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Does anyone seriously believes that he could have known about this?

It was the Pentagon’s responsibility to make it known — not just to him, but to Congress. The incidents being publicized now happened in Nov-Dec., started being investigated in January and Taguba’s report was finished a month later.

Even less likely is the contention that he would support it.

Oh, I dunno about that. You’re talking about a man who as a teenager stuffed firecrackers into the mouths of frogs to blow them up for fun, a man who not only wouldn’t give a totally rehabilitated and downright saintlike Carla Faye Tucker a reprieve from the death penalty but smirkingly mocked her to an astonished Tucker Carlson later.

Too, our whole military intelligence chain of command basically supports this. These are not anomalies. The very general (Miller) sent over to replace Karpinski was at Abu Ghraib from Gitmo some months ago giving them the very advice on how to “set conditions” for interrogation that they ultimately followed to end up at this place.

In spite of popular opinion, Bush is not an idiot. He understands how devastating this is to the US, not to mention the greatly increased risk of terrorist attacks and attacks on US troops in Iraq now.

Does he? Maybe it can be explained to him and he can “remember” it, but I don’t for a minute believe he understands it on his own. If he does TRULY understand it, why didn’t he actually apologize to the Arab/Muslim world this morning? That would’ve carried a lot more weight than just his excuses and protestations that Americans aren’t like this.

No, I’m sorry. This administration’s actions from the start have been provocative, counterproductive, and destructive to our stated goals. Some pundits are now speculating that this is on purpose — that a WW3/Armageddon scenario is what is actually being provoked. I’m not sure I do, but when you look at how stooopid everyone’s been at every step, you have to wonder.

I heard the clip on the O’Franken Factor on Air America. Quite obviously, Rush has gone off the deep end here, saying it was no worse than a Skull ‘n Bones initiation and was essentially just good clean fun. It saddens me that Rush doesn’t think we as a nation should be better than that.

Eloriel, I won’t go to the length of thinking that Bush is purposely provoking the Muslim world into Jihad against us. I think that it’s just happening as the unintended consequence of short-sighted policy—a policy his own father disagreed with.

Wanna bet he’s not doing pain killers again?
Why anyone would listen to this racist, amoral sleezebag is beyond me. There’s no accounting for stupidity sometimes.

By the way, what happened to the post in the Republican column on Abu Graib?

While I don’t think that Bush knew about this or condoned it, the widening abuse scandal reaffirms the lack of planning on “winning the peace” after toppling Hussein, and reaffirms the issues involved with using insufficiently trained National Guard and above-the-law gov’t contractors to handle tasks that full enlisted military should be handling.

As for Rush, he’s not the only one injecting something. O’Reilly is of course againt this information being released as well. He thinks that it’ll just give the Iraqis and others more justification to attack Americans in Iraq. As if the news wasn’t getting out already over there…

Yes, the President again shows himself unwilling to take responsibility for his own leadership. It’s easy for him to distance himself by condemning these actions as isolated incidents, but such a distancing is nothing short of an unfair placement of blame and an abdication of Presidential responsibility. Treatment of prisoners of war is something that a President MUST ALWAYS take responsibility for.

Bush doesn’t micromanage - he makes broad pronouncements like “with us or against us” or “we will stand firm” (childishly broad announcements, if you ask me, but hey, lots of people seem to think that such rhetoric counts as bold decisive leadership). After he makes his simple statements or decisions, then the people underneath him take action and formulate policy based on his general guidance. Presumably the President makes his decisions based not on a wonkish understanding of nitty gritty policy details, but rather on his own internal moral compass and his core belief systems (I am being generous to the President here - many think that he doesn’t think about his decisions or even play a role in most policymaking).

So, what kind of leadership has the President given his intelligence units? Well, he’s said things like ‘whatever is necessary’. He says we have to try ‘unorthodox’ and ‘controversial’ methods, making it clear that we need to be ready to make ‘tough decisions’. He permits and encourages civil rights abuses at home PATRIOT act, and widely condones the suspension of basic legal and civil rights in the cause of fighting terrorism (Gitmo). I am not saying anything about the rightness or wrongness of these policies, but I am saying that the abuses in Iraq should be seen as the logical results of these policies.

Any President who has behaved the way this one has with regards to the “tough” resolve we are supposed to show against terrorism would be stupid to not realize that the abuses in Iraq were utterly inevitable results of those policies. I, for one, wasn’t surprised that these actions were occurring - I am surprised, actually, that the President isn’t defending these soldiers, since their actions don’t, to me, look all that inconsistent with the President’s other policies.

Also, let’s look at why the President didn’t condemn these abuses months ago. I can only think of three reasons.

1) Nobody in the government knew about the abuses.

2) Bush’s underlings knew about it, but didn’t see fit to tell him. Now, why would they not tell him? I can only think of one reason: Because they must have figured that it wasn’t worth telling him something that he already assumed was the case.

3) He knew about the patten of abuse and, in his heart, approved of it.

#1 is obviously absurd. In the case of #2 and #3, it seems possible that the President himself, and certainly the highest levels of leadership in the Pentagon, knew perfectly well that such abuses were occurring and stupidly thought that we would get away with it.

Think of it this way: did Bush ever give orders or make public statements that we should and would *not* treat prisoners this way? Did he issue any general, broad-sounding statements to the effect of “We will do what we have to do, but we won’t do anything that will make us look as bad as Saddam.”? Did he say anything like “Winning the hearts and minds of Iraqi people is going to be our number one priority in Iraq.”? No, he did not. If he had made statements like these, you can bet that there wouldn’t even be “isolated incidents” of abuses like what we’ve seen. That’s how leadership works: people will act in a manner they beleive to be consistent with the beleifs of the leader. Bush has clear that he doesn’t give a damn about the civil rights of enemies of the United States - even those who are merely suspects - so why should the soldiers on the ground act any differently?

This administration is so inept it makes me want to scream sometimes. I think that Rush Limbaugh’s words are identical to the words being spoken behind closed doors in the White House. I think the administration’s only regret is that they forgot to take into account the fact that thousands of our troops are carringing digital cameras and camcorders around with them these days.

-Cf

Rush’s arguments never hold water. Recently he’s been on a kick saying that these images show that Women shouldn’t be in the military. I also like how he constantly puts up straw-man arguments, like how asking why the terrorists hate us contains within it the kernel of the ultimate destruction of the United States. Unbelievable.

As for Bush’s responsiblity for all of this - he didn’t have to actually know about it directly to be responsible and accountable for it. There needs to be some high-level firings and an actualy apology in order to stand a chance of salvaging the opinion in the area. Rumsfeld has so many strikes against him that he seems an obvious choice.

The pre-drug-abuse Rush was entertaining even when he was wrong, which wasn’t always. It gave me a good laugh when certain social micromanagers wanted to outlaw movie theatre popcorn, and Rush brought a bunch of that in for he and his staff to munch on, in protest. He seemed more Libertarian in those days, which made him more palatable.

I don’t listen to Rush, but there’s no more need for conservatives to defend every word that comes out of his mouth than there is for leftists to defend everything Noam Chomsky or Ted Rall says.

The irony here is that those who took no interest whatsoever in what went on in Iraq’s prisons when people were being butchered there by the thousands (hung from meathooks, thrown into industrial blenders, impaled and bled to death in Udai’s iron maiden) are suddenly striking postures of superior morality over the frat-party-gone bad antics of a few bad apples.

Nudity? Being forced to wear women’s underwear? Diddle oneself for the camera? Deplorable acts, but “torture” is way too strong. These people weren’t killed or maimed. Those responsible deserve to be punished—and will be. But I can’t help but think that the Arabs in particular, whose blood-soaked prisons are hell on earth, are laughing in their sleeves as they decry these Phi Kappa Psi “atrocities.”

Martin, people like Chomsky were highly critical of the human rights abuses of Hussein at the same time the Rumsfield was handing him large amounts of cash and weapons back in the 80’s.

Of course, I guess I see your point about these abuses not being all that serious, I mean who hasn’t engaged in “Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick” once in a while, right?

Perhaps everybody hasn’t. I saw no such thing in those photos. If they did happen, I hope somebody gets punished for them. Unlike in Arab countries, people go to jail instead of get medals for such acts (oh, wait, John Kerry got medals for service during which he’s confessed to committing war crimes—I take it back).

On the subject of war crimes, the best and hardest hitting commericial yet is up on crushkerry.com. I only wish the RNC would run it nationally.

It’s a shame President Bush didn’t follow up on the reports of abuses six months ago. It’s pretty lame to call the acts reprehensible and promise swift action on the perpetrators only after the pictures leaked.

Why wasn’t he asking for swift justice six months ago? My guess is that he just figured someone else was taking care of it. That would explain why he’s so ticked at Rumsfeld right now.

It seems like the American people are ill-served by a president who lacks either the interest or the attention span to follow up on important details.

crushkerry.com? Don’t tell me the Republicans found themselves their very own version of George Soros?

Lee, at the very least Bush could have had a “meeting” about the prisoner abuses. That would show a sense of urgency right? By Clinton’s standards, that would qualify as an “obsession”. (smirk)

“It seems like the American people are ill-served by a president who lacks either the interest or the attention span to follow up on important details.”

I take it Kerry will be personally visiting every prison and inspecting every Iraqi sphinctre to ensure no guards inserted a chemical light up in there?

If he finds one, will he throw his medals on his own lawn, in protest of himself?

There are 14 deaths which warrant fake murder investigations, evidence of torture and lots of random but deliberate humiliation, designed to “breakdown” Islamic prisoners. This proves just how irrelevant Shrub really is. New demands are placed on Rove (Bush’s Brain) and the media. The very experienced, ruthless, rich, bullshit machine will now drown a gullible, forgetfull electorate in fake remorse and outrage, lies, lies, lies. Bush can start by hugging children.

I take it Kerry will be personally visiting every prison and inspecting every Iraqi sphinctre to ensure no guards inserted a chemical light up in there?

No, but he’ll likely have someone brief him on it occasionally.

Bush, on the other hand, appears to have been as “out of the loop” as Clarke and O’Neil have been said to be by this Administration. I wondered how they’d top keeping their counter-terrorism advisor out of the loop on terrorism… they appear to have done so.

You don’t have to be killed or maimed to be tortured. These captives were subjected to cultural attacks as well. Do you have any idea how humiliating it must have been for them to be displayed and handled like that in front of a woman? And to have it photographed and broadcast thoughout the world?

If US captives were treated this way, you’d be calling for heads to roll. This double standard is unacceptable. We have to treat them as we would want them to treat us.

And please don’t refer to the mutilation of the dead mercenaries a few weeks ago as justification for the treatment Iraqi prisoners recieved. Two wrongs won’t make a right.

Michael, compared to some of the things the Iraqis did to Coalition captives in both Gulf Wars (read Andy McNabb’s book, “Bravo Two Zero” if you can stand to), those POWs would stand in line to trade places with the Iraqis being “humiliated”, if they were able to stand. On the other hand, “humiliation” has no interrogation value, no psyop value, and doesn’t represent the value system at our core. It has no place in military operations.

Years ago, when I was being trained in interrogation techniques, I remember the “Mutt and Jeff”, the “Fear Up”, the “Fear Down”, the “We Know All”, and the “We Know Nothing”, but I don’t recall ever being told about a “Humiliation Up” technique. Prisoners don’t “break” when they’re humiliated, they just fold up and get even more silent. Shame has a silencing effect on people, and silence isn’t golden during interrogation, obviously.

One thing which is legal and works, though, and is somewhat amusing, is, you have several prisoners in a room, bound hand and foot, and gagged but not blindfolded. You keep an extra gag in your sleeve and create a veiled partition where you can see the shadow/silhouette of people on the other side, but not the detail. You take one random prisoner into the veiled area making sure the others see this. In the veiled area, you make it look like you’re removing the prisoner’s gag, pulling the extra one out of your sleeve. You aim a pistol parallel to a line of fire toward their head but such that it will miss the head when fired, demand that they talk, and when they don’t (because obviously they can’t), fire. When you do, push that prisoner to the ground, tripping him, making it look like he fell from being shot in the head. Because he’s gagged and bound, any struggling or what-not will appear to be the writhing of a dead man from a head shot. Quickly drag the first prisoner away, and bring the second one into the veiled area, being sure to pick out the one prisoner who looks the MOST frightened by the bluff-shot event. (A check of urine stains often helps in this selection.) You then repeat the pantomime process, but instead of pretending you really do remove his gag. He might or might not talk—if he does, you leverage the information as quickly as possible to get more information in further interrogations, passing what you learn up to analysts as quickly as possible. If he doesn’t talk, you say “this time you will be spared but you will be asked this question later, and next time you might or might not be spared.” Go on down the line of prisoners, tending to bluff with the ones that look tougher, and “spare” the ones that look weaker or more scared. That would be an example of the “Fear Up” approach; not 100% textbook, but a field expedient application of what’s textbook. Some troops used to call it the “haunted house” technique. Clever illusions used to produce fear.

Thanks for sharing, Ciggy. A friend of mine in the Rangers recently shared similar stories with me about his own “resistance training.” Not pleasant stuff to be sure.

Myers knew it, he got CBS to delay showing the photos for 2 weeks. Did he not tell Rumsfeld about it? Or did he tell Rummy and Rummy did not bother to inform the Pres.? Either way, some heads need to roll and it’ll still be one of the worst moments of Bush’s (first) term.

The above can be combined by a “we know all” by taking the tougher prisoners and pretending that they are talking (lean into them and make it seem like they are whispering the information into your ear). Then you overtly spare the “tough” prisoners who “cracked” (but didn’t really), and tell the weaker, more scared prisoners, that they will be quizzed on what the tougher prisoner “whispered in my ear”. If it’s correct, hot shower, hot meal, the good life. If it’s incorrect, BANG. (A fake BANG, but a scary one nonetheless.)

I did read that book. And yes the treatment the author and his men received was terrible. But does the fact that American and Coalition POW’s were mistreated by Iraqis make the abuse against Iraqi prisoners OK? I don’t think so.

You can’t gloss this over with “they did it first” arguments. And nevermind what the motivations behind this treatment may have been. Nothing justifies this behavior. It makes us look like the captialistic godless bullies al Quaida says we are.

Greg said: “By the way, what happened to the post in the Republican column on Abu Graib?”

The article was temporarily removed for additional formatting for the front page. Once the formatting was corrected, it was placed back on the WB front page.

> compared to some of the things the Iraqis did
> to Coalition captives in both Gulf Wars …
> those POWs would stand in line to trade
> places with the Iraqis being “humiliated”

Lots of people are saying this kind of thing right now, comparing the treatment of these prisoners to the much-more-harsh treatment of prisoners under Saddam or under other historical circumstances.

I don’t understand - what point is being made by this kind of statement?

-Cf

Seeing that picture of that Iraqi prisoner on the leash being led around by that female soldier kind of reminded me of the little game Monica Lewinski and I used to play. She would take my necktie and tie me up and I would bark like a dog while she called me a “bad little mongrel.” Then I would rear back on my hind legs, growl and bark, then shove a cigar up her twat while barking out the Star Spangled Banner. God, I miss being president. Bill Clinton

Man, that’s some wierd stuff Monica and Bill used to do.

That isn’t me posting above - it looks like it’s an adolescent child or some sort of mentally deficient adult is impersonating me. Moderator, can ya fix that? Thanks,

-Cf

Right away Herr Farley. Caught your post and pictures over at gaylife.com. You have GREAT pecs, and what a package!! Thanks, Henri, (i mean moderator)

I wonder if Bush and Rumsfeld are doing the Mutt and Jeff routine? Perhaps, I’m a bit cynical.

At least this character isn’t trying to sell us that cigar again. Oh brother.

wow martin…you and i agree more and more lately….scary….

ok…my two cents here….I really don’t care what Bush knew or didn’t know….

As Commander and Chief, and President of the United States of America….if YOUR army that you are the Commander and Chief of commit’s horrid and childish acts like those committed……im sorry…..the captain has to take responsibility for his ship.

If it happened on Clinton’s watch or any other Dem, the right would immediately hold the President accountable…..double standards don’t work here.

another note….Bush says that this is not the America he knows…..really?

the America where a man gets dragged behind a car until his limbs fall off (in Texas no less), or the America where the police unload 45 rounds into an unarmed black man(in NYC), or the America where teenage boys shoot up the school they attend (Colorado)?

I love my country…..but I wholeheartedly believe that we have a TREMENDOUS capacity for evil……what happened in the prison’s in Iraq are just the tip of the iceberg.

the fact is American’s love to see other people be humiliated……look at our television…American Idol, AM I hot or not?, Jackass, Bloopers, etc……. WE CRAVE seeing people in pain….we couldn’t be happier to watch a man get hit in the balls, hell…you can get on DVD the complete Faces of Death, and watch people get killed for real….

and people are shocked when this really happens?

hmmmmm….

Geez.
There’s such a thing as ‘not sinking to their level’. So Iraqi’s tortured US troops, and by Victim’s License, the coalition can do the same?
Maybe they have a right, you know tit-for-tat and all that.
But there is such a thing as moral highground. How can the world believe that America is out protecting the ‘greater good’ with images like that floating around?( ofcourse i never thought the war was good or anything)
Sure torture and abuse happen like this all the time all over the world. But the manner in which it has come to light is very,very damaging to the image of the war that the Bush govt has been trying to create.
I am not one to support Bush , but I do think it may be a little harsh to blame him for this one. Sure he does need to take some sort of responsibility for it, and make some apologies, but I don’t really believe that this could be something that he wanted to happen.
Just underlines the point I’ve stressed into the ground.
War=Bad. Diplomacy=Good.

Michael, the “it” is nowhere near the same “it” if you think I’m making a “they did it first” argument. My two points, which might have seemed contradictory if you didn’t step back and think about them, were 1) Humiliation has no tactical or intelligence or psyop value in prisoner treatment, and 2) American and British POWs who were held by Saddam’s forces, and Iraqi dissidents taken by the Muhabarat, would have gladly switched places with those at Abu Ghraib, nakedness or no nakedness. The point of the second point is to say that when the “Arab street” gets all fired up and indignant at the Abu Ghraib treatment, they’re doing so with QUITE a bit of hypocrisy. It has no place in the American way of doing things, but at the same time, the hatred being vented right now is really a pre-existing hatred and would still have been there if the Abu Ghraib prisoners all got conjugal visits by 72 virgins apiece and were treated like sheiks.

I am very disturbed, though, at hearing from the MP commander that oh by the way, she DID know what was going on, but didn’t stop it because she says it was CIA telling the MPs to do that. This tells me that it should be George Tenet, not Rummy (this time) in the hot seat. As far as I’m concerned that’s a strike three and OUT for Central “Intelligence” these days.

Rob, we DO have a tremendous capacity for evil in America, and I think if the Arab “street” were as aware of this as they should be, they might not be so quick to express an hypocritical and irrational hatred of us every chance they get. When America hates back, it always gets ugly. (Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki?)

The point of the second point is to say that when the “Arab street” gets all fired up and indignant at the Abu Ghraib treatment, they’re doing so with QUITE a bit of hypocrisy.

Ciggy, that just means we shouldn’t start handing them any more propaganda bullets. Sure they’re hypocritical and there’s nothing the US could do that the “Arab street” would praise us for. But we shouldn’t go out of our way to make it easy for them to score propaganda points.

The Arab street isn’t really the audience we should be playing to anyhow. Everybody knows there’s no pleasing the Arab street. What we need to do is make sure our coalition allies, our potential allies at the UN, and hopefully some potential Arab allies don’t use this event to abandon us in the face of domestic pressure.

The damage from this could have been contained if it was handled immediately. As it is, it just highlights the ineptness of the Mayberry Machiavellis who are running this country. The whole Iraq adventure has been a cluster f&$k right from the start.

I concur with Lee. We are not going to convince our enemies to like us. But we sure can convince our allies and non-allied “friends” to stop liking us. And behavior like this is just one thing that can turn our friends against us.

I also find it repugnant that conservative pundits have tried to dismiss these acts as nothing worse than frat hazing. Even their Republican president has said that this behavior is abhorrent. So either the behavior is unacceptable or Bush was blowing wind in an effort of damage control.

Lee, I agree about not handing the Arabs propaganda points. I also agree that handling the incidents needed to involve more than just quietly prosecuting the MPs involved. If the MP commander’s allegation that this was being directed by CIA, pans out, then Rummy should have been showing these pictures to Bush and telling him how much of a loose cannon CIA had become, and for POTUS to deal with it, and to do so on a fast track, not an “after duck hunting in Crawford” track.

I also agree that it was a clusterf*** from the start, mainly because it shouldn’t have started at all. It isn’t that the conventional phase of the war wasn’t successful, or that the transition period COULDN’T have been such, but that it was a dumb idea to even go, and when the transition period is being so poorly managed, that’s just fecal icing on a fecal cake being sold to us as “chocolate”.

Now you’ve totally put me off my dessert. Thanks a lot.

The plot thickens. Apparently the MI interrogators, contractors, and CIA interrogators, were indirectly but strongly encouraging the abuse, which did indeed include torture. When a man has electrodes on his fingers and genitalia, getting zapped whenever he shows signs of falling asleep, I call that torture.

To the credit of some of the MPs, there was testimony in the Taguba report that when some were told by interrogators to “soften them up”, they pushed back saying they would need specific and written orders of what to do, and then those demands shifted to other MPs, MPs who were “team players” in the effort. Rightly, the “team players” are now being prosecuted for “playing” with the wrong “team”.

Read about it here:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/

There is definitely something broken, and my guess it’s at about the middle level of the MP chain of command, and at a fairly high level at the MI chain of command. And it seems CIA itself has just rotted to the core.

But none of the Democrat members of the Senate Armed Services committe today actually called for Rumsfeld’s resignation. One did, however, ask Rumsfeld if it would help show the world how seriously this violates U.S. values and ideas of how things should be done, and Rumsfeld very candidly answered, “that is possible”.

And I think in the details of this report, one can understand why.

The Arab Street will always be angry no matter what, so in many ways they don’t matter, but I think we owe it, not just to anyone who might have the brass cajones to announce themselves our friends, but to us ourselves, to make many, many, many heads roll over this.

Bill, I’d spring for another box of Havana’s and a new necktie if you could run again. I miss you!

The post I was referring to has been deleted.