Taking the Fall

By Chris Kromm / May 3, 2005

Today, Rep. Henry Waxman's Committee on Government Reform (Minority Office) draws attention to a recent GAO study critiquing the administration's use of Virginia-based contractor CACI International to interrogate prisoners in Iraq.

According to the report, "the Administration repeatedly violated federal procurement rules when it awarded this interrogation work to CACI," one of many top-level policies that led us to the prisoner abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib.

It comes the day after Pfc. Lynndie England of West Virginia entered her guilty plea for her role in the abuse, which brought the total number of U.S. military personnel convicted in the scandal to eight. Half (all Army reservists) are from the South, which is in line with the over-representation of Southerners in the military, especially in the lower echelons (the last time the Institute researched this in 2002, 42% of the nation's troops came from the South).

No innocent players here. But guess which is getting more media attention?

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