Drama and Dissension

When a mistake is made, the correct and acceptable behavior is to take the responsibility for the mistake, try to correct it, and make sure that it does not happen in the future. Then you move on. During the Abu Ghraib fiasco, in which prisoners were treated inhumanely by National Guardsmen is one of these times.

It has recently come out that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld submitted his resignation to the President, but the President chose not to acknowledge the letter. He decided that Sec. Rumsfeld was better off working with the United States Army and National Guard in resolving the conflict, than to give up on a problem perpetrated by untrained service men and women.

It also shows the type of respect that the two men have for one another. Many different groups were calling for the resignation of Sec. Rumsfeld, yet nothing was heard from the Pentagon or the Whitehouse on his resignation attempts. The President refused to leave a man whom appointed to do the job, to the viciousness of the public. This once again shows the loyalty of the President to his subordinates. Whether or not this is a good thing, I leave up to the reader to decide.

The issue of accountability though still lies in the fore front of the issue with Abu Ghraib. Who was accountable? Whose fault is it? Should Sec. Rumsfeld have had better information on what was taking place in the prisons of Iraq, undoubtedly. Should he had an idea what was going on, yes. Is he ultimately responsible for what occurred? Mostly. The buck stops with the President, but he's protected by his Cabinet. So the Secretary is a buffer between the President and the Pentagon. He takes the flack and he takes the responsibility.

It's unfair to believe that Sec. Rumsfeld had full knowledge of the abuse going on at Abu Ghraib. Even with the Bush Administration's weak view of the Geneva convention and the treatment of Prisoners of War/Enemy Combatants, it is unlikely that the type of abuse experienced at Abu Ghraib would be systematically used, as it didn't seem to be used for information gathering. The Secretary of Defense is accountable for what the military does, but he is not in control of everything that happens in a day.

Even the Republicans were distancing themselves from Rumsfeld during the Abu Ghraib and No Armor Scandals. Was this simply to pragmatically distance themselves for the upcoming elections, or does this signal things to come? Surely Republicans, such as Senator John McCain had real problems with the abuse and weren't using this tragedy of foreign relations to advance their own politics. But one has to wonder if this distance and the politics between the Republicans will be there in the future, especially considering the upcoming Bush Administration's agenda.

This concludes today's broadcast.