Whitewashing the Fence; Army Edition

No officer has been convicted for the torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Even the guy who was convicted of the biggest sin in the eyes of Chimpy ("Reporters; talking to") was let off. This is a crime in and of itself. What this means is that theArmy is nothing more than another governmental bureaucracy, where the primary activity is avoiding blame.

The idea that a group of junior soldiers, mostly E-4s and below, decided on their own to set up a ring to torture prisoners is insane, but that is the view that the Army is promoting. There used to be a concept called "command responsibility," which was very easy to grasp: "If you are in command, you are responsible for everything that goes on in your command."

The Army seems to have adopted the bureaucratic view that if you are in charge, you get the credit for the good stuff and if bad stuff happens, then just send a few soldiers to prison and forget the whole thing.