The disgraceful stories of abuse of Iraqi detainees keep on pouring out and shocking the collective psyche of the American people. The Washington Post published some more pictures in its issue of May 21, 2004, which display the sordid behavior of the interrogators. The details are so depraving that many like Sen. John McCain would like to have them disappear somehow. Abu Ghraib has forced Americans to determine what we were up to in Iraq. You cannot hope to coax or coerce reliable information from the detainees by degrading them absolutely and abjectly. Forcing them to curse their own religion! I think and believe that America stands for freedom of religion. Under these circumstances, many have started pondering the question which has all the while been lurking in and nagging our subconscious: why are we in Iraq? The weapons of mass destruction (wmds) are simply not there and our mission seems to be accomplished because we went there to destroy the wmds.

Putting up a shaky and unconvincing support for the defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Nicholas Kristoff wrote in his op-ed column “Sticking Up for Rumsfeld” in the May 22, 2004 issue of The New York Times, “The central point is that we have no proof that Mr. Rumsfeld bears direct responsibility for the torture…So we need a thorough investigation. If Mr. Rumsfeld turns out to be complicit, he must go. But if, as Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba said in his report (deservedly praised as tough and unsparing), the problems were at much lower levels, then why make a scapegoat of the defense secretary?”

In the editorial of the same issue, it was stated, “The theory that mid ranking intelligence officer carried out such a drastic shift in the military’s normal rules did fit in with the overriding theme of testimony thus far: senior officers blaming those far below them for every thing. General Sanchez said Red Cross reports on prisoner abuse had gone to low-level officers who had never passed them on. Other accounts contradict that. But in any case, that’s not a defense– it’s an indictment of his command.”

Think over it.

That Mr. Kristoff’s defense is unconvincing, even to himself, is demonstrated by his comments: “The better argument for Rumsfeld’s ouster is that he led us, poorly prepared and clutching the hands of a charlatan, Ahmad Chalabi, into a quagmire. His doctrine of underwhelming force hobbled our occupation and is partly responsible for the mess. According to a poll cited in the Financial Times, 58 percent of Iraqis now support Mktada al-Sadr, one of our enemies.”

We should really go beyond what Mr. Kristoff has stated. While the whole world knew Saddam Hussein, nobody, outside Iraq, knew Moktada al-Sadr six months before. The mismanagement of war in Iraq created al-Sadr. Arresting him or even killing him will not solve the problem. Because, as my elder brother, a homeopath besides being a retired mechanical engineer, is fond of saying, “It’s useless to treat the symptoms; treat the real malady.” Al-Sadr is not the real problem; he is only a symptom of the deeper sickness that is infesting Iraq.

Who should be responsible for mismanaging the Iraq war? Mr. Kristoff says, “But remember – this is not Mr. Rumsfeld’s war. It is President Bush’s.” True, but Rumsfeld is fighting the Bush war. This should be not the excuse for a mismanaged war or for the defense secretary who is waging it. Kristoff further stated, “He is an old fashioned conservative, a realist like the first President Bush, and he did not particularly press for war with Iraq. The real culprits are the neo-con ideologues who screamed for war: people like Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Scooter Libby and the current President Bush himself. So why fire Mr. Rumsfeld for carrying out his boss’s invasion?”

This is a lame argument. Every one else is culpable for Iraq debacle, according to Mr. Kristoff, but not the defense secretary whose duty it was to fight and win the war without sullying the American image. He concludes his column with, “The person who charted the course into Iraq and who bears ultimate responsibility is not Mr. Rumsfeld but Mr. Bush – and his bosses will get a chance to fire him in November.”

No matter how one tries to hedge around the mismanaged war in Iraq, its horrible ghosts will not disappear by wishing them away. American values and its liberal democratic form of governance are much more important than the Iraq war. Defense of American values is more fundamental than finding excuses for Abu Ghraib and defending people whose duty it was to see that the American values were not short-changed for the short term despicable measures to extort information.