"There Is No Honor"

Sean-Paul at the Agonist posted a link, under the heading Apologies Don't Wash With This Soldier, to Arkhangel at Better Angels of our Nature:
"There is no honor.
"I saw Don Rumsfeld's testimony today, and there is no honor. Certainly, the other men present at the witness table did not acquit themselves well, but in the end, it comes down to Rumsfeld and the President. And there is no honor.
"Who was in charge? What was the chain of command?" Simple questions, these. Asked by John McCain, an honorable man. Simple questions, deserving of a simple answer. But the simple answer never made it past the lips of the Secretary. There were evasions and dodges, a dance of deceit, if you will.
"No one was in charge, it seems--because that way, the only people who suffer punishment are the sergeants and privates in the photographs and videos. And as for the chain of command, well...uh...well, that was left behind somewhere in the recesses of the Pentagon. And there is no honor in that."

This was pretty much my reaction to the ten or so minutes of Rumsfeld's testimony that I could bear to watch. DH doesn't believe that the US Army ever had a tradition of honour, but he doesn't know US history, really, and only knows what's gone on since TV news was in colour, plus a few highly slanted notes from the glory days of his vanished empire that he learned in school. The US military once had honour. Even in Vietnam, it had more than this.