Revolt against Rumsfeld: It's the torture.

This week's Economist features a Lexington column baying for Rumsfeld's head on a pike. I think this is the "new" Lexington, since the prior Lexington was a GOP poodle this is a bit of a change. There's no denying attacks on Rumsfeld are also attacks on Cheney and Bush.

Salon has more to say. They claim the root of the general's revolt is not so much in Rumsfeld's strategic failures and tactical blunders, but rather in his execution of Cheney's torture program:

More top brass blast Rumsfeld | Salon.com News

..."I sense a great deal of distress among senior military officers over what's happened with prisoner treatment," Irvine said. "I believe the abuse is playing a significant part in how these generals are feeling and why they're speaking out. There's an understanding that whatever we're doing at Guantánamo and elsewhere constitutes license for others to do to us when our soldiers are taken prisoner in the future. There's the realization that we've pretty much trashed the high ground along with the Geneva Conventions."

On April 14, Salon revealed that Rumsfeld was personally involved in directing the harsh interrogation of a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay, according to a sworn statement by an Army lieutenant general who investigated prisoner abuse at the U.S. base in Cuba...

The thesis is that emotional fire beneath the rebellion is a hatred for the dishonor Rumsfeld has brought upon America and the American military.

Honor. I figured Americans had forgotten what it meant.