Failings Will Happen

This morning we learn how the US has the "best trained armed force that we’ve ever had." We learn that after hearing about how sensitive and gentle the US military is in extreme situations in places like Iraq. I loved how in the audio clip of JAG training, the US didn't shoot a guard who raised his weapon...that was pretty funny.

Listening to this piece on NPR you would never know that Abu Ghraib was not an aberration, but was the standard operating procedure for abusing detainees in Iraq (the aberration being that it was indisputably caught on film). Instead Ari Shapiro tells us that "when the military has high profile public failings like the Abu Ghraib abuses or the massacre at Haditha, JAGs investigate." See, it was just a public failing--and JAGs took care of it.

We also hear from a retired JAG who runs the oxymoronic "Center for Law Ethics and National Security" at Duke University. According to Shapiro this man "says failings will happen." That's reassuring.

What I find really aggravating about this piece is that I actually would like to hear from some JAGs -- those who have shown the integrity of opposing the treatment of detainees in the sham of the "war on terror" -- and not these sorry apologists.