Iraq Prisoner Abuse, Pt. 4: Rumsfeld Ordered It

He [Undersecratary Stephen Cambone] was known instead for his closeness to Rumsfeld. “Remember Henry II—‘Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?’” the senior C.I.A. official said to me, with a laugh, last week. “Whatever Rumsfeld whimsically says, Cambone will do ten times that much.” ««««««----- is the most ominous thing I've ever heard.

Is there anyone like Rush Limbaugh on ILX?

Resume shock and awe over Rumsfeld's hubris.

Goddamn, the government was out to get them. That's great, blame the white trash, let them take the fall.

Looking at it from a political standpoint, I cannot believe that Bush and his handlers would be stupid enough to wholeheartedly back Rumsfeld and then have something like this come out. Of course, they have stupidly got themselves so deep in this mess, they were perhaps resorting to extreme measures trying to get ahold of the situation.

If it holds to be true and a somewhat provable point, then the situation in Iraq is even much further gone than it appears and the Bush administration is much closer to completely coming apart at the hinges than anyone has previously predicted.

Nixon was able to ride out Watergate for a long time. How long until the bow breaks and the Bush Whitehouse is discredited to the point where even partisans won't be able to defend what is going on? It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

the gop has been all about polishing turds for the past few decades.

There are a few people in the hierarchy that are probably sweating, as they know and perhaps want to come forward, but are probably fearful of what will happen and want to get a good book deal signed before they start singing (yeah...pretty cynical I know).

The resultant clusterfuck could be pretty damned great. But it's still early days yet.

History doesn't repeat itself as much as it echoes.

Hersh ain't Piers Morgan. For which we should all be grateful.

and i'm hardly surprised by the anonymity of the sources, given the statement in the piece that revealing a black operation effectively shuts you out of the intelligence community for life. also, revealing a codename for an operation is a felony. since when do current intelligence officers outside p.r. go on the record?

I wonder who Hersh's "Pentagon consultant" is.

the conspiracy nut in me wonders how hersh's been able to do all this without getting his phone tapped and tires slashed.

by whom? and how do you know it hasn't happened? i would imagine that he's too high profile to be seriously threatened (and doubt that anyone would believe it would have an impact, but you never know).

That would be such a dream.

it will be given serious attention by the mainstream media

It's begun. That's the lead story on CNN at present. Not the lead story on Fox News but still up there.

Sacrificng Rumsfeld would probably best for Bush politically RIGHT NOW, but, as a number of writers have pointed out, the ensuing congressional hearings over the administration's choice for the new Sec. Defense would most likely result in a number of questions and revelations about the way they handled the war that the administration wouldn't want public around election time.

It seems like every phase of the war so far has like enhanced the Rumsfeld vision of the military: faster, smaller, and unrestrained by the geneva conventions.

The way the entire situation is playing out, I cannot believe there will not end up being a special congressional investigation of these various matters. I just am waiting for the next piece of the puzzle to become appearant. Think about how much perspective has changed in the past few months, give it another few weeks and I think other things will start shaking out of the trees.

If things continue to get ugly and uglier, there are a bunch of Republican House and Senate members up for election and if they play obstructionist in the face of evidence, they risk having this used against them as a campaign issue. I don't think you will see as many of those campaign ads with guys hugging up on Bush saying they "stood toe to toe with the president in the war against terror".

The only thing I can figure is that Rumsfeld behind the scenes has basically stated to Bush Co. that they can fuk off him taking the blame and if you hang me out, I'll make you burn. If he was a good soldier, he would have started making a setup to walk away, but instead they have run a big PR campaign to try and change the viewpoint.

I think the plan is to use greater military force to try and break the back of this resistance, like someone trying to use a sledgehammer to swat flies. It is only going to bring more death and destruction to civilians in Iraq and the resulting images will be broadcast to the world making this situation even more ludicrious and unstable. What a mess.

The level of ruthless conspiratorial cunning and mind-boggling incompetence simultaneously attributed to this administration on a daily basis by some of its critics just doesn't make sense to me. I can understand it being one, or the other, or occassionally back and forth between the two, but both at the same time, all the time? It just doesn't add up.

"For purposes of comparing the outrage here with the outrage back home, perhaps the most striking of the Iraqi themes is that of total indifference as to whether Donald Rumsfeld is kept on, pushed out, or melted down and drizzled over porcini mushrooms."

http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/frontpage5.asp

I love this defense: "I don't believe this because it just doesn't make sense." I hear it a lot. It was trotted out most recently when the first hints of Abu Ghraib came to light: "It just doesn't make sense. American soldiers wouldn't do that? Why would they do that? What do they gain from it? I don't believe any American soldier would have such a great lapse of judgment." Then, as that became an unsustainable view, the defensiveness moved up the ladder (of the Defensive Department?), always steadfastly insisting at each level that "it just doesn't make sense" for a ranking officer/military intelligence/general to approve of it. ("It doesn't make sense for experienced military intelligence officers to authorize torture. Any experienced military intelligence officer knows torture doesn't work. I don't believe it, it just doesn't make sense.")

Against this you have the long, long human history of people doing horrible things to each other in wartime (we even have the chariming phrase "fog of war" to help explain the phenomenon), and this administration's late-2003 desperation to find something, anything that looked or smelled like a "weapon of mass destruction" (just because they've pretty much abandoned that issue now doesn't mean they weren't chasing it with mounting determination and frustration last year), plus the lack of adequate oversight for all of our Iraqi operations (it's not actually clear where anybody's authority to do anything in Iraq comes from), and the acknowledged use of "aggressive" interrogation techniques as a matter of policy in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and somehow none of this seems even remotely hard to believe to me. You can say "it doesn't make sense," and I might agree -- but then, I've spent the last three years watching things that don't make sense. That doesn't mean they're not happening.

Given such tendencies, the temptation is great to dismiss Abu Ghraib as the awful exception that proves the admirable rule: to focus on the need not to tar the many good soldiers with the sins of the few. Even as I write this, the images of the many hard-working, spotlessly decent soldiers of my acquaintance are swooping around in my head, like ghosts insistent on remembrance. And they should be remembered. But fairness to soldiers is not the main fairness.

The world-famous catastrophe of Abu Ghraib has something important in common with every little domestic political gaffe: It would not resonate unless it rang true.

The fact is, there is a lot about this Abu Ghraib stuff that does ring true. One hopes that in its particulars, this scandal will turn out to be as aberrant as it is abhorrent. But as a piece of the wider puzzle of what this occupation is like for many Iraqis, it does fit right in.

Day after day in Iraq, in countless instances great and small, America absolutely comes off as a country-club democrat, convinced that freedom, democracy and human rights are the exclusive entitlement of those with full membership in the United States, and that everybody else is lucky to be a busboy.

So much for the dream.

Stuart: "The what?"

x-post

(unlike our crybaby soldiers)

"The four Geneva Conventions that are in effect today -- covering the treatment of the wounded on land and at sea, prisoners of war, and civilians in time of war -- were drafted in 1949, in the aftermath of the Second World War. Some two hundred countries have ratified them, including all the members of the United Nations." {emphasis mine}

"'We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts. There was a pattern and a system." - Pierre Krahenbuhl, director of operations for the International Red Cross

Who was the International Red Cross founded by? Henri Dumant, who also codified the Convention of the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field - the first Geneva Convention.

Hmm...and yet a couple of posts before:

The Geneva Conventions cover people who wear UNIFORMS and STOP FIGHTING once they've been captured.

I have to say I have yet to see you NOT backtrack. Over anything, really.

Anyway, some other stuff:

Berg's father sends a message to the Stop the War Coalition

Stivits trial about to begin in Baghdad; al-Jazeera among the media attending, but no direct broadcast allowed.

ICRC official expressing doubts over improvements from February to March. And he adds this:

Speaking about the original report in February, Mr Krahenbuhl added: "We had identified a series of elements and patterns in terms of treatment and conditions that appeared to us contrary to some of the provisions contained in the Geneva Conventions.

"Some of the aspects that we documented appeared to us to be tantamount to torture, certainly elements of inhuman and degrading treatment."

Boy, that stress treatment, lemme tell ya.

when you don't know who the insurgents are, you'll interrogate anybody. That's straight outta the Vietnam playbook.

oh right, "we don't ask for permission slips." Right.

It's not a black and white issue.

But what does it matter? They weren't civilians and they weren't POWs so they weren't covered by the Geneva Conventions. Therefore, why should we even care? Should you care?

We've got the American Jesus
See him on the interstate,
We've got the American Jesus
He helped build the president's estate

I feel sorry for the earth's population
'Cause so few live in the U.S.A,
At least the foreigners can copy our morality,
They can visit but they cannot stay,
Only precious few can garner our prosperity,
It makes us walk with renewed confidence,
We've got a place to go when we die
And the architect resides right here

We've got the American Jesus
Bolstering their ship of faith
We've got the American Jesus
Overwhelming millions every day

He's the farmer barren fields, (In God)
The force the army wields, (We trust)
The expression in the faces of the starving millions, (Because he's one of us)
The power of the man. (Break down)
He's the fuel that drives the Klan, (Cave in)
He's the motive and the conscience of the murderer (He can redeem your sins)
He's the preacher on TV, (Strong heart)
The false sincerity, (Clear mind)
The form letter that's written by the big computer, (And indefinitely kind)
He's the nuclear bombs, (You lose)
And the kids with no moms (We win)
And I'm fearful that he's inside me (He is our champion)

We've got the American Jesus
See him on the interstate
We've got the American Jesus
Exercising his authority
We've got the American Jesus
Bolstering their ship of faith
We've got the American Jesus
Overwhelming millions every day

http://victoryatseaonline.com/war/ww2/images/great-escape.gif

"oh, fuck"

Since when did first hand testimony from alleged victims = hearsay?

The 'investigators' didn't even speak to the accusers before coming to the conclusion that there was no abuse. Going back to a previous analogy how does "We didn't need to speak to Kathleen Willey because she wasn't raped" sound?
And then you talk about due process?

(multiple x-post, it's been a long read)

I'm referring to evidence other than the direct testimony of the two parties involved.

The 'investigators' didn't even speak to the accusers before coming to the conclusion that there was no abuse.

From the stories linked here, we do not know if the accusers provided written testimony; it seems that we can assume some sort of written complaint must have been filed. We don't know anything about the investigative process from the reports filed, except for aspects favorable to Reuters. I assume that if this story has legs, more details will follow.

rockist!
but also: basic officer's duty is to escape, n'est-ce pas? and brit soldiers lack uniforms...

I've never known don to have this much faith in the way media operate.