abuse, illegality and accountability
«a day of congressional hearings yesterday confirmed two glaring gaps in the bush administration's response to hundreds of cases of prisoner abuse in iraq and afghanistan. the first is one of investigation: major allegations of wrongdoing, including some touching on defense secretary donald h rumsfeld and other senior administration officials, have yet to be explored by any arms-length probe. the second concerns accountability. although several official panels have documented failings by senior military officers and their superiors in washington, those responsible face no sanction of any kind, even as low-ranking personnel are criminally prosecuted. to use the phrase of sen. john McCain (r - arizona), this "is beginning to look like a bad movie".»two major areas remain unexplored: one is the army's accommodation of dozens of "ghost prisoners" held by the cia and deliberately hidden from the international red cross in violation of the geneva conventions and army regulations. another is that the pentagon has never answered the critical question of how harsh interrogation techniques promoted by rumsfeld and other political appointees at the pentagon and the department of justice "found their way into documentation found at abu ghraib". sen. lindsay o graham (r - south carolina) has pointed out that those techniques were "way out of bounds" and that "inappropriately" classified memos show professional military lawyers opposed them from the beginning because "they violated the uniform code of military justice and they violated international law".
read the complete editorial at the washington post and any of presently over one hundred articles regarding, for instance, the «ghost detainees».
