Accountability is for the little people

Washington Monthly, Jan-Feb, 2006 by Charles Peters

"CIA is likely to avoid charges in most prisoner deaths" was a recent headline in The New York Times. It is truly amazing how the higher-ups have avoided punishment despite one prisoner--abuse scandal after another, while Lynndie England gets slammed with three years. What outrages me even more is that all the evidence at the England trial related to her mental and emotional suitability demonstrated conclusively that the Army should never have assigned her to Abu Ghraib, and probably should not have recruited her in the first place.

There is a terrible cruelty in the Army's misusing a human being and then blaming her for the consequences.