Kevin's Weblog

This technique is just awesome. (link courtesy of jwz)

Tim Bray expresses some reasonable thoughts about what’s been going on in Abu Ghraib. Of course, this is exactly what the Geneva Convention has always said. “We were just following orders” or “we were under a lot of pressure” or “our training didn’t cover this” are not valid excuses.

At this point, even The Economist is calling for Rumsfeld to resign over this. I’m not a fan of Rumsfeld by any means, but I do think that this might still be a little premature. It is possible that these abuses were known all the way to the top. Certainly some statements from the government’s lawyers in the Guantanamo cases could be interpreted to support the idea that torture was officially sanctioned procedure. And, I don’t believe for a moment that those soldiers were acting completely on their own with no knowledge or sanction from superiors. However, I think a reasonable investigation into what happened is warranted.

One of the primary arguments for someone at the top taking the fall for this seems to be that it would restore US credibility in the international community. After the refusal to support the International Criminal Court, this will look really bad unless the rest of the world is convinced that this issue is fully investigated. Of course, what would look even better than Rumsfeld resigning would be for us to admit our fallibility, put our backing into the ICC, and turn this whole matter over to the international community to handle.