With no penalties, failures multiply

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

By GEORGE F. WILL
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

WASHINGTON -- Listen to the language. It is always a leading indicator of moral confusion.

The lawyer for a soldier charged in the Iraq prison abuse was explaining a photograph. It showed some Americans standing over a pile of naked Iraqis:

"Intelligence officers came into the facility, pulled two men out of their cells, took them away, brought them back with a third prisoner, ordered the MPs to undress all of them, and then started interrogating them, and had them ... in this position where they're all embracing each other."

"Embracing."

The lawyer's client probably will offer -- this should deepen Americans' queasiness -- the Nuremberg defense: I was only obeying orders. If the abuse was the result of orders -- or of the absence of them -- fault must extend up the chain of command.

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Indict Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney for war crimes and the put them away in Abu Ghraib where they belong.</b