Dear Colin Powell: This Is What A Good Soldier Does

It's called loyalty to a higher principal than "your leader." A higher principle than "following orders."

From today's Washington Post:

The two-star general who led an Army investigation into the horrific detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib has accused the Bush administration of war crimes and is calling for accountability.

In his 2004 report on Abu Ghraib, then-Major General Anthony Taguba concluded that "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees." He called the abuse "systemic and illegal." And, as Seymour M. Hersh reported in the New Yorker, he was rewarded for his honesty by being forced into retirement.

Now, in a preface to a Physicians for Human Rights report based on medical examinations of former detainees, Taguba adds an epilogue to his own investigation.

Et cetera.

It's a different code of conduct than Colin Powell's keeping one's mouth shut and not rocking the boat. It's what democracy is looking for in its leaders -- military and civilian.

Something to salute.

Comments

[bgregs]

Yeah, I was listening to Rachel Maddow last night and she was playing clips from Powell's chief of staff, or something, and he was talking about how he and the Secretary we wondering how high up the leadership failed in the bush admin and military. I was screaming at the car radio "WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY SOMETHING THEN! YOU FREAKING MORONS!"

[DavidJames]

Here is a link to Major General Anthony Taguba's forward to the report 'Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact' from Physicians for Human Rights.

www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/18/9728/

[jmpurser]

Thank you. I'm sick of people holding up Powell as an honorable soldier who "just happened" to "have to" support the Bush Co. lies on Iraq. No, really, he had no charachter when he signed on with them and he had none when he carried their lies, and he has none now.

But there are military men and women out there who really do embody honor and courage even when it's not politically expedient. They should be known and their opinions sought by this nation. Not the Powells.

[bgregs]

No, I'm not willing to go far enough to say that he had no character when he signed on. However, by the time we were going to war illegally with false intelligence, he should have been standing up screaming from the rooftops about what was actually going on!