Joe Keeps Digging

L'il Joe Lieberman has been roundly excoriated for his outrageous and incoherent rationalization of the Abu Ghraib abuses at last week's Armed Services Committee hearings, remarks that were, in Josh Marshall's words, "[u]gly, pandering, a display of the cheapest tendencies of the man." L'il Joe strives to atone in Friday's Wall Street Journal editorial page, but only succeeds in digging himself in deeper (the sine qua non of any WSJ op-ed piece).

Many argue that we can only rectify the wrongs done in the Iraqi prisons if Secretary Rumsfeld resigns. I disagree. Unless there is clear evidence connecting him to the wrongdoing, it is neither sensible nor fair to force the resignation of the secretary of defense, who clearly retains the confidence of the Commander in Chief, in the midst of a war. I have yet to see such evidence.

The evidence connecting Rumsfeld to the wrongdoing is there, but Joe chooses not to see it. I suspect that more evidence is forthcoming, but L'il Joe won't see it then, either. He seems to be demanding evidence of Rummy's involvement ex ante in the Abu Ghraib scandal, thereby ignoring the criminal negligence evidenced by Rummy's dilatory response to documented abuses at Abu Ghraib. His observation that Rummy "clearly retains the confidence of the Commander in Chief" begs the question of whether the Commander in Chief retains the confidence of L'il Joe, and if he does, then why?

The junior Senator from Connecticut has allied himself with the criminal neocon element in our government. It is now up to me and my fellow Connecticut citizens to send L'il Joe packin'.