This is getting quite a bit of play in the blogosphere. But I thought I would include it here, too.
A failure of leadership at the highest levels Army Times editorial 05/17/04 issue (accessed 05/10/04)
Around the halls of the Pentagon, a term of caustic derision has emerged for the enlisted soldiers at the heart of the furor over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: the six morons who lost the war. ...
But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons. ...
[W] hile 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. ...
[Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard] Myers, [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld and their staffs failed to recognize the impact the scandal would have not only in the United States, but around the world. ...
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.
On a related note, Josh Marshall has an interesting biographical detail about Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who did the now-famous report on treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghuraib. His father was a prisoner of war himself in the Second World War.
In fact, as a prisoner of war, he was part of the notorious 'Bataan Death March'.
Who knows what played into this one man's role in this story now unfolding. But it's hard to imagine this memory of his father's time as a POW didn't play upon his mind at some point in his investigation.
This has no bearing on the quality of his investigation, as such. It stands or falls on its own merits.
But it's a reminder of why we have laws of war and rules for treating prisoners. And I can believe that Taguba in undertaking the Abu Ghuraib story may have been influenced in his personal sense of duty by his father's experience.
Taguba is the second Filipino-American to become an Army general. But, if this Phillipine article is correct, he may have topay a personal price for being a good soldier and a responsible American in preparing his report: Taguba for president! (we wish) ABS-CBN (Phillipines) 05/09/04.
Although Taguba has never been known to be a grandstander and had definitely no part in the leaking of his report, still, it is hard to conceive of him ever getting again the same level of objective support he may have gotten from both superiors and peers, enabling him to rise, on merit, through the ranks despite his foreign origins.
In a sense, General Taguba may be likened, for lack of a better comparison, to an officer who has not shirked the duty of reporting a fatal hazing in an academy, regardless of where the chips may fall. ...
Even without meaning to become a whistle blower of sorts, he bucked the simpler option of yielding to the sense of “military brotherhood” and that unwritten code of silence that binds comrades in uniform.
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