From Our Washington Correspondent

Our old friend Michael from D.C. sends along this dispatch...

One thing that I have not seen the press connect the dots with. 1 - General Richard Myers asked Dan Rather to hold the 60 Minutes II story, stating that it could endanger the lives of hostages in Fallujah. 60 Minutes held the story for two weeks. 2 - This last Sunday, General Myers was on This Week and stated that he had not read the Taguba Report submitted in February.

So we have the JCS Chairman knowing that a major story is going to break about torture, rape and abuse in Saddam's most notorious prision, and doesn't read the military's own report on these abuses? He said something to the effect that it was "working itself up the chain to him" as if he is helpless over what reports he can read.

The other thing that astounds me is that the International Committee of the Red Cross petitioned the military several times to stop the torture and was ignored.

I really want to support our military, but I have to think that this is a systemic problem and not just a few bad apples.

I think (in my own way of clarifying which is questionable in many circles) that what we're all suffering from is having fewer and fewer people to believe in within our military. We support our military, but decision-makers are fumbling the ball in a BIG way. We support our troops, but we cannot condone what a handfull of those troops are doing. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz...well, we never had ANY faith in those two, and their incompetence is now spreading and spiraling down into their entire department. They need to be relieved of their duties NOW.

There are too many bad apples at work here, and they're rotting the entire orchard.

As a side note: It's an interesting position the president has dug himself into here. These are egregious and profound wartime and human rights violations done under the command of Donald Rumsfeld. Bush is adamantly standing by his man, while the rest of the world is calling for his head. If he bows to pressure (just as he did in finally apologizing today), it's a major, major, MAJOR flip-flop in the making. One on a grand (and much more dangerous) scale.