Hero worship: is Taguba all some say he is?

Every time anyone makes trouble for Bush he's embraced here like the new Messiah. But the current Taguba adulation makes little sense to me. He's not a whistle-blower or a loose cannon. He got an assignment and did it. He didn't do a complete whitewash because a) he's a professional, b) there's little love for Rummy in the Army, and c) the story was too wide open to disappear entirely.

Looking at his report (executive summary, at least) and testimony I am reminded of Watergate. The White House practically jettisoned the first six or eight Watergate felons. "Never saw 'em. Don't know 'em. We hope they get maximum sentences because we are tough on crime."

Taguba didn't set out to investigate the entire situation. He set out to investigate some photographs and/or disturbing stories concerning one shift of workers in one area of one prison. He stopped his investigation at the Brigadier General level, and even going that far showed initiative. (Again, I have no reason to think poorly of him as an officer. He may be a true professional or a hack involved in a cover-up. Either is a wide-open possibility so far.)

But whatever his intention, the net result is Watergate II; if there's incontrovertible evidence implicating someone he (or she) is thrown to the wolves. That vigorous process "proves" that everyone that escapes the first round of incriminations is absolutely innocent.

What we should remember about Watergate: The famous "act of courage" when Howard Baker (R) said "what did the President know, and when did he know it?" was not non-partisan. That line was a conscious Republican strategy. Baker and the other Republicans in Congress all thought that by framing the question as a narrow question of Nixon's involvement they could cut of the damage. Obviously nobody could ever PROVE what Nixon knew on a given date... right? Halderman and Ehrlichman weren't going to turn State's evidence or anything.

When the existence of the tapes was revealed Baker's intended soft-ball suddenly became a coup de grace, but only because Baker had no idea the tapes existed. Nobody did. Baker's ploy was as much crass partisan spin and damage control as anything we see today, but it blew up in his face, so he's erroneously remembered as a hero of non-partisanship.

Red Cross, amnesty International both have independent reports as well. The abuse has not been difficult to coroborate. The more you look at war, the more abuse you see. War means what? Violence, destruction- something like that.
I do agree Americans have this annoying tendency to want a monarch or patriarch of some sort. If not Bush its Jerry Garcia. People have to get used to the concept that a democracy is more of a horizontal type structure rather than a pyramid.

You claim that Taguba was just doing the job he was assigned, but the facts say otherwise. Taguba was NOT given the job of investigating military intelligence's involvement, yet he did comment on it.

I also don't think that people are portraying him as a "hero", though I could be wrong about that here on DU. But then again, what people on DU say is representative of nothing besides "what people on DU say". IOW, I wouldn't extrapolate that to the population in general