Out-do the President and Defense Secretary
The Taguba Report, detailing not just a few instances, but a culture of prison abuses at Abu Ghraib. It reached conclusions and made recommendations and has been finalized since--no kidding--February. The military kept it quiet, from the public, and from Congress. If 60 Minutes and The New Yorker hadn't broken this story, it's doubtful that they would be dealing with it in any serious way, as they are forced to now. It's certainly no coincidence that talk about court-martials and holding people accountable started coming out after the story went public.

But still...the President hasn't read the report, nor has the Defense Secretary, or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Continuing to conduct the war not by any recognizable leadership, but by being jerked around everytime their own lack of desire to know what's really going on bites them in the butt. It's happening with more and more regularity. From a Sacramento Bee opinion:

"Stunningly, although Taguba's report was finished in February, neither Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld nor Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had even read it as of May 1! Last Sunday, Rumsfeld ducked in the weeds, dispatching the general to work the Sunday TV-talk circuit.

'It's just working its way up - up the chain,' Myers explained lamely, when pressed by 'Face the Nation' host Bob Schieffer on CBS. Later, he told an equally persistent George Stephanopoulos on ABC's 'This Week': 'I'm not going to comment on it until I have a chance to read it and see what the context is. ... This sort of reporting can often be very, very wrong.'

Understand this: Taguba's report cited systemic illegal abuse of Iraqi detainees and quotes that the incidents were done at the direction of military intelligence officials. But Myers, who hadn't read the report, insisted: 'I would say that categorically there is no evidence of systematic abuse in this system at all.'

Rummy surfaced Tuesday to tell reporters that the Defense Department had been investigating this for months and had even told reporters of the probe on Jan. 16. But no, he hasn't read the report yet either.

Back at the White House, nothing is known about anything. Had National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice briefed President Bush about Taguba's shocking evidence and conclusions in February? March? April? Had he read the report? He surely could have gotten a copy quicker and easier than [New Yorker reporter] Sy Hersh did - just by commanding, one more time: 'Bring it on!'

Tone is set at the top. Bush failed to demand urgency inside and inoculate America's image by moving quickly and publicly on the outside. He needed to take strong public action against the culprits before the photos poured through the Great News Funnels around the world.

You can add distance to the measure by which you already out-class all of them by reading it yourself (finally available online, via TalkLeft) here. Warning: it's pretty long...I haven't read it all myself, but then again I'm not the Secretary of Defense and primary spokesperson for the war.