Dan RatherBOSTON:
WHILE THE Democratic infomercial went on and on, there was plenty of news. Some here. A lot in Iraq. And some on paper, in the form of an official government report that came out right before the convention and has received little notice amid all the scripted political hullabaloo.
Not the 9/11 Commission's final report which has already become an instant best-seller, and such is its perceived political influence and, perhaps, its inherent value that President Bush seems to be moving toward adopting many of its recommendations, quickly.
For the moment, at least, that report does not seem in danger of falling down the memory hole. No, your reporter refers instead to another item on his reading list, the Army Inspector General's report on 'Detainee Operations' in Afghanistan and Iraq. I'm still making my way through its 321 pages, as I am the 585-page 9/11 tome. But one does not need to read far to catch the report's central message, and one does not need to conduct more than a casual review of television, radio and newspapers to see that, amid all the coverage of the presidential campaign, Iraq and the 9/11 report, this Army report is all but getting lost.
DEVASTATING PHOTOS
Why should we care? For one, many have argued persuasively that prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere -- and the devastating photos thereof -- have done as much to damage American standing in the Arab and Muslim worlds as anything that has happened in recent years. And you don't have to care about that in the abstract to be concerned -- as long as United States men and women in uniform are in the Middle East, and as long as we remain under the threat of terrorist attacks, this is relevant, and so is the way the U.S. Government deals with it.
For another, the report leans heavily on the theory that the abuses recorded at Abu Ghraib and other sites were the result of the proverbial 'few bad apples', despite abundant evidence to the contrary. According to the report, these 'bad apples' are, perhaps predictably, the enlisted soldiers most closely associated with the abuses thus far -- those who had direct contact with prisoners.
BAD APPLES
Those who ask whether this is an accurate and adequate explanation are not necessarily saying that there are many more bad apples; what they are asking, rather, is whether what bad apples there are rise higher, if you will, up the apple tree. If you fear that a handful of low-ranking soldiers might be getting blame heaped on them for practices that might have been at least partially sanctioned or ordered by their higher-ups, that is also reason to care about the report.
The Inspector General's office writes in the report that it "did not find any systemic failures that resulted in incidents of abuse." That seems to contradict the findings of the earlier Army report on Abu Ghraib by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, as well as those of an International Red Cross report. The Washington Post and The New York Times have been at the lead of an editorial-page chorus that calls the report a 'whitewash'.
Meantime, in the Senate Armed Services Committee and elsewhere in Washington, politicians seem to just want this thing Abu Ghraib, the report, all of it to go away.
If citizens don't educate themselves on the subject by following the news and reading the available reports, including that from the Inspector General, these officials will likely get their wish. Except it won't all go away, not really. In the most dangerous part of the world for Americans, it continues to fan the flames of hatred.
Dan Rather is a television news broadcaster.
