Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it has.

It's been three years, but the deplorable images from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq still haunt the nation — as well they should. Such inhumane actions performed by our own military should not be forgotten, lest they be repeated. Accountability was the key to showing the nation and the world that the United States government does not tolerate torture of detainees. Period.

U.S. soldiers shown in the photographs, who became the focus of our national rage, were the easy targets. But the question begged to be asked: Who authorized this treatment of the detainees?

Had top Pentagon officials and members of the Bush administration known such violations were occurring, action would have been swift and aggressive.

If only that were the case.

In a recent interview with the New Yorker magazine, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who led the investigation into the abuse, claims that the Pentagon knew of the abuse and that defense officials were involved in directing abusive interrogation policies.

Among other disturbing claims: Taguba was ordered to limit the investigation to military police at the prison, and "not those above them in the chain of command." Taguba also suggests that then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was told about the photographs and the abuses long before he was summoned to testify. And when the Army two-star general was unwavering in his testimony and his report, he was forced to retire in January 2007.

In a country at war in the name of freedom and democracy, it's a shame the government continues to whittle away at what little public trust it has from its own people.