McClatchy nee Knight-Ridder is once again out in front reporting on the Bush Administration’s malfeasance. On the front page of the Washington Bureau’s web page:

The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.

The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who’s now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.

“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Taguba, whose 2004 investigation documented chilling abuses at Abu Ghraib, is thought to be the most senior official to have accused the administration of war crimes. “The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture,” he wrote.

Buried in the Washington Post’s site:

In a statement accompanying the report, retired Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who led the Army’s first official investigation on Abu Ghraib, said the new evidence suggested a “systematic regime of torture” inside U.S.-run detention camps.

I guess that’s what happens when you suckle up to the powers that be, and later lay off many of your best reporters, especially the ones who didn’t join a myopic editorial staff which still maintains that Bush was telling the truth about those non-existent WMDs and honestly relied on faked and blatantly flawed evidence in pimping the war to the American people like a bunch of Madison Avenue ad men.

PREDICTION: If other major news media pick up this story, Taguba will be labeled by the Right as “disgruntled.” Just because, you know, he was fired by Rumsfeld for making too thorough an investigation.