Hersh is right. Bush allowed the 'few bad apples" mantra.
http://mrspickles.wordpress.com/2007/06/18/seymour-hershabu-ghraib-they-showed-other-more-sexual-abuse-than-we-knew-sodomy-of-women-prisons-by-american-soldiers-a-father-and-his-son-forced-to-do-acts-together/HERSH: It’s not a question of seeing the pictures. Once they had the back channel e-mails describing everything, from the field, guys were saying, hey, boss, let me tell you what’s going on.
It was very serious stuff. The messages were all high priority. And they go to Rumsfeld’s military aide, who is now a four-star general running NATO, General Craddock. And the question is, Rumsfeld acknowledged, sort of, in and out — it was unclear in his testimony exactly when he told the president, but certainly, by March, he’s talking to the president quite a bit about this.
BLITZER: This was before your article?
HERSH: Oh, my God, two months. Is it possible — you know, the question you have to ask about the president is this. No matter when he learned, and certainly he learned before it became public, and no matter how detailed it was, is there any evidence that the president of the United States said to Rumsfeld, what’s going on there, Don? Let’s get an investigation going.
Did he do anything? Did he ask for a — did he want to have the generals come in and talk to him about it?
Did he want to change the rules? Did he want to improve the conditions?
BLITZER: And what’s the answer?
HERSH: Nada. He did nothing. And you know what it meant?
Inside the chain of command, the military, you get a bad case like this; it’s all known inside; nobody at the top says another word to you. Everybody understands one thing: this is not a way to get ahead in a career, to start being very tough…