From a letter to the editor to the NY Times:
To the Editor:
America has certainly come to a curious moral impasse. "4 Top Officers Cleared by Army in Prison Abuses" (front page, April 23) opens with the statement that "a high-level Army investigation has cleared four of the five top Army officers overseeing prison policies and operations in Iraq of responsibility for the abuse of detainees there."
How is it possible that this so-called aberrant behavior could have escaped their oversight? The answer is that in the American military it cannot. It would not. In fact, it could have occurred only at the active direction of those people just exonerated. Things don't just happen, especially in military prisons.
We cannot allow responsibility for such acts to evaporate into thin air. The military wanted prisoners softened up for further interrogation, and our soldiers and intelligence operatives did it. Now it's time to take responsibility for all the Abu Ghraibs we have permitted.
To do anything less is to dishonor the principles this nation is founded upon.
John Greeley
Oceanside, N.Y., April 23, 2005
The writer, a Vietnam veteran, is a former Marine Reserve captain.