ramblins of buddy don: this n that

ye mite member how them publicans wuz always claimin to be the party of personull responsibilty. we woodnt have no presdents denyin doin rong, lease as long as the rong yer talkin bout is 'havin sex with that woman.'

corse, thays other kinds of rong, lack torchur, witch aint nobidy a'gone take personull responsibilty fer that. kin it be that the military chain of command is so broke that it caint cuntrol the soljers under thar command? my marine daddy wooodnt never have add mitted such a thang could happen. this mornins new york times has a letter frum a nuther ex-marine name of john greeley, witch it sounds lack it coulda been writ by my daddy:

America has certainly come to a curious moral impasse. "4 Top Officers Cleared by Army in Prison Abuses" (front page, April 23) opens with the statement that "a high-level Army investigation has cleared four of the five top Army officers overseeing prison policies and operations in Iraq of responsibility for the abuse of detainees there."

How is it possible that this so-called aberrant behavior could have escaped their oversight? The answer is that in the American military it cannot. It would not. In fact, it could have occurred only at the active direction of those people just exonerated. Things don't just happen, especially in military prisons.

We cannot allow responsibility for such acts to evaporate into thin air. The military wanted prisoners softened up for further interrogation, and our soldiers and intelligence operatives did it. Now it's time to take responsibility for all the Abu Ghraibs we have permitted.

To do anything less is to dishonor the principles this nation is founded upon.

i reckon by pertendin the torchur wuz limited they figger folks woodnt thank twuz so bad. as everbidy knows, taint whuther ye sin that matters, tiz whuther ye doot over n over agin n dont repent n sin no more. is that whut we dun? not accordin to this:

A rights watchdog said on Wednesday the abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison were just the "tip of the iceberg" of U.S. mistreatment of Muslim prisoners.

The abuses at Abu Ghraib are part of a larger pattern of U.S. rights violations of detainees in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, New York-based Human Rights Watch said.

Its summary of accusations of abuses came on the eve of the first anniversary of publication of photos showing humiliation and mistreatment of prisoners at the Iraqi jail.

"Abu Ghraib was only the tip of the iceberg," Reed Brody, special counsel for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

"It's now clear that abuse of detainees has happened all over -- from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay to a lot of third-country dungeons where the United States has sent prisoners. And probably quite a few other places we don't even know about."

i caint claim to put this inny bettern mr bob herbert, grate pundit fer the new york times, duz here:

When soldiers in war are not properly trained and supervised, atrocities are all but inevitable. This is one reason why the military command structure is so important. There was a time, not so long ago, when commanders were expected to be accountable for the behavior of their subordinates.

That's changed. Under Commander in Chief George W. Bush, the notion of command accountability has been discarded. In Mr. Bush's world of war, it's the grunts who take the heat. Punishment is reserved for the people at the bottom. The people who foul up at the top are promoted.

It was a year ago today that the stories and photos of the shocking abuses at Abu Ghraib prison first came to the public's attention. It was a scandal that undermined the military's reputation and diminished the standing of the U.S. around the world.

It would soon become clear that the photos of hooded, naked and humiliated detainees were evidence of a much larger problem. The system for processing, interrogating and detaining prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq was dangerously out of control, and the command structure responsible for it had collapsed. Detainees were beaten, tortured, sexually abused and, in some instances, killed. Many detainees should never have been imprisoned at all, as they had committed no offenses.

So what happened? A handful of grunts were court-martialed, a Marine major was cashiered, and the Army plans to issue a new interrogation manual that bars certain harsh techniques. There was no wholesale crackdown on criminal behavior.

corse, ye mite not bleeve innybidy higher up coulda been involved (ignorin whut that wood say bout the military chain of command). but ye wood be rong, at lease accordin to this claim in the washington post (please disproov it ifn ye kin):

A YEAR AGO this week, the release of shocking photographs of naked and hooded Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison alerted the world to serious human rights abuses by U.S. forces. Those images, it turned out, were the tip of an iceberg: Subsequent investigations by the media, human rights groups and the military itself revealed hundreds of cases of torture and abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Guantanamo Bay prison, including scores of suspicious deaths. A trail of documents showed that abusive interrogation techniques, such as the use of dogs and painful shackling, had been approved by senior military commanders and the secretary of defense. Even more extreme practices, such as simulated drowning and the withholding of pain medication, were authorized for the CIA at White House meetings presided over by President Bush's counsel.

All these facts are undisputed. Yet Pentagon officials have now made it known that the last of the official investigations of prisoner abuse, by the Army inspector general, has ended by exonerating all but one senior officer, a female reserve brigadier general who was not directly involved in the abuses and who received an administrative reprimand. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; former CIA director George J. Tenet; and Alberto R. Gonzales, the former White House counsel who is now attorney general, are excused: In fact, they were never directly investigated. The only people to suffer criminal prosecution from one of the most serious human rights scandals in U.S. history remain a handful of lower-ranking soldiers, including seven reservists implicated in those first photographs from Abu Ghraib. That the affair would end in this way is even more disgraceful for the American political system than the abuses themselves.

yep, them groanups is finely in charge now, aint they?