It starts at the top.

The Denver Post reports that the investigations in Iraq include "......more than twice as many allegations of detainee abuse - 75 - are being investigated by the military than previously known. Twenty-seven of the abuse cases involve deaths; at least eight are believed to be homicides." The investigations extend to at least four facilities in Iraq.

ABC News reports that Sgt. Samuel Provance of the 302nd MI Battalion has charged that "dozens" of soldiers at Al Ghraib were involved in cases of abuse.

The Red Cross has filed reports of 50 allegations of abuse at Camp Cropper.

It's abundantly clear that the problems with our treatment of POWs and other detainees in Iraq extends far beyond a handful of Reserve MPs operating as roque agents in a single cell block. It's also totally unremarkable that this is true.

In fact, as scandalous as the conduct of those Reservists may be, the level of denial coming out of the civilian hierarchy and military brass is equally if not more scandalous. With over 130,000 heavily armed individuals operating in a distant, alien and generally hostile environment, it should simply be no surprise at all that as many as hundreds of them might conduct themselves improperly. It happens in every war. To pretend that we can conduct war in a pristine fashion, that Americans in Iraq cannot or will not do what Americans and troops of every nation have done in every other combat environment in our history is simply absurd.

It's also no reflection at all on the overwhelming majority of our troops - and the troops of other nations - that conduct themselves honorably in circumstances that those who have never been combatants simply can't fathom.

The abuses are a problem, but it's a problem that the UCMJ and the court martial procedures of the US military is completely capable of handling. The greater problem at this point is the attempt to cover up the realities of war and to pretend that these problems weren't inherent in the decision to go to war. To, in other words, compound the lies that led to the beginning of the war with another layer of lies about its conduct.

But lie they must, because the truth is that the central problem isn't using MPs to 'set the conditions' for interrogation, although that's a problem. The central problem is that a line is appearing that clearly leads from those Sergeants and Privates up through Captains and Majors and into the ranks of a series of Generals and civilian authorities. It's a line that leads directly to the office of the Secretary of Defense, where the conditions that made the behavior of those MPs inevitable were set in the first place.

The whole thing is rotten, and like a decaying fish, the rot extends from the head. For the honor of our troops and our nation, we need to cut out the rot where it begins.

Rummy has to go.

Sign the petition.

(The Stakeholder has a note on the 'Gonzalez Memo' that illustrates just how those conditions were set at and transmitted through the higher echelons.)