'Judgment at Nuremberg' turned upside down

The New York Times > Arts > Frank Rich: On Television, Torture Takes a Holiday: "Specialist Graner's defense lawyer, Guy Womack, explained it this way in his closing courtroom statement: 'In Nuremberg, it was the generals being prosecuted. We were going after the order-givers. Here the government is going after the order-takers.' As T. R. Reid reported in The Washington Post, the trial's judge, Col. James L. Pohl of the Army, 'refused to allow witnesses to discuss which officers were aware of events in cellblock One-Alpha, or what orders they had given.' While Mr. Womack's client, the ringleader of the abuses seen in the Abu Ghraib photographs, deserved everything that was coming to him and then some, there have yet to be any criminal charges leveled against any of the prison's officers, let alone anyone higher up in the chain of command. ... 'Nobody seems to be listening,' Mr. Danner said last week, as he prepared to return to Iraq to continue reporting on the war for The New York Review."

Because no one wants to face this sort of ugliness. This is why the Nazi regime rose to such power in Germany. No one could face the fact that an evil was being perpetrated by the institution to which they belonged. My nation could never do such a thing because that would impugn upon me. Ah, but the nation has, the nation does, the nation will. Separate your identity and see what is really happening. In so doing, you will avoid the need to apologize later.