I quess it is easy to understand why Rumsfeld and Cheney opposed U.S. support of an international war crimes tribunal.

Dear Editor,

The troops at the bottom are not the only ones guilty.

I believe and have always believed that the guilt and

responsibility goes up to George Bush himself. He is

a person of little character and few morals. I agree

fully with Janis Karpinsky in her assertion that

Rumsfeld is completely involved. The whole Bush

Administration Iraq War Group are involved. This includes Bush,Cheney,Gonzales,Ashcroft,Rumsfeld and all

their assistants. All of these people should be tried

for crimes against America. They should be tried here in America and then be handed over to the World Court at The Hague for another trial for crimes against humanity.

Signed: A Staunch Conservative/Humanist

I ask on two fronts. When do we, the Salon community, stop responding to stories with personal attacks?

More importantly, when do we, the US Citizenry, rise up and stop this administration and hold them accountable.

The US used to be the flag bearer of human rights. Now our Vice President is fighting with Congress because he wants the CIA to be exempt from a no torture policy.

Whether you believe in Karpinski's innocence, is not the real issue with this story. It is pretty clear that this administration is flouting the Geneva Convention, is holding innocent people with no plan to release them, and is using torture. When do we, the people that they supposedly represent, stop this? They are not going to stop themselves.

The Republican Senators are calling for an investigation into who leaked the information regarding secret prisons. What we need is an enforcment of the Geneva Conventions and a removal of everyone who decided that it is okay to ignore them.

You can't end violence with violence. But, no, the invasion of Iraq was in no way defending our pysical well being. Its bad enough that we're there under false pretenses. Its more than criminal that we're conducting ourselves like barbarians.

We need a change of command.

Prisons are a fairly modern invention. Numerous respectable studies of prison culture show that as instutions prisons by their very nature lead to a debasement of one's sense of right and wrong. This is because human beings have fairly predictable reactions to confinement, stress, uncertainty, and fear. It is also important to note that the prison guards are just as much "in prison" as the detainees and are therefore subjected to the same sorts of stresses as the people they are guarding.

I mention the foregoing to make the following point: without a highly professionalized and competent leadership maintaining constant control, any and all prisons are by their very nature susceptible to the forces that lead to degradation, violence, and torture. It is almost like the law of gravity, much like how if you drop an apple it will fall to the ground. Prisons tend to become nightmarish places in the absence of extraordinary oversight and leadership.

So, here's what I think the people at the Defense Department actually did. I think that they knew that if they created a certain sense of urgency in the minds of the guards, the guards would naturally tend towards rough treatment of detainees. I think they knew that if they simply created lax oversight of the prisons in Iraq, a culture of violence and degradation would emerge that would be beneficial for interrogations and intelligence gathering. Thus, nobody had to actually order anything. Nobody had to actually say, "let's torture these people." All they had to do was make it clear that they were not opposed to the rough treatment of the detainees and then couple that attitude with a lack of oversight. The prison as an institution would do the rest over time.

I guess what I am saying is that there is a sort of bureaucratic negligence that has predictable consequences. All the Defense Department had to do to bring about the system of torture we saw in Iraq was to create an ineffective prison leadership, put the guards into difficult situations, and then let the culture of torture emerge on its own. It certainly didn't help that the leadership publicly debated the merits of various torture techniques without explicitly condemning torture either.

In short, they all should have known what was happening just by knowing what prisons are like as institutions. I think they all did know what was happening and wanted it to be happening but at the same time wanted to avoid any direct responsiblity for it. They let the system drift out of control, knowing that it would drift out of control but without directly ordering anything. In my experience that's how bureaucracies actually work. So, yes, I think Donald Rmsfeld is ultimately responsible for what happened because he wanted it to happen and did nothing to prevent it from happening while at the same time creating an ambiguity about the idea of torture in his public statements and official writings.

That said, I think it is differnt for the CIA interrogators. The CIA interrogators actually do explicity and knowingly practice torture in secret prisons. That is a totally different issue.

So Karpinski, in charge of seventeen different prisons (count 'em), struts around Abu Ghrabe with all her assorted bits of metal and ribbon on her chest and various flunkies at her heels, then wonders why no one--no one--came forward to complain about prisoners being tortured? First of all, why wouldn't they think she was complicit in it? And second, does she really think the privates are going to come to level with her while the superiors they see every day are in the room?

I think Karpinski is far more culpable than Lyndie England, in that she was not only in a position to know that bad things were happening but unlike Lyndie, she was also in a position to stop it.

"But when I go out and I talk to soldiers and

I talk to prisoners, I have to trust what

they're saying to me is the truth."

To me, this is the core of the difficulty I've had

with Gen. Karpinski's discussions of her role at Abu

Gharib.

I'm convinced that the problems extend much higher up

than her position - in fact I think they extend higher

than Rummy. But this...credulity, is so maddening. If

she's simply going to believe whatever she hears from

those under her, without serious question, then there

was no reason for her to even be there - just let

Lynndie England run everything. Karpinski's job

included asking appropriate questions of those who

reported to her, and not stopping until she got

sensible answers that agreed with actual evidence.

The argument that a General was captive to Corporal

Graner, and that this General willingly remained in

such a position, is infuriating. The infuriation is

not abated by my belief that the blame likely

extends to the office of the Regent, I mean, Vice

President.