"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."This administration's debasement of the public trust and its criminal contempt for even the most basic human rights and decency, as revealed in this article, ought to prompt righteous indignation in every American. That it doesn't, demonstrates the depths of degradation into which America has fallen under this administration. Degradation either cheered or condoned by jingoistic right-wing Christians and neo-conservative ideologues alike.
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."
Nothing discredits the gospel in the eyes of an unbelieving world more than the docility of evangelical Christians in the face of such demonstrably depraved leadership.
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