Sunday, June 17, 2007
The sad tale of Tony Taguba
You remember him, the general who wrote the report on Abu Ghraib. Under oreders he investigated the allegations of torture there, found them true and paid for his efforts with his career because he did not cover his superiors asses. Seymour Hersh, writing in this weeks New Yorker, uses the arc of Taguba's story to detail further the criminality being conducted in our name by people who appear more intent on what they do than why they do it. People in power, military and civilian, have always covered up their follies and mistakes and it is quite disturbing to read about it. Still, even now it is important to read what they did not want you to know. The words of Gen. Taguba express this best.
“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”
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