OF TRIBUNALS AND FAILURE

Mark Danner speaks for us in "Torture and Truth," his ruminations in the current issue of The New York Review of Books on the "Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade" by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba and the "Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on the Treatment by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and Other Protected Persons by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq During Arrest, Internment and Interrogation by Delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross":

Many of the young Americans smiling back at us in the [Abu Ghraib] photographs will soon be on trial. It is unlikely that those who ran "the process" and issued the orders will face the same tribunals. Iraqis will be well aware of this, even if Americans are not. The question is whether Americans have traveled far enough from the events of September 11 to go beyond the photographs, which show nothing more than the amateur stooges of "the process," and look squarely at the process itself, the process that goes on daily at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, and other secret prisons in Iraq and around the world.

Ahmed Rashid also speaks for us in "The Rise of bin Laden," his review of "Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001," in the previous issue of NYRB:

What successive U.S. administrations could have done to prevent September 11 will always be debatable; perhaps the failure of intelligence to anticipate it is ultimately understandable, in view of the ponderous workings of bureaucracies. What is unforgivable is the failure of the current U.S. administration to maintain the resources and manpower needed to rebuild Afghanistan and to arrest bin Laden after September 11, and its decision to go to war in Iraq instead.