Seymour Hersh asks that question in his New Yorker piece. It's a question that has to be answered. So does the question about what we do about it. A slap on the wrist won't do.
Karpinski was rarely seen at the prisons she was supposed to be running, Taguba wrote. He also found a wide range of administrative problems, including some that he considered "without precedent in my military career." The soldiers, he added, were "poorly prepared and untrained . . . prior to deployment, at the mobilization site, upon arrival in theater, and throughout the mission."
General Taguba spent more than four hours interviewing Karpinski, whom he described as extremely emotional: "What I found particularly disturbing in her testimony was her complete unwillingness to either understand or accept that many of the problems inherent in the 800th MP Brigade were caused or exacerbated by poor leadership and the refusal of her command to both establish and enforce basic standards and principles among its soldiers."
This is rapidly becoming an international PR disaster here, here, and here (that last bit about civilians in Fallujah... once you're seen as flouting Geneva conventions, expect criticism about everything else you do, too), not just for Bush (he's disgusted) but for Tony Blair (he's appalled). I will assume it's the military as well who is horrified to hear about this, as are conservatives, as are we. Maybe for the same reasons, maybe not, but no matter.
Okay, but what are they going to do about it? That's where the true test of leadership lies. Put up or shut up, fellas. And quickly. The whole world is watching.