Conventions

The rift between the uniformed military and the civilians in the Pentagon flared right out in the open yesterday.

Taguba, who understands a little something about torture as his father was brutalized as a prisoner of the Japanese in WWII, also understands that by flouting the principles of the Geneva Convention -- and then, when the obvious happens, denying any such flouting -- we weaken those conventions. And as the world's policemen, U.S. troops may suffer by that weakness.

Per Talking Points Memo, even the Washington Post editorial board, not usually an entity willing to point a finger at the Bush administration and exclaim, "J'accuse," has done so.

Mr. Cambone made no attempt to reconcile his claim of U.S. adherence to international law with the actual procedures his office has helped to promulgate. Instead he insisted that the crimes at Abu Ghraib -- which, though they went beyond the established practices, were based on the same principles -- were the responsibility of the guards and their commanders, and not the intelligence-gathering system. In this he was contradicted by the witness sitting next to him, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who repeated the conclusion of his own investigation: that the practices were introduced by intelligence interrogators who were improperly placed in command of the guards.

These contradictions go to the heart of this scandal and its impact. The sickening abuse of Iraqi prisoners will do incalculable damage to American foreign policy no matter how the administration responds. But if President Bush and his senior officials would acknowledge their complicity in playing fast and loose with international law and would pledge to change course, they might begin to find a way out of the mess. Instead, they hope to escape from this scandal without altering or even admitting the improper and illegal policies that lie at its core. It is a vain hope, and Congress should insist on a different response.

Oh, but of course, I forgot. The real scandal is not the abuse, but that 60 Minutes II ran with the pictures.

Kaus and Goldberg's argument that there was no need to show the pictures and that a description of what's in them would have been enough, flies in the face of reason as well as Rumsfeld's own testimony on Friday. When asked why he hadn't raised an alarm over the growing scandal in January, when the investigation began, he replied, it wasn't until he'd seen the pictures that he understood the full horror of what had occurred.