib will seriously undermine the current U.S. policy of using bases located around the globe to imprison and interrogate so-called enenmy combatants. National Review contributor Andrew C. McCarthy, a former chief assistant U.S. attorney, says the Bush government clearly no longer operates with the benefit of the doubt.

"The images are out and we must move forward. Moreover, the world in which we must go forward is not limited to Iraq. We have for many months been holding captured unlawful combatant terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, as well as three other such combatants (including two American citizens) in United States military brigs.

"As counsel for some of the combatants argued late last month in the Supreme Court, when the executive branch asserts that it should be permitted to detain indefinitely without judicial review, it is essentially saying, 'Trust us.' Trust us that we have captured the right people, that we are treating them humanely, and that we don't intend to keep them in limbo for a second longer than is necessary to elicit intelligence and prevent them from rejoining the battle against our troops. No, it's not fair that the barbarity of a few should be of such profound consequence, but anyone who thinks that 'trust us' carries the same assurances today as it did two weeks ago is hallucinating."

Recent Stories