The latest Pentagon report on the abuse of captives, delivered to Congress last week by Vice Admiral Albert Church III, doesn't point a finger of blame at Miller or any other high-ranking official. It concludes that while detainees in Iraq, Guantanamo, and elsewhere were brutalized by military or CIA interrogators, there was no formal policy authorizing such abuse. (On occasion it was even condemned -- in December 2002, for example, some Navy officials denounced the Guantanamo techniques as ''unlawful and unworthy of the military services.")The fundamental principal of a legal system, is that everyone is held accountable for their actions. Commit a crime, the state prosecutes you. Injure another person through negligence or even intent, and the judicial system provides civil remedies. You are responsible for what you do, and held accountable when what you do is considered wrong; when it improperly costs someone else in either property, liberty, personal injury, or loss of life. As small a thing as an offensive contact, or even an offensive word; as great a thing as death, dismemberment, or grievous suffering before dying.
But surely, Church was asked at a congressional hearing, someone should be held accountable for the scores of abuses that even the government admits to? ''Not in my charter," the admiral replied.
So the buck stops nowhere. And fresh revelations of horror keep seeping out.
That fundamental principle is being ignored. Again. Ask the Indians. Ask the blacks, the Mexicans, the Chinese, the Irish, what have you. We've done it before, we'll do it again.
But this time it's on my watch, so to speak. And I can't stand it anymore. As Dirty Harry wisely said: "Man's got to know his limitations."
I know mine. It's almost Holy Week. There are other things to contemplate. Outrages, some of them, anyway, will have to wait awhile.
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