Accountability.....

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Can you spell "subpoena?"

Joseph L. Galloway is former senior military correspondent for Knight
Ridder newspapers, columnist for McClatchy Newspapers, and co-author of the
national best-seller We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young. Readers may write to
him at: P.O. Box 399, Bayside, Texas 78340; e-mail: jlgalloway2@cs.com.

Better late than never.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is gone, but there's little time
for celebration, even for those of us who long ago began calling for his
removal. The damage that men do lives after them, and it's time at last for an
accounting. The nation’s voters have spoken, and it's reasonable to expect that
the Congress finally will begin to exercise some oversight of the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan after five years of serving as rubber stamp and
doormats.

Can you spell "subpoena?"

For the Democrats who will soon take charge of the House of Representatives
and perhaps the Senate, too, here's a preliminary laundry list of some of the
things that need doing:
A comprehensive investigation of the pre-war
intelligence on Iraq and how it was perverted, how the mine was salted, and by
whom.

A thorough investigation of what pre-war advice was offered by senior
American military commanders on troop strength, equipment requirements and
strategy and tactics. Did even one general ignore the bullying from on high and
ask for more troops, and how did Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
respond?

• Why did the Pentagon send American troops into battle without enough armored
  vests, armored vehicles, rifles, ammunition, food and water? Who's responsible
  for that debacle which cost so much in blood and money?
  
• Where did our money go? Billions of dollars of taxpayer money disappeared
  down various rat holes in Iraq, forked over to contractors without even so much
  as a handwritten receipt. Who got the money? What did they do for it? This is a
  fertile field that can be drilled for years, with a steady stream of
  indictments, trials and prison sentences.
  
• What about those no-bid Defense Department contracts that were parceled out
  to the Halliburtons and KBRs and Blackwaters in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other
  more costly weapons and equipment contracts that went to big defense industry
  conglomerates accustomed to writing very generous checks to the
  Republicans?
  
• Why did an administration that was hell-bent on going to war, with the
  inevitable and terrible human casualties among our troops, consistently
  underfund the Veterans Administration, which is charged with caring for our
  wounded and disabled?
  
• What's been the effect of the grotesque politicization of the selection and
  promotion system for senior military commanders by the office of the Secretary
  of Defense? What failures have resulted from that ill-conceived action? What
  responsibility do those generals and admirals chosen by Donald H. Rumsfeld bear
  for the failure to prepare for and conduct effective action against an
  inevitable Iraqi insurgency?
  
• Who at the top bears responsibility for the torture and mistreatment of
  prisoners and detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and the Guantanamo detention camp?
  A score of Pentagon investigations got to the bottom of the chain of command but
  declared that the top, in Rumsfeld’s office and the White House, was
  innocent.
  
• Who's responsible for breaking our understrength Army and Marine Corps with
  endless combat duty tours in Iraq and Afghanistan? Who refused all suggestions
  that the force was too small for the mission, and that 50,000 or 100,000 more
  men and women were needed in uniform? Who stubbornly refused even to consider
  the inevitable consequences of an Army so tied down trying to man these wars
  that it no longer could react to an emergency anywhere else in a dangerous
  world?
  

Simply put, the jig is up. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick
Cheney and Rumsfeld have come to the end of their free ride. No longer can they
act without thought or ignore the boundaries of the Constitution, the law and
common sense.

Did they really think they could get away with all of this without ever being
called to answer to history and the American people?

They all deserve what's about to descend on their heads. They deserve every
subpoena. They deserve every indictment. Most of all, they deserve a reserved
place atop the ash heap of history.

Can I get an AMEN!

-UF