Speaking of military matters, former Army Major General Antonio Taguba, quoted in the latest issue of the New Yorker by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, has a few words for the higher-ups who threw him out after he contributed to the investigation of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, surrounded by the evasions and deceit of the former Secretary of Defense, a man unworthy of the title from the beginning.

Quoting from Taguba at length, because it’s important: “From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service. 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.”

Agreed. Somewhere, sooner than later, Rumsfeld and all other parties to the scandal who knew full well and tried to dissemble their way out of it must be tried and thrown into prison for the rest of their natural lives.