Newsweek: No Good Defense (+ poll: should Rumsfeld resign?)

[Barrett808]

No Good Defense
Do you think Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld should resign over the abuse of prisoners in Iraq? * 26066 responses

Yes
74%

No
22%

I don't know
4%

He leaned forward, changing the way America fights wars and shaking up a staid bureaucracy. But his culture of intimidation alienated the brass—and helped pave the road to Abu Ghraib. Donald Rumsfeld's journey to the brink

By Evan Thomas
Newsweek
May 17 issue - Donald Rumsfeld likes to be in total control. He wants to know all the details, including the precise interrogation techniques used on enemy prisoners. Since 9/11 he has insisted on personally signing off on the harsher methods used to squeeze suspected terrorists held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The conservative hard-liners at the Department of Justice have given the secretary of Defense a lot of leeway. It does not violate the spirit of the Geneva Conventions, the lawyers have told Rumsfeld, to put prisoners in ever-more-painful "stress positions" or keep them standing for hours on end, to deprive them of sleep or strip them naked. According to one of Rumsfeld's aides, the secretary has drawn the line at interrogating prisoners for more than 24 hours at a time or depriving them of light.

advertisement

If it were possible to be a true war god, to aim every arrow that flies, to smite every foe and avenge every wrong, maybe Donald Rumsfeld would be that man. But it is not, and in Greek tragedies the gods themselves are brought low by pride. In Washington, where the assassin's weapon is usually a well-placed leak, Rumsfeld last week was left explaining, with uncharacteristic pitifulness, that he had not seen the actual pictures that appalled the world until eight days after the images first appeared on CBS's "60 Minutes II."Live Vote
Do you think Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld should resign over the abuse of prisoners in Iraq? * 26066 responses


Yes
74%

No
22%

I don't know
4%

Not a scientifically valid survey. Click to learn more.




Apparently, even the almighty Rumsfeld could not control everything that happens in the vast American gulag that has sprung up since 9/11 to deal with enemies of the state. In Iraq, Rumsfeld's aides say, the Defense secretary delegated responsibility for interrogation methods to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the ground commander of the occupying forces. The military believes in chains of command, but somehow the chain became twisted and broken as it worked its way down into the prisons where the United States has kept, for too long and in wretched conditions, up to 50,000 detainees. In Baghdad, at Abu Ghraib—a hellhole where Saddam Hussein once tortured his countrymen—someone seems to have delegated authority to the Devil.

President George W. Bush said the photos made him "sick." The effect on Arabs will be to make them want to kill Americans. Is it possible to create an image more offensive to Arabs than a photograph of a female American soldier holding a naked Arab man on a leash? Or a naked Arab man hooded by a pair of woman's underpants? Could even Hollywood have imagined anything more disgusting than Americans leering over a pile of prisoners in simulated sexual positions?

(more)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4934213/

[rexcat]

1. I think there could be a case here for war crimes...

once Bush* is out of office. With the House, Senate, Courts and WH controled by repugs at this time I don't think anything will happen.

[whistle]

2. Here is how Hillary Clinton summed up her questionning...

...of Donald Rumsfeld on Friday:

"CLINTON...But I'm also concerned by a related matter. And let me just quickly reference the case of Chaplain Yee, the Muslim Army chaplain from Guantanamo Bay who was arrested and placed in solitary confinement. Ultimately all of the charges were dropped after his reputation was sullied. It's obvious that the information about this particular case came from government sources. It was pushed out and it was widely disseminated.

So, Mr. Secretary, how is it that a case with no basis in fact gets such widespread publicity, based on information from government sources, while egregious conduct like that at the Abu Ghraib prison is cloaked in a classified report, and is only made available when the investigation is leaked to the press?"

And here is how Rumsfeld answered:

"RUMSFELD: Well, Senator, first let me say, with respect to the question that Senator Reed raised, I can't conceive of anyone looking at the pictures and suggesting that anyone could have recommended, condoned, permitted, encouraged, subtly, directly, in any way, that those things take place.

Second, the decision that was made by the president of the United States that you referred to was announced. And in the announcement it was said that the Al Qaida in Guantanamo that are captured in the world, mostly in Afghanistan, would be treated consistent with the Geneva Convention. That is a fact.

You say the report was well known. I don't know how you know that. All I know is when it made the public, when somebody took a secret document out of prosecutorial channels and released it to the press, I do not believe it was yet anywhere in the Pentagon. Certainly, I had not been given it or seen it.

I quite agree with you. When you read the report, you do get an impression, as you suggested, that there is something much worse than what was in the press release, for example, in January or the discussion in March by the Central Command. But that was not something that had been moved past the Central Command, to my knowledge. It may have been somewhere in the Department of Defense, but certainly I had not received a copy. It was still in those channels."

By his own response, this makes Donald Rumsfeld one of the most inept Secretaries of Defense this country has had in the last 100 years. He should resign or be removed from office.