Joseph Galloway - CAN YOU SPELL "SUBPOENA"

[kpete]

A Time For Accounting
Joseph L. Galloway
November 10, 2006


Joseph L. Galloway is former senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder newspapers, columnist for McClatchy Newspapers, and co-author of the national best-seller We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young. Readers may write to him at: P.O. Box 399, Bayside, Texas 78340; e-mail: [e-mail].

Better late than never.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is gone, but there's little time for celebration, even for those of us who long ago began calling for his removal. The damage that men do lives after them, and it's time at last for an accounting. The nation’s voters have spoken, and it's reasonable to expect that the Congress finally will begin to exercise some oversight of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan after five years of serving as rubber stamp and doormats.

Can you spell "subpoena?"

For the Democrats who will soon take charge of the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate, too,
here's a preliminary laundry list of some of the things that need doing:

Galloway makes his case at:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/11/10/a_time_for_accounting.php

[Coexist]

1. I miss Knight-Ridder

:cry:

[greenman3610]

5. they are the Mclatchey Washington bureau now eom

[Selatius]

2. Just a reminder to folks: Launching investigations does not equal impeachment

Impeachment only comes after any investigation unearths evidence of wrongdoing, and until the evidence is gathered, I guess the politically expedient advice would be to not mention impeachment at this time. We will talk about it after the evidence is in.

[asjr]

3. Hearings and investigations will

air out a lot of dirty laundry.

[msongs]

4. you mean we cannot act like republicans and fundies? darn! nt

[leveymg]

6. A response to Mr. Galloway

I have to admit to being a little apprehensive about some of the measures Mr. Galloway recommends. He's entirely right that the full range of crimes -- from contracting fraud to prisoner abuses -- needs to be investigated right up to the top. But, the following recommendation struck me as leading into a potential mine field. So I wrote the letter that follows.

Mr. Galloway writes that Congress needs to probe:

* What's been the effect of the grotesque politicization of the selection and promotion system for senior military commanders by the office of the Secretary of Defense? What failures have resulted from that ill-conceived action? What responsibility do those generals and admirals chosen by Donald H. Rumsfeld bear for the failure to prepare for and conduct effective action against an inevitable Iraqi insurgency?

* Who at the top bears responsibility for the torture and mistreatment of prisoners and detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and the Guantanamo detention camp? A score of Pentagon investigations got to the bottom of the chain of command but declared that the top, in Rumsfeld’s office and the White House, was innocent.

I responded:

Dear Mr. Galloway -

I can't agree with you more about how top Bush Administration officials richly deserve subpoenas and indictments for a multitude of Iraq-related crimes. Those at the very top of the chain of command --the President, VP, the civilian policy-makers around the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General -- who actually wrote and signed the memos, in particular, need to be grilled under the klieg lights for war crimes.

But, before the ranking brass receive the same sort of grilling for the failures of the Iraq War, we need to isolate just how much was a failure of policy before we try to pin the label of incompetence upon military officers. It would be too easy to scapegoat the theater and field commanders for failure to win an impossible mission. I'm not really sure there is any real evidence that those officers who were promoted from the list during the last three years have been less than diligent in the face of an impossible task.

We ought to be careful that the right people properly get the blame.

- Mark G. Levey

[Selatius]

7. We ought to be careful, but we shouldn't let them go either if they're guilty

The UCMJ is perfectly clear on obeying illegal orders.

Personally, I favor going from the ground up through the officer corps to the very top and picking out all who have broken the law or demonstrated criminal negligence and even negligent homicide in the dispensing of their duties.

[leveymg]

8. Very much agree

But, it would be best to let the JAG Corps carry that out. We don't want to appear to be pursuing an inquisition from the outside.

Congressional hearings on the full scope of the command responsibility for war crimes would be most welcome if they run parallel to military proceedings.