The Buck Stops...Somewhere Below Bush
The Bush assministration continues to avoid responsibility for the torture at Abu Ghraib. From Reuters:

The Army has exonerated Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former top U.S. commander in Iraq, of wrongdoing in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, but relieved another general of her command amid evidence of dereliction of duty, defense officials said on Friday.

An Army investigation by a 10-member investigative team that last October began assessing any wrongdoing by top brass in Iraq found that Sanchez and three other senior officers had not committed dereliction of duty, the officials said. These four will not face criminal or administrative punishment.

But the investigation found that "allegations of dereliction of duty were substantiated" in the case of Army Reserve Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who had commanded the 800th Military Police Brigade at the heart of the Abu Ghraib abuse, said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity. [snip]

(Karpinski deserves everything she gets and more, but the real big fish are not getting fried.)

Human rights activists sharply criticized the Army's failure to take action against Sanchez and reiterated their call for an independent investigation of detainee abuse. Human rights groups and other critics have blamed the abuse on actions by top U.S. commanders in Iraq as well as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials. [snip]

The other senior officers exonerated by the investigation were: Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, Sanchez's former top deputy; Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, formerly Sanchez's top intelligence official; and a colonel who served as Sanchez's top legal adviser. Fast was a one-star general at the time of the prisoner abuse, but has since been promoted.

That's just terrific. We promoted someone involved with torturing prisoners of war. No wonder they hate us. What happened to the all the hype about Bush's "outreach to the Islamic world"? Wasn't Bush's Nanny™ supposed to come along and spin, er, fix all this, with her non-Arabic communication skills and extensive foreign policy experience? Apparently that plan got postponed, because, you know, there's no rush on improving US--Middle Eastern relations:

Karen Hughes, who was appointed a month ago to craft a bold new approach for U.S. public diplomacy, is not expected to take the job until as late as the fall, according to administration and congressional sources. The delay is already undermining U.S. credibility, with a well-placed U.S. official warning about "the gap between rhetoric and reality."

That last sentence pretty much says it all, doesn't it? But wait, there's more:

The delay comes as a Government Accountability Office report released this month criticized the administration for failing to develop a strategy to improve the image of the United States as "recent polling data show that anti-Americanism is spreading and deepening around the world."

"Such anti-American sentiments can increase foreign public support for terrorism directed at Americans, impact the cost and effectiveness of military operations, weaken the United States' ability to align with other nations in pursuit of common policy objectives, and dampen foreign publics' enthusiasm for U.S. business services and products," the report warned . . . [and] despite the administration's repeated pledges of outreach, the State Department's main program directed at the Islamic world has no Muslim staff, U.S. officials say.

Feel safe yet? Iran, here we come.
- posted by TJ @ 10:00 PM