CNN reports: Lawmakers to review new Iraq prison images
[Vice President Dick] Cheney issued a rare weekend statement Saturday in which he voiced support for Rumsfeld, calling him "the best secretary of defense the United States has ever had. People ought to let him do his job." Cheney is also a former defense secretary. [...]Cheney's statement followed calls by several Democrats for Rumsfeld's resignation after an Army report found numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" of Iraqis held at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
UPDATE: Charles Johnson highlighted a David Frum editorial on the reasons why Rumsfeld must stay:
1) Resignation would be utterly unjustified. The abuses in Abu Ghraib were in no way Donald Rumsfeld's fault. Nothing he ever said or did could have given anyone in the chain of command beneath him any reason to think that he countenanced or would countenance the humiliation and degradation of prisoners.2) Resignation would be pointless. The damage done by the Abu Ghraib pictures is irretrievable. The president could fire his entire cabinet, without changing a single mind in the Arab world -- or for that matter Europe -- about what happened and why.
Johnson also noted some spot-on comments from Senator Joe Lieberman regarding who's really owed an apology:
"The behavior by Americans at the prison in Iraq is, as we all acknowledge, immoral, intolerable and un-American ... I cannot help but say, however, that those responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, never apologized. Those who have killed hundreds of Americans in uniform in Iraq, working to liberate Iraq and protect our security, have never apologized. And those who murdered and burned and humiliated four Americans in Fallujah a while ago never (apologized)..."Posted by Forkum at May 9, 2004 10:26 PM"I hope as we go about this investigation we do it in a way that does not dishonor the hundreds of thousands of Americans in uniform who are a lot more like Pat Tillman and Americans that are not known, like Army National Guard Sgt. Felix Delgreco, of Simsbury, Conn., who was killed in action a few weeks ago, that we not dishonor their service or discredit the cause that brought us to send them to Iraq, because it remains one that is just and necessary."
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