Watch What We Do

From the Boston Globe:

With his job on the line over the shocking revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib prison last year, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told the world to ''watch how democracy deals with wrongdoing and scandal and the pain of acknowledging and correcting our own mistakes and, indeed, our own weaknesses."

Now, exactly one year after the photographs from Abu Ghraib became public, the Defense Department has placed seven low-ranking guards under court-martial. No general -- or colonel, or CIA intelligence officer, or political appointee -- has faced any charges.

Human rights groups yesterday seized on the anniversary to reiterate their dismay over the lack of command responsibility, saying Abu Ghraib will be remembered as much for who wasn't held accountable as who was.

But while investigations into the Iraqi prison case have come to a close, the scandal has led to broader revelations about the mistreatment of prisoners in US military custody around the world.

Disclosures at other military detention centers, from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan, have revealed use of sleep deprivation, shackling in painful positions, exposure to temperature extremes, and beatings that have resulted in at least 28 deaths -- suggesting that the detainee abuse scandal that started with Abu Ghraib will haunt the war on terrorism for years to come.

''The abuses aren't as sexy, so to speak, as some of the genuinely perverted images that came from Abu Ghraib," said Ken Hurwitz of Human Rights First. ''But the real interrogations have been, by all accounts, quite brutal. As more and more detainees are released from places like Guantanamo, the idea that Guantanamo was doing it right and Abu Ghraib was doing it wrong is just not holding up."

The entire article is worth reading.