So many people don't think any adminstration officials should be held accountable for the actions of US troops abroad. So my open question is...

Who is ultimately accountable for the actions of our troops if not the administration?

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are just as detached from our military victories as they are from the prisoner abuses. Yet I have no doubt that they will claim responsibility for winning this war when it's over. If they want to claim responsibility for our victories, they also have to share the same responsibility for our shortcomings.

I'm sorry, didn't we elect these guys to be responsible and manage our country? (or in this case, not elect)

It's hard to argue with the notion that polticians are accountable for the implementation of policies they instigate. (It's therefore also hard to debate - so don't be surprised if the thread gets closed quickly )

Clearly they aren't RESPONSIBLE for detailed implementation themselves - we wouldn't expect to see Bush and Rumsfeld firing guns in Iraq at the enemy themselves any more than we would expect them to personally build roads funded federally, personally dish out medicare drugs or personally bring in the crops their policies subsidise, etc. They aren't there to do the low level implementation tasks that follow on from their lead, they are there to lead.

However, they ARE personally and policitally (and, if necessary, morally and criminally) accountable for the outcomes of their political actions and omissions.

Julian,
I certainly don't disagree with this statement, but would like to point out the importance of the bolded word. People should only be accountable for those things related, as you state, to their political actions or omissions. Merely being 'in command' does not meet this criteria--there are numerous things that could go on below your command level that you have no control over or knowledge of. You shouldn't then be accountable for those things, unless it can be shown that they occurred due to a specific action or omission on your part. Currently, I haven't seen anything linking Bush to any of the activities in the prison abuse issue. He would therefore be no more accountable for these activities than he would, for example, be accountable for someone in the military getting drunk and running over someone. Now that the issue is known, however, he can be on the hook if appropriate actions are not taken. As for Rumsfeld, it remains to be seen what involvement, if any, he might have had.

As I pointed out in a separate thread, it does seem to me that, at the very least, there was a lack of supervision at this facility, which someone somewhere is certainly responsible and accountable for. Exactly where that particular buck falls has not been determined. Also, there is certainly the possibility that these actions were taken under orders (or, as you point out, direct omissions), the responsibility of which should certainly fall on somebody's shoulders. So far, though, that somebody is unknown. So, demanding accountability before identifying the responsible parties seems a bit premature to me.

The question is, WHY is/was Bush not informed to begin with? If he wasn't, he should be concerned about Rumsfeld withholding that information and punishing him accordingly. Instead, he (still) openly supports Rumsfeld and indicated he had no immediate intention of firing him. This is ridiculous and, in my opinion, indicates that the deliberate coverup may have included Bush himself with his prior knowledge of what was going on, otherwise he would have been more forthcoming with his apology to the American public and the Iraqi people.

Either there's a helluva lotta miscommunication going on in this administration (everyone from Condoleeza Rice "not seeing any immediate danger of terrorism", to John Ashcroft "hiding his head in the sand at the very thought of a terrorist threat brought forth by the FBI & CIA"), or everyone DOES know what's going on and are handling it very haphazardly. Either way, it seems to me incompetence flourishes abound in this entire administration, and they're simply not doing their job when it comes to protecting the American people.

In short, I think the soldiers were instructed to do what they were told by higher ranking officers. This doesn't excuse the actions of the soldiers, however, it doesn't excuse those ordering the directives either. The results of such abusive actions having been exposed to the world, have now put Americans as well as other countries at greater risk of attack. The leaders didn't follow the rules responsibly and therefore didn't fulfil their duty to protect the Free World.

Remember, these guys are PUBLIC SERVANTS by definition - elected by the people for the people, and if the left hand doesn't know what the right one is doing when it comes to something as serious assuring national security, then something is seriously wrong. Responsibility should and does go all the way to the top on these issues. Afterall, the executive branch has the power to declare war, and since Bush wanted it, he should be abreast to how everything is being handled and either approve or disapprove of it. Apparently, he approves since he did nothing to punish Rumsfeld, so he too, should be held accountable.

Seems to me that Bush is very busy defending his administration; meanwhile, his administration is hanging him out to dry. Of course Rumsfeld new of the abuses, and that there we no WMDs in Iraq (I have a video clip where he says that very thing).

In a normal functioning democracy the president would be impeached after such atrocities. In the United States of Amnesia we simple accept the double-think and keep waving the flag.