Joe Galloway: It's Time For Rumsfeld To Go
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
May 6, 2004
Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and a nationally syndicated columnist. One of America's preeminent war correspondents, with more than four decades as a reporter and writer, and co-author of the best seller,
"We Were Soldiers Once, and Young", he recently concluded an assignment as a special consultant to Gen. Colin Powell at the State Department.
Galloway, a native of Refugio, Texas, spent 22 years as a foreign and war correspondent and bureau chief for United Press International, and nearly 20 years as a senior editor and senior writer for U.S. News & World Report magazine.
His overseas postings include tours in Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Singapore and three years as UPI bureau chief in Moscow in the former Soviet Union. During the course of 15 years of foreign postings Galloway served four tours as a war correspondent in Vietnam and also covered the 1971 India-Pakistan War and half a dozen other combat operations.
In 1990-1991 Galloway covered Desert Shield/Desert Storm, riding with the 24th Infantry Division (Mech) in the assault into Iraq. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf has called Galloway
"The finest combat correspondent of our generation -- a soldier's reporter and a soldier's friend."
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WASHINGTON - All that the Bush administration had in Iraq, in the absence of any grand strategy, was a grip on the moral high ground: Whatever else, we were way better than Saddam Hussein, who tortured and murdered the unfortunates who ended up in Abu Ghraib Prison.
We had the moral high ground until a week ago when news of the prisoner scandal came out.
The photos are disgusting. Iraqi prisoners hog-tied and heaped one upon the other. An American soldier sitting on top of a prisoner. Prisoners naked and abused. Prisoners, an Army investigation reported, who had broom handles and chemical light sticks shoved up them.
Six Army Reserve military police ? part-time soldiers in a full-time war ? face court martial on charges that could send them to Leavenworth military prison for years. Six officers and sergeants who should have had a better grip on the situation in Abu Ghraib Prison outside Baghdad have been given administrative punishment of a severity that will effectively end their military careers.
All that is well and good and as it should be. But the buck in this case should not stop at the lieutenant or captain level. There were people wearing silver stars on their shoulders who bore responsibility both for the prisoners and for the MPs guarding them. And above the generals there is Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld,
who until events forced him to couldn't even be bothered to read the Army investigative report, written in February, which detailed the fresh horrors in a place of horror, Abu Ghraib.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on national television shows Sunday that he hadn't read the report, either.
We are Americans. We are better than this. This is not about training and education and instruction on the finer points of the Geneva Conventions on the proper treatment of prisoners of war, although those things are important. This is about right and wrong. First graders know that. Any policeman who can't figure that out needs some time on the other side of the bars.
It tars us all, just as Lt. Rusty Calley and Capt. Ernest Medina and their band of My Lai murderers tarred the reputations of everyone who served in Vietnam, and all Americans.
This takes us down in the eyes of the Middle East and the rest of the world.
It is one more disaster in a string of disasters that began with the idea that we would topple Saddam Hussein and the grateful Iraqi people would welcome us with showers of rose petals.
Heads ought to roll over Iraq in general and Abu Ghraib in particular,
but George Bush seems to have an aversion to firing people even when they desperately need it. He didn't fire anyone after Sept. 11 when too many of our watchdogs were asleep at the switch. He didn't fire anyone at the Central Intelligence Agency for getting some very important information wrong in the lead-up to invading Iraq.
At times it seems that the only thing that can get you fired in Washington is telling the truth. President Bush needs to get out a long broom and do some housecleaning. There's still time for him to go into the election looking tough and decisive and on top of the situation. No better way to send that signal than some creative firings.
A couple of weeks ago we suggested the dismissal for cause of L. Paul Bremer, head of the civilian reconstruction effort in Iraq, along with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Deputy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Peter Pace. This week we raise our sights and suggest that it is past time for Rumsfeld himself to depart.
He insisted on total personal control of everything to do with planning and carrying out the Iraq invasion and reconstruction. Now that things have become difficult, not to say bloody, the secretary of defense and his crew are bobbing and weaving and dodging and praying for June 30 when they can hand off responsibility to Secretary of State Colin Powell, the man they froze out of virtually every decision made, especially the bad ones.
As he leaves, Rumsfeld can take with him everyone in his office, especially including Under Secretary of Defense Douglas A. Feith, director of the Office of Special Plans. Myers should go, too.
We preach accountability to our children, so why should we not demand accountability from those whose decisions and obsessions have sent our soldiers and Marines into harm's way? Get it right or get out. Now there's a slogan a retread corporate czar like Rumsfeld should be able to identify with.
? 2004 Joe Galloway. All opinions expressed in this article are the author's .
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Well............................not ALL of those opinions are "just" the "authors'"!
