Friday, May 07, 2004
It is characteristic of the moral hypocrisy of the Bush Administration - & sadly, of the United States - that Janet Jackson's exposed nipple & Howard Stern's radio shenanigans generate more moral outrage than the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. & it will surely come to light that those atrocities are not confined to Sadaam's former torture palace. Donald Rumsfeld says those calling for him to resign are just making a "political issue" out of the scandal. Like The New York Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, New York Newsday, Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star Tribune and Detroit Free Press, all called for him to step down. Donald, IT IS A POLITICAL ISSUE! & it angers & discourages me that Americans by the millions are not screaming for Rumsfeld to quit, & that this President stands a good chance of being re-elected no matter how many Iraqi prisoners are sodomized with broomsticks, beaten, tortured with chemicals, & humiliated by American soldiers who appear to be unsupervised, unofficered.
Senator McCain asked Rumsfeld a simple question: What was the chain of command? Rumsfeld didn't know. In the military, the chain of command is of paramount importance, & is not usually secret information. If I'm a G.I., I know who who my staff sergeant is, & our Lieutenant, & their Captain. & in that prison, I would know the name of the top on-post commander. Rumsfeld is looking at the chain of command from the top down, & he doesn't know where it goes? McCain looked astonished.
These are out-of-control, rogue military units in an out-of-control field of operations. Who can be sure now what the hell goes on in the rest of Iraq? It's understandable, if not excusable, when terrible mistakes, bad moral choices are made under fire, in the chaos of battle. But these awful events took place in a secured area, where we are responsible for the safety & well-being of prisoners-of-war according to the rules of the Geneva Convention. We threw that rulebook away & adopted Sadaam's practices in the very place he practiced them. For shame on George W. Bush, on Donald Rumsfeld, on the American commanders on the ground in Iraq, & on the solders under their command who participated in these violations of human rights. For shame that this administration & Pentagon did not act to correct these abuses & punish the guilty - indeed, engaged in a coverup - right up to the moment this terrible thing was exposed.
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"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Senator McCain asked Rumsfeld a simple question: What was the chain of command? Rumsfeld didn't know. In the military, the chain of command is of paramount importance, & is not usually secret information. If I'm a G.I., I know who who my staff sergeant is, & our Lieutenant, & their Captain. & in that prison, I would know the name of the top on-post commander. Rumsfeld is looking at the chain of command from the top down, & he doesn't know where it goes? McCain looked astonished.
These are out-of-control, rogue military units in an out-of-control field of operations. Who can be sure now what the hell goes on in the rest of Iraq? It's understandable, if not excusable, when terrible mistakes, bad moral choices are made under fire, in the chaos of battle. But these awful events took place in a secured area, where we are responsible for the safety & well-being of prisoners-of-war according to the rules of the Geneva Convention. We threw that rulebook away & adopted Sadaam's practices in the very place he practiced them. For shame on George W. Bush, on Donald Rumsfeld, on the American commanders on the ground in Iraq, & on the solders under their command who participated in these violations of human rights. For shame that this administration & Pentagon did not act to correct these abuses & punish the guilty - indeed, engaged in a coverup - right up to the moment this terrible thing was exposed.
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