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| Thoughts about prisoner abuse in Iraq |
May 07, 2004 |
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Dear Friends,
There was a lightening storm over Virginia as we took off from Washington National Airport on Friday night headed toward New Mexico. As we climbed out to the north following the line of the Potomac River, we flew over the Pentagon, its jagged scar from September 11th now repaired and then Arlington National Cemetery, its rows of white crosses still visible beneath a darkening sky.
The sadness I had been feeling all day deepened.
I came to the airport directly from a House Armed Services Committee hearing where Secretary Rumsfeld and senior officers testified about the brutally criminal acts committed by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
There are still many unanswered questions about how this happened and whether prompt and appropriate action was and is being taken in response to it. But as I read through inches of reports and viewed the photographs the world has now seen, I was taken back to another moment in history.
In early 1969 a soldier from Phoenix, Arizona back from Vietnam could not live with what he knew had happened in a place called My Lai. His letters to Congress and the President and other officials eventually led to the court martial of Lieutenant William Calley and an independent investigation that concluded senior Army officers had covered up their actions and involvement.
By November of 1969 the My Lai massacre was national news. My Lai, and how it was handled by American leaders, tainted the reputation of America in the world, undermined the support of the war among the American people, and impacted a generation of young men and women in the military -- including me.
The response of American military and civilian leadership to Abu Ghraib will resonate for many years to come.
I have some role to play in making sure we do the right thing. I will do my best. That`s a personal obligation I feel toward those buried below the rows of crosses under a darkening sky at Arlington.
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