Bush accepts some blame for Abu Ghraib
The Washington Times writes that President Bush, in an interview with a reporter from the Saudi-run Middle East Broadcasting Center accepts some blame for the Abu Ghraib scandal;
President Bush for the first time took a measure of responsibility for the 2004 Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, during an interview with an Arabic TV network.
“Abu Ghraib was a terrible disappointment. And admittedly, I wasn’t there on the site, but I was the Commander-in-Chief of a military where these disgraceful acts took place that sent the absolute wrong image about America and our military,” Mr. Bush said.
I understand that President Bush is trying to firm up his legacy, but I’m not sure I like this new guy in the White House. Yes, he’s the commander-in-chief, and yes, he bears a small measure of responsibility because he’s the commander, but not to the extent he admits.
It was a crime committed by seven dimwits who claimed they didn’t know that naked pyramids were somehow inappropriate. And then they were so stupid, they took pictures of their antics and emailed the photos around to their friends. Their friends knew it was wrong – so why didn’t the perpetrators know it was wrong? They all received the same Law of Land Warfare class in Basic Training.
Yeah, it did damage the image of the military, but only because the US media ran the pictures day-in-and-day-out – like the flushed Koran fairietale – to purposely damage the country and the military and fan the violence in Iraq.
I’m waiting 9with unabated breath) for the New York Times and Washington Post apologize for their behavior during this war.
Category: Liberals suck, Media, Politics, Terror War
The crime committed by seven nitwits weren’t really a crime, but was no more than college type hazing. It became a major crime when the democrats Lame Stream Media suffering from BDS decided it was a major crime. I see it’s coming back to bite them in the a** since prosecutors have no choice but to use the same laws against college/high school students who get caught hazing others. It will only get worse as time goes by. Soon some ‘liberal left wing students’ will draw some serious prison time out of a hazing incident. I say good on them.
Jonn…That was humiliation and nothing akin to a crime. The crime was that the media deliberately set out to try and destroy any kind of credibility the military might have had to that point as Bremmer was perceived as a failure.
Remember, if it’s not textbook, then, “we”(C) are screwed. If the dems(big L) had failure, it would have been someone else’s fault and we are supposed to back off. Have you seen any dem do anything but point a finger elsewhere?
I agree that Bush could take a bit of the blame, but the media will take this and smear the daylights out of him for even admitting a part.
Like I’ve said before, with the COW, clarity will come on many issues to prove that Bush was right on many of his decisions. Fuck the rest of them. WE. KNOW. WE. GET. IT.
” New York Times and Washington Post apologize for their behavior during this war.”
500 degrees below zero—– isn’t that when hell freezes over? Maybe then, but not likely. They have a populace that won’t hold their feet to the fire.
nuf sed
Well, you’re going to hear me saying something you’ve never heard before: I think Bush did a good thing. I’ve been waiting for him to accept command responsibility for eight years, and while I wish he did it a long time ago, I’m still glad he did it.
Jonn wrote: So you’re saying that the Army never mentioned to you that doing stuff like building naked pyramids out of detainees was considered wrong? Nothing in your training would have prevented you from doing the same thing – until the New York Times told you?
Goodness, Condi was out accepting responsibility for what Rummy was accused of. What’s going on. Tis the spirit?
Jonn,
It’s not nice to rub her nose in reality.
No. I’m not saying anything like that. However, I also consider myself to have a slightly stronger code of ethics and law of war that came pre-Army that teaches me naked pyramids are wrong. I didn’t come in thinking naked pyramids are a-OK and then have to be trained by the Army that gee, golly, whilikers, we need to treat people decently. My military heroes were always men who did the right thing with honor. I never believed that the ends justified the means, and my morals were pretty codified before getting into the Army. In the Army, I got some pretty crappy law of war training. I think it amounted to one or two powerpoint presentations, and some fifteen minute presentations given by very bored JAG captains. Oh, and one NCODP given by a sergeant major where he taught us about the law of war, then told us not to risk ourselves in order to ensure it, and closed with an inspiring story about someone who broke the law of war and saved all his men by doing so. That’s a bad culture of casual indifference to rules and ethics. I’ve long complained that the Army doesn’t have enough patriotic, civics, and military history training-the kind they give the officers. Why do only officers need to learn military history? Because they assume enlisted don’t need to know that stuff or wouldn’t profit by it. I don’t agree. Bush, as commander in chief, is responsible for the culture prevalent in his Army by the principle of command responsibility. However, so are all the generals in the Army. The squad leader there is responsible, the platoon sergeant is responsible, the platoon leader is responsible, the first sergeant and commander are responsible…everyone is responsible. And yes, I take command responsibility for actions of soldiers under my command as well. I took and take full responsibility. When one of my soldiers got himself killed, I fully accepted that it was my fault, because as his NCO and squad leader, I had not done enough to prevent it. It is my fault he is… Read more »
A/S,
[When one of my soldiers got himself killed, I fully accepted that it was my fault, because as his NCO and squad leader, I had not done enough to prevent it. It is my fault he is dead, just as it is the platoon sergeant and first sergeant’s fault and so on. That’s how responsibility works.]
And you didn’t resign, did you?
There’s an epidemic of people that SAY, “I accept responsibility” but don’t accept the consequences.
If the IVAW types were given the chance to “do the honorable thing” we’d have to leave them alone with a gun and two bullets. Why? Because they’d miss the first shot.
Jonn: No, I don’t think I’m the only one, but I also point out that I was brought up in a particularly patriotic/military household. I knew more about military history by third grade than I think most do when graduating high school. Civics and ethics aren’t taught in schools anymore, and a lot of kids come out of bad environments.
Naked pyramids weren’t included in the example, but shooting prisoners was.
Raoul: Actually, I tried to resign as squad leader. It caused a major stink and I had to go see the sergeant major who told me grief and guilt should only go so far. I wasn’t really happy about that outcome either, but hey.
Jonn wrote: You were brought up in particularly patriotic/military AMERICAN household – somewhat different than in a particularly patriotic/military IRAQI or AFGHAN or FRENCH or GERMAN or any number of other ethnic families that might laugh at your naivete about the rules of land warfare. Something about being American tempers our sense of revenge and torture in the more traditional usage of the terms.
A/S,
No resign from the Army. Hell, buy into the whole IVAW thing and desert as a matter of “conscience”…
“Naked pyramids weren’t included in the example, but shooting prisoners was.”
Shoot prisoners, shoot the moon, moral equivalence isn’t it?
Jonn: True, that. No argument there. However, I think it’s a good thing. I don’t see anything wrong with holding ourselves to a higher standard-leading by example.