CNN: Powell aide (Wilkerson): Torture 'guidance' from VP Cheney

[DeepModem Mom]

Powell aide: Torture 'guidance' from VP
Former staff chief says Cheney's 'flexibility' helped lead to abuse
Sunday, November 20, 2005


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A former top State Department official said Sunday that Vice President Dick Cheney provided the "philosophical guidance" and "flexibility" that led to the torture of detainees in U.S. facilities.

Retired U.S. Army Col. Larry Wilkerson, who served as former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, told CNN that the practice of torture may be continuing in U.S.-run facilities.

"There's no question in my mind that we did. There's no question in my mind that we may be still doing it," Wilkerson said on CNN's "Late Edition."

"There's no question in my mind where the philosophical guidance and the flexibility in order to do so originated -- in the vice president of the United States' office," he said. "His implementer in this case was Donald Rumsfeld and the Defense Department."

At another point in the interview, Wilkerson said "the vice president had to cover this in order for it to happen and in order for Secretary Rumsfeld to feel as though he had freedom of action."...


http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/20/torture/index.html

[daleo]

1. So, what is meant by "philosophical guidance"?

I read it as saying to interrogators, "you have the unrestricted permission to do anything that you want, and legal strictures do not apply". In other words, Cheney and Rumsfeld were aiding and abetting crimes.

We said all along that this had to go to the very top. This finally seems to be coming out in a big way.

On edit:
"Rumsfeld told ABC that the military has "overwhelmingly treated pople humanely.""

This statement is appropriately vague, and typically Rumsfeldian - if you only torture one person in ten, then you overwhelmingly treated people humanely.

[Akoto]

2. My interpretation of "philosophical guidance" is ...

"Well, see, if you torture them this way ... that's obviously against the law. But if you do it *this* way, that doesn't seem as bad, now does it?"

[ixion]

4. only torture the cute ones,

is the line, I believe. :evilgrin:

[cliss]

11. Yup....we knew it all along. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.

There is a photo of these two somewhere in the DU archives...you have Rumsfailed and Cheney, sitting together in the president's office....Gerald Ford at the time.

They just looked so impish, so full of devilish plans, you could tell that their time had not yet come. The Torture Twins.

Poor Gerald Ford was probably duped by these imps. Too bad we didn't get rid of them then.

[rzemanfl]

3. My interpretation is "I'm a rich old white guy with a bad heart, do

whatever you fucking want."

[pushycat]

21. Angry, old, white men

[spindrifter]

5. Philosophical guidance means he gave a full-on

green light and said Torture them." Flexibility means "do it however you need to." Let's not mince words--save the mince for the pies.:mad:

[indepat]

6. The fish rots from the head and, boy, do we have a stinking fish

[Peace Patriot]

7. The "philosophical guidance" was that the Geneva Conventions and the UCMJ

--that is, the laws of this land--are now "quaint." I know our new chief law enforcement officer of the U.S. is the one who coined that designation--but I believe that Cheney also views our laws, and our democracy itself, as "quaint"--outmoded, irrelevant, to be overrun at will by fascist global corporate predators.

I figured Cheney and Rumsfeld were working together on getting rid of any fastidious, "quaint," lawful ideas about torture--as I think they worked together on getting rid of any fastidious, "quaint," lawful, patriotic ideas of protecting our own agents, or of engaging in useful, necessary dissent and argument within government. My theory of Traitorgate is that it came right from the top, from these two, starting with the "crude" Niger forgeries, to entice the honest analysts and agents at the CIA into a public position of no nukes in Iraq, to be followed up by Judith Miller "finding" the nuke material or components that they intended to plant in Iraq. An ugly, deceitful, traitorous conspiracy from first to last--with the visible part of Traitorgate (the part we can see now) as the coverup of their nefarious scheme to plant WMDs in Iraq and the foiling of that scheme (which I think was discovered by the Brits chief WMD expert David Kelly, who was found dead, under highly suspicious circumstances, four days after Plame was outed.)

I don't want to see them hang--although in traditional justice, they deserve it. But I do want to see them imprisoned for life, and all their ill gotten war profits, and those of the companies they work for, confiscated and returned to the American people.

These are the worst people who have ever gained power in the U.S. They are utterly disreputable, traitorous criminals. And I hope the one benefit we may gain from having endured them is that the corporate predators who rule over us, and who now control our elections as well, are fully exposed and disempowered, and, additionally--don't I wish!--are de-chartered and stripped of their assets.

May the scales fall from the eyes of the good-hearted, peace-loving American people! They knew enough to vote these criminals out of office in 2004, and were thwarted--because the election theft machines of Bushite companies (Diebold and ES&S) were too new for people to have caught up with their non-transparency and fraudulence. Now they must realize just how bad this junta is, how bad the colluders among the Dem Party leadership have been, and act to get our country back and restore our right to vote.

[druidity33]

23. Karpinski laid it out

in her interview on Democracy Now! Rumsfeld had sent orders down on exactly what was acceptable... waterboarding, use of dogs, etc. They then hung this new issued order in an officer area in Abu Ghraib.

link here:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/26/1423248&mode=thread&tid=25

an excerpt-

<snip>
...so we made arrangements to leave at the crack of dawn to drive down to Abu Ghraib to see what we could find out about this ongoing investigation and went through the battalion over to Cell Block 1A. The people who would normally be working on any shift were not working. The sergeant that I spoke to said that their records had been seized by the investigators, and they started a new log to account for prisoners, make sure that their meals were on time, those kind of things, and he pointed out a memo that was posted on a column just outside of their small administrative office. And the memorandum was signed by the Secretary of Defense, and –

AMY GOODMAN: By Donald Rumsfeld.

COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: By Donald Rumsfeld. And said – it discussed interrogation techniques that were authorized. It was one page. It talked about stress positions, noise and light discipline, the use of music, disrupting sleep patterns, those kind of techniques. But there was a handwritten note out to the side. And this was a copy. It was a photocopy of the original, I would imagine. But it was unusual that an interrogation memorandum would be posted inside of a detention cell block, because interrogations were not conducted in the cell block.

AMY GOODMAN: This was the command of Donald Rumsfeld himself?

COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Talking about the techniques?

COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: The techniques that were allowed. And there was a note – handwritten note out to the side of where the list of tactics, interrogation tactics were. It said, "Make sure this happens." And it seemed to be in the same handwriting as the signature. That's what I could say about the memorandum.

AMY GOODMAN: People understood it to be from Rumsfeld?

COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Yes, they certainly did. And I never heard a word – I did – certainly did see the reference to photographs in the original email, but when I asked the soldier, when I asked the sergeant, when I asked the commanders out at Abu Ghraib, what did they know about, they knew nothing about it. They had heard that there were some photographs, but they did not know any specifics.

<snip>

[DELUSIONAL]

8. or . . . making bushie seem like an "innocent" surrounded by

a bunch of manipulative bastards.

But then I really don't believe that bushie is an innocent bystander -- he is a sick sadistic s.o.b. and I really DO mean Son of a BITCH.

So how will bushie go down in history -- as a bumbling fool? Or as a player in the game of torture?

Singing to the choir here -- but the US administration approval of torture will come back to bite the TROOPS -- and Americans will die (or probably have already died) horrible deaths because of decisions made by the bushie crime family.

This hits home -- I'm a Navy brat and my father flew risky missions during the cold war. They knew if they went down they would be more than likely tortured and they went to training camps to learn what to expect if their plane ever went down in "enemy" territory. The cold war was an undeclared war . . .

[SpiralHawk]

9. Bush hangs out in the Skull & Boner sub-krypt at the White House

and so has a perfect excuse. As usual. He was AWOL when all this was going down. As usual.

[rateyes]

10. Thank goodness for people like Wilkerson...

we need more whistleblowers.

[skooooo]

12. It's looking baaaaaaad for Cheney.

:rofl::rofl::rofl:

[Stephanie]

17. Cheney's going down

He needs to go straight to jail -

[VegasWolf]

13. Cheny, "Yank their balls off and we will use them at fundraisers!" nt

[goforit]

19. LOL!!!........just a little sick humor, eh?

[ThePopulist]

14. Figures

Well anybody who expected anything different from "Dick and Balls" Cheney obviously hasn't read much into him. Jesus, he even pushed the beloved Colin Powell out of the "influence circle." This must have caused a lot of problems regarding the distribution of power in the White House and the reasoning behind why Powell resigned.

[joeunderdog]

24. Colin is no saint.

He blocked International anti-Genocide laws in the Regan era.

...But he's a good soldier.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

25. to be ever so slightly fair to Powell

he was only following US tradition - it took 40 years for America to actually ratify the Convention againt Genocide, and even then with reservations.

http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/0/AF36B604F1BDEE93C125642F004639AF?OpenDocument

[ThePopulist]

26. Colin has his flaws but he's still a good man at heart I believe

He literally was the only thing standing in between us and war with the entire Middle East because the neocons would have invaded Iran and Syria too had it not been for him.

[depakid]

27. One look at the man's picture and you can just tell he's evil

I hate to be shallow- but there is something to be said (psychologically) about recognizing those characteristics in some people's faces). The whole 5 deferments- cowardice thing- combined with his voting record (for assualt weapons and against head start, for example) only adds to the conclusion.

To this day, I've never forgive Lieberman for sitting down at that table during the VP debates and making Cheney look like a nice, reasonable and respectable guy. It certainly played a riole in Gore's defeat- and Lieberman (and other's) similar behavior- legitimizing monstrous Republican policies has cost the Dems their relevancy in national politics.

[theHandpuppet]

28. It's the picture of a man rotting from the inside out

Cheney is the embodiment of evil.

[lovuian]

15. Yep the torture addition is Cheney's baby just like the WMD was

Cheneys!!!

[goforit]

20. Lets us not forget our beloved anti-constitutional Patriot Act.

[truthisfreedom]

16. this is huge. totally huge. have they discredited Wilkerson before?

watch them do it now.

[liveoaktx]

18. AUDIO

MP3 Wilkerson

[DeepModem Mom]

22. Thanks, once again, liveoaktx! nt

[truthisfreedom]

29. i really seriously wonder if cheney is going down.

i got a feeling... they're treading so lightly now, they can't use the typical rovian techniques... does rove have subtlety up his sleeve? can he finesse cheney out of this mess?