Look, one fact that continues to be mentioned with respect to this mess is that there were far too few soldiers to deal with the number of detainees in the prison. The lack of adequate resources was a direct contributing factor of the abuse of the prisoners.
Why are there too few soldiers to meet the basic mission requirements? Because Donald Rumsfeld personally decided, against the advice of Powell and many, many other high ranking career military personnell (including General Shinseki, who got the public beat down for suggesting that we would need many more troops than Rumsfeld wanted to use), to go into Iraq on the cheap, with as few troops as possible.
The particular instance in the prison, as well as many other of the day to day problems facing the US Military in Iraq, are the direct result of Rumsfeld’s arrogant insistance that he knew better than anyone else how to make this work. He fucked up. He fucked up big time. And the people that are going to pay for his world class fuck-up are (i) US soldiers in Iraq, that have to deal with the increasing rage of the population as a result of this; (ii) the Iraqi people, whose chance at a stable society is pretty much shot to hell for the foreseeable future – probably generations; (iii) future victims of attacks by terrorists whose anger is fueled by those pictures; (iv) the US taxpayer, whose burden has been increased, yet again, by the arrogance and stupidity of the people in charge.
William Bennet’s anti-Clinton screed seems apt – The Death of Outrage. Where is the outrage? Why is the general US population not furious at this situation?