Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter for The New Yorker, has been writing for the past three years about the abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, and Donald Rumsfeld's alleged involvement in U.S. torture policy.

Now Hersh has apparently dug up some further evidence indicating that Rumsfeld clearly knew about the prisoner abuse before it became public, even as he lied to Congress about being unaware of it. Furthermore, the investigators were prevented from looking very high up the chain of command, and were scrutinized themselves, lest they learn or share too much.

>> Read Hersh's article in The New Yorker online: The General's Report

This is really nothing new. Hersh's latest piece just gives us some more details of what we've known all along: That the low-level American soldiers in the Abu Ghraib photos didn't make the decision on their own to abuse and torture the detainees in their custody. It had to have come from much higher up. After all, the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib bears a striking resemblance to the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. You can't blame Lynndie England for our Guantanamo policies. And, of course, there were the torture memos.

But accountability in the press is one thing. We need accountability in a court of law. Will we ever see it?

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About author Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist, with a focus on politics, human rights, and social justice. She is a former Philadelphia Area Coordinator for the Nobel-Prize-winning human rights group Amnesty International, and her views appear regularly in a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites. Note that the ideas expressed here are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Amnesty International or any other organization with which she may be associated. E-mail: mary@maryshawonline.com