New Yorker: Rummy approved prisoner abuse

[FlaSoxxJim]

Link to Seymor Hersh's New Yorker piece, print issue to hit stands tomorrow:

 

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa_fact

 

Link to ABCnews' Report on the Pentagon's denial of Rummy's involvement:

 

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040516_331.html

 

That's two very detailed New Yorker pieces in the last two weeks. The Pentagon spokesman dismisses the latest report as "outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture." But until Hersh or the New Yorker are hit with a libel suit that will likely never come, I tend to take the reports at face value.

[southsider2k5]

If there is any bit of truth, prosecute him. Period. Throw the book at him. And charge him with perjury while you are at it.

[FlaSoxxJim]

If there is any bit of truth, prosecute him.  Period.  Throw the book at him.  And charge him with perjury while you are at it.

Yep. It looks like it was mostly Undersecretary Steven Cambone's screwup (imagine, a PNAC study group member involved in Geneva-skirting abuse of foreign prisioners to gather intel). But Cambone is Rummy's stoogie and is equally despised by the Pentagon old guard and the CIA. Here's the bottom line on culpability from an unidentified Pentagon associate:

 

A Pentagon consultant, who spent much of his career directly involved with special-access programs, spread the blame. “The White House subcontracted this to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon subcontracted it to Cambone,” he said. “This is Cambone’s deal, but Rumsfeld and Myers approved the program.” When it came to the interrogation operation at Abu Ghraib, he said, Rumsfeld left the details to Cambone. Rumsfeld may not be personally culpable, the consultant added, “but he’s responsible for the checks and balances. The issue is that, since 9/11, we’ve changed the rules on how we deal with terrorism, and created conditions where the ends justify the means.”

[southsider2k5]

Yep.  It looks like it was mostly Undersecretary Steven Cambone's screwup (imagine, a PNAC study group member involved in Geneva-skirting abuse of foreign prisioners to gather intel).  But Cambone is Rummy's stoogie and is equally despised by the Pentagon old guard and the CIA.  Here's the bottom line on culpability from an unidentified Pentagon associate:

The question becomes can the connect this to GW?

[FlaSoxxJim]

The question becomes can the connect this to GW?

It doesn't sound like it, although he was aware of the initial SAP in effect in Afghanistan. I didn't catch whether he was aware of or had approved its expansion to the Iraq prisons.

 

Amazing that this is the first covert "black operation" to have gone sour sinnce the cold war.

 

The statement from Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch at the end of the Hersh piece really hits it on the head as far as American denial of the right to humane treatment of those we deem as "illegal combatants," including iraqi citizens plucked off the streets without cause:

 

“We’re giving the world a ready-made excuse to ignore the Geneva Conventions. Rumsfeld has lowered the bar.”

[cwsox]

If nothing else this connects to Bush because Bush is president. Leadership has responsibility. Bush wants to take responsilbility for nothing.

 

In the way that it is, it is on "his watch."

 

His watch. What does he watch? He has the lowest curiousity level. He seems involved in nothing and distanced from anything.

 

American intelligence was outsourced, it was subcontracted. Bush did that. He failed to follow up, at the very least. Failure to be involved, to follow up, to be in charge, to be "on watch" during one's watch.

 

I reflect that the problems in Iraq are not sui generis. Given they are third generation to whatever is happening in the news embargoed Guantanamo where counsel and family and contact denied to the detainees and no legal procedures but "intelligence gathering" and the same thing in Afghanistan and that the Iraqis have been complaining of the abuses at all detention facilities in their now third generational detainee situation - and dismissed because they were after all Iraqs... and this administration rushes to court martial 20 year olds as if all this is the result of 6 National Guard folk...

 

consider an American, John Walker Lindh, was stripped naked, tied to a guerney, placed in a closed shipping container and, photographed... that an American Jose Padilla has been denied basic constitutional rights for 2 years - we have had hints of everything, if this is what they do to our own, what will they do to others. A president is charged with faithful execution of laws and needs to have a minimal curiousity to take leadership into ensuring that the law is enforced.

[FlaSoxxJim]

and this administration rushes to court martial 20 year olds as if all this is the result of 6 National Guard folk...

Because that is all they can 'cleanly' get away with of course. Those not 'read into the heart of darkness' have to be hung out to dry, and from the outset of the breaking scandal, the Administration has characterized the abuse as a handful of kids that got out of hand.

 

The program was protected by the fact that no one on the outside was allowed to know of its existence. “If you even give a hint that you’re aware of a black program that you’re not read into, you lose your clearances,” the former official said. “Nobody will talk. So the only people left to prosecute are those who are undefended—the poor kids at the end of the food chain.”

[JUGGERNAUT]

He should resign. He deserves the benefit of the doubt on whether he made a well-informed decision to approve prisoner abuse. But there is no doubt that he did not make any public statements to prevent it. Knowing that there are over 18000 cases of abuse filed in the US military yearly he can't claim ignorance for not making those public statements to prevent it.

 

Any one who doesn't believe that such statements before the prisons were open for business would not have had an impact simply doesn't understand the power of modern media. Such statements would have created fear of consequence in the leadership of the Pentagon & soldiers in Iraq to put them on high alert & watchdog against it.

[FlaSoxxJim]

This is all breaking wide open. Here's a link to a newly posted ABCnews story suggesting, from several sources, that Pentagon political appointees have for months to years been ignoring the JAG uniformed military lawyers who have been cautioning about thr potential for prisiner abuse.

 

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/US/JAG_...s_040515-1.html

 

The JAG voice was sestematicly stifled, the objectors marginalized, and there was little uniformed military lawyer presence allowed bear Abu Ghraib. Identified as central to ignoring the warnings were Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, and William Haynes II, the Pentagon's general counsel, whom President Bush has nominated for a Court of Appeals judgeship.

 

Feith is another of the really frightening Neo-Cons in a position of incredible power in this administration. Having come out of background of the Cold War where everything was painted in the clear duality of good (the US) and evil (the Soviets), he has pretty much just applied that black and white worldview to the Arab world.

He is on record as believing the US and Israel have "moral superiority" over the Arabs.

 

Another potentially big piece of the puzzle, relating directly back to SS2k4's question as to whether this can be traced all teh way up to Bush, is in this story:

 

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040516_765.html

 

The report suggests that Bush was informed shortly after 9-11 that there may be a leagal means of getting around those pesky Geneva restrictions on treatment of prisoners of war, that he and his advisors went for it, and now here we are.

 

Here's the lead in to that story:

 

Within months of the Sept. 11 attacks, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales reportedly wrote President Bush a memo about the terrorism fight and prisoners' rights under the Geneva Conventions.

 

"In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions," Gonzales wrote, according to the report in Newsweek magazine. Secretary of State Colin Powell "hit the roof" when he read the memo, according to the account.

 

The White House did not immediately comment Sunday.

 

Should be an interesting upcoming week as more of the pieces fall into place.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Here's a link to a page at NPR with an audio file of yesterday's Weekend Edition interview of Seymor Hersh by Liane Hanson:

 

http://www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?pr...y-2004&prgId=10

 

The audio link is titled "Pentagon: No Link Between Rumsfeld, Iraq Abuses"

 

Here's the link to the Pentasgon's official statement on the report by Lawrence Di Tita:

 

http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2004/n...40515-0793.html

 

Here's the link to the page with the audio file of yesterday's Libby Lewis'a nd Linda Wortheimer's All Things Considered story on the Senators' urging further investigation of the new charges:

 

http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/...re_1898596.html

 

The link to the file is titled "All Things Considered Audio",

 

Too bad all of this broke on a Sunday, but I'm sure the tory has legs enough to be followed up all week.

[FlaSoxxJim]

And from the online version of this week's Newsweek, the report called "The Roots of Torture" pretty much sums it up:

 

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4989422/

 

On the Newsweek site, so far 86% of the 14,000+ respondents to their (unscientific) survey believe the Abu Ghraib abuse was authorized by the higer ups, while 9% still admit to buying the Pentagon's "few bad apples" version of the story.

 

From the Newsweek report:

 

The Bush administration created a bold legal framework to justify this system of interrogation, according to internal government memos obtained by NEWSWEEK. What started as a carefully thought-out, if aggressive, policy of interrogation in a covert war—designed mainly for use by a handful of CIA professionals—evolved into ever-more ungoverned tactics that ended up in the hands of untrained MPs in a big, hot war. Originally, Geneva Conventions protections were stripped only from Qaeda and Taliban prisoners. But later Rumsfeld himself, impressed by the success of techniques used against Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay, seemingly set in motion a process that led to their use in Iraq, even though that war was supposed to have been governed by the Geneva Conventions. Ultimately, reservist MPs, like those at Abu Ghraib, were drawn into a system in which fear and humiliation were used to break prisoners' resistance to interrogation.

[southsider2k5]

And from the online version of this week's Newsweek, the report called "The Roots of Torture" pretty much sums it up:

 

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4989422/

 

On the Newsweek site, so far 86% of the 14,000+ respondents to their (unscientific) survey believe the Abu Ghraib abuse was authorized by the higer ups, while 9% still admit to buying the Pentagon's "few bad apples" version of the story.

 

From the Newsweek report:

Honestly, I don't see how they COULDN'T have been acting on orders. The whole heirarchy of the military is to follow orders to a T. You aren't supposed to be thinking on your own, you are supposed to be doing what you are told. The only question in my mind is how high the orders came from, and so far it seems to stop at Rumsfelds desk, which he needs to start cleaning out.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Sometimes things get to the point where more evidence, testimony, etc, don't really matter. But what the hell, in case anyone still thinks the Abu Ghraib fraternity pranksters were acting on their own, here's more to ignore:

 

‘Definitely a Cover-Up’

Former Abu Ghraib Intel Staffer Says Army Concealed Involvement in Abuse Scandalhttp://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/Investi...p_040518-1.html