who point out blemishes. Unfortunately...

About 15 years ago, a fairly new Lieutenant had an article in Army magazine. He'd earlier worked on a chicken farm and at a kennel. He compared a pack of Dobermans who will help each other and are solicitous of a pack member who's injured to a flock of Chickens wherein all will gather to peck an ailing flock member to death. His point was that the Army had a tendency to go the Chicken route and he opined the Doberman route might be more beneficial to everyone.

I didn't have the heart to write him and tell him that it had been that way for years.

Taguba did his job and did it right but he was guilty of telling the system something it didn't want to hear; that's a no-no. It will bite you if you do that unless you're pretty slick in the way you do it. No matter that he was right and the system was wrong. Way wrong.

Abu Gharaib was an aberration but it was the system's fault. Untrained MPs; sustained and heavy indirect pressure from above to get info "with the gloves off;" failure to supervise by senior NCOs and Battalion and below Officers; failure of anyone in the chain to stand up and say "This is not right. It was an invitation to a cock-up -- and we got one. Serves us right.

As an aside, a Company Commander from the 82d on external security at the prison did make waves early on as did his Battalion Commander but it died when it got to V Corps, they didn't want to hear it...

Back to the Doberman bit -- in 1961, if I told my boss I was ready to go to war and it turned out I wasn't, I'd have gone to jail. By 1965, nobody cared whether I was ready or not as long as I was prepared to say on my USR that I was ready. If I did not, I 'd be pecked to death. Unless I got slick and was very careful not to blame my boss's boss...

That's about the same time that what the boss wanted became more important than what was right, that political correctness and the "turn on the weak" attitude got going and it has accelerated since. The pressure and competition for promotion are inimical to absolute integrity; we're just lucky that there's as much as there is and we're fortunate that very few commands would have failed as badly as did that MP Brigade -- but we've yet to acknowledge that the system around it contributed. He or she who points out such failures is likely to get pecked a lot.

I hit my second retirement in 1995 but I've got a serving son and things don't seem to have improved -- fortunately, they don't seem to be much worse. We really need to make them better, a lot better.

To those of you still working at it and keeping the faith; Thanks.