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Newspaper scores Rumsfeld, Myers for 'professional negligence'
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-05-11 09:08 A leading military newspaper editorialized that US
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld set the tone for the prisoner abuse scandal in
Iraq by refusing to give captives rights due prisoners of war under the Geneva
Conventions.
"This was a failure that ran straight to the top," said the editorial
appearing in the May 17 edition of the Military Times weeklies.
An editorial by the
Military Times newspaper faults both US Defense Secretary Ronadl Rumsfeld
and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers(R), for
the prisoner abuse scandal.
[AFP] | "Accountability here is essential -- even if that means relieving top leaders
from duty in a time of war," it said.
Owned by Gannett, the Military Times publishes the Army, Navy and Air Force
times, weeklies that are widely read by servicemembers and distributed on US
military bases around the world.
The editorial said the soldiers caught in photographs and videos abusing
prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison are referred to around the Pentagon as
"the six morons who lost the war."
"But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons," it said.
Responsibility, it said, "extends all the way up the chain of command to the
highest reaches of the military hierarchy and its civilian leadership."
"The entire affair is a failure of leadership from start to finish," it said.
"Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld set the tone early in this war by
steadfastly refusing to give captives the rights accorded to prisoners of war
under the Geneva Convention," it said.
"From the moment they are captured, prisoners are hooded, shackled and
accorded no rights whatsoever. The message to the troops: Anything goes."
The editorial also faults General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, for trying to persuade CBS television to refrain from airing
the images while failing to read the army's own damning internal report
detailing the abuses.
"On the battlefield, Myers' and Rumsfelds' errors would be called a lack of
situational awareness -- a failure that amounts to professional negligence," it
said.
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