The non-apologetica: "BUSH APOLOGIZES FOR TREATMENT OF IRAQI PRISONERS," reads the WaPo headline. But the text of Bush's

I told him I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families. I told him I was equally sorry that people who've been seeing those pictures didn't understand the true nature and heart of America. I assured him that Americans like me didn't appreciate what we saw and that it made us sick to our stomachs.

This, of course, is not an apology, this is an expression of benign disinterest. I am "sorry" for a lot of things -- the fact that I haven't won the lottery, the support Western liberals gave to Stalin for so many years, the horrible taste of most sugar substitutes, the career of Titus Flavius Domitianus -- but to passively wring one's hands is not to take an active stand against something, let alone to take responsibility for it. At best, Bush's words were what the Washington Post, in another time and under another President, called a non-apology apology.

All of this would be a minor contretemps at best if the stakes weren't so high. The acceptance of responsibility is a serious act. The soldiers involved had direct responsibility due to their exercise of moral autonomy; their superiors had responsibility for encouraging or allowing an environment to exist in which such acts were tolerated or ordered; the civilian leadership has responsibility for not properly overseeing the actions of soldiers in-theatre; and the President, as Commander-in-Chief, has ultimate responsibility for the conduct of soldiers fighting in a war he launched.

If the President does not take responsibility, if he does not display the moral clarity he has claimed so often, then America will take the blame. And where, we should ask then, is the outrage?