CT Blue

More reason to believe that we may never recover from the criminality of the Bush Administration in Seymour Hersh’s latest article in the New Yorker.

General Antonio Tagula, who conducted a circumscribed (by his superiors) investigation of the Abu Ghraib torture, was forced out of the military in January, and for the first time he has spoken on the record about his investigation and his personal conclusions about the complicity of Rumsfeld, et. al, all of whom were spared serious scrutiny as the full force of the law was visited on the hapless M.P.s who were “just following orders”:

A Pentagon consultant on the war on terror also said that the “basic strategy was ‘prosecute the kids in the photographs but protect the big picture.’ ”

Hersh paints of portrait of a military that has been morally hollowed. Apart from the luckless (though revolting) MPs, the only members of the military to be punished as a result of the Abu Ghraib tortures were those, like Tagula, who investigated or condemned them. Those, such as Major General Geoffrey Miller, who have, at best, looked the other way, or at worst, actively encouraged torture, have prospered.

Tagula is convinced that the torture at Abu Ghraib didn’t just happen. With Hersh’s help, he effectively demonstrates that Rumsfeld lied to Congress about what he knew about the torture (what else is new?). Hersh provides sufficient detail to allow one to conclude with confidence that those around Rumsfeld who didn’t connive in the torture either looked the other way or actively covered it up. Because no one in authority was punished, torture as an interrogative tool has been effectively legitimated. As for Tagula, he got his reward:

In January of 2006, Taguba received a telephone call from General Richard Cody, the Army’s Vice-Chief of Staff. “This is your Vice,” he told Taguba. “I need you to retire by January of 2007.” No pleasantries were exchanged, although the two generals had known each other for years, and, Taguba said, “He offered no reason.” (A spokesperson for Cody said, “Conversations regarding general officer management are considered private personnel discussions. General Cody has great respect for Major General Taguba as an officer, leader, and American patriot.”)

“They always shoot the messenger,” Taguba told me. “To be accused of being overzealous and disloyal—that cuts deep into me. I was being ostracized for doing what I was asked to do.”

Taguba went on, “There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff”—the explicit images—“was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this.” He said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.

“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.”

They will never be held accountable. They will, instead, become the leaders in a new military, as people like Taguba are forced out. The stench and corruption (and concomitant incompetence) of the Bush Administration will infect the military long after Bush is gone.This is the face of empire.