U.S. Senate report ties Rumsfeld to Abu Ghraib abuse....highlights the sad story of "patriots" scapegoating some in the military to save their skins

[Arjun]

U.S. Senate report ties Rumsfeld to Abu Ghraib abuse

WASHINGTON, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials share much of the blame for detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to portions of a report released on Thursday by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The report's executive summary, made public by the committee's Democratic chairman Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and its top Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said Rumsfeld contributed to the abuse by authorizing aggressive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay on Dec. 2, 2002.

He rescinded the authorization six weeks later. But the report said word of his approval continued to spread within U.S. military circles and encouraged the use of harsh techniques as far away as Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report concluded that Rumsfeld's actions were "a direct cause of detainee abuse" at Guantanamo and "influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques ... in Afghanistan and Iraq."

"The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own," the executive summary said.

"Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at (Guantanamo)."

The detainee scandal at Abu Ghraib and later revelations of aggressive U.S. interrogations such as "waterboarding" led to an international outcry and charges that the United States allowed prisoners to be tortured, a claim denied by the Bush administration.

The Bush administration has since recanted the policies under pressure from Congress, while President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

The report found that the military derived the techniques from a Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape program, or SERE, which trains U.S. soldiers to resist enemy interrogation that does not conform to the Geneva Conventions or international law.

"These policies are wrong and must never be repeated," McCain, who last month lost the U.S. presidential election, said in a statement released with the executive summary.

McCain said the report revealed an "inexcusable link between abusive interrogation techniques used by our enemies who ignored the Geneva Conventions and interrogation policy for detainees in U.S. custody."

Levin said: "The message from top officials was clear. It was acceptable to use degrading and abusive techniques against detainees."

...
..

Members of Bush's Cabinet and other senior officials participated in meetings inside the White House in 2002 and 2003 where specific interrogation techniques were discussed, according to the report.

The committee also blamed former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers for undermining the military's review of interrogation methods. (Editing by Anthony Boadle)

the full article could be read here


This report supports what Brigadier General Janis Karpinski said all along

Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who ran Iraq prisons in 2003, including the notorious Abu Ghraib prison was insistent that all orders on interrogation practices came from the top down during the Bush administration on CBS News’ The Early Show this morning.

“These soldiers didn't design these techniques on their own…we were following orders,” Karpinski told Harry Smith. “We were bringing this to our chain of command and they were saying whatever the military intelligence tells you to do out there you are authorized to do."

...

Karpinski argued that there was a “clear” line between the techniques condoned by top level administration officials and the practices condemned in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

“The line is clear,” she said. “It went from Washington, D.C. From the very top of the administration with the legal opinions through Bagram to Guantanamo Bay and then to Iraq via the commander from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And the contractors who were hired to do those things.”

Karpiniski was insistent that she and the soldiers prosecuted were “scapegoated” by superiors in the administration.

read the rest of that Article here

So its evident that the top brass in the Army scapegoated a few soldiers and officers to save their hides and those of their political masters; who were the ones to issue orders to carry out such intorrogation and torture on the prisoners in the first place.


At this juncture; i want to point out what Deputy secretary of Defense Wolfowitz said about the Abu Gharib scandal.

Interviewer: Is this going to effect what we’re doing over there?

WOLFOWITZ: Of course, it has a negative effect. That’s why it’s such a disservice to everyone else, that a few bad apples can create some large problems for everybody.


source: http://www.defenselink.mil/transcrip...nscriptid=2970

^^ The Senate report shows that this claim by Wolfowitz is not true...in other words..he seems to have lied. Is this the way a party that supposedly "stands by the nations Military" ..a party that chants "America America America" in its election rallies; treats its troops?..as fodder in order to save their skins?






Ps:Lol, this is my 500th post in TWC

[TotalPeaceCenter]

Congrats on posting your 500th on TWC, Arjun!

Why just Rumsfeld, I would actually pin the blame on the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld troika. And I believe Rumsfeld is actually what the hoarding says in the pic whose link I've provided below!!
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed...image/31593130

[Arjun]

Congrats on posting your 500th on TWC, Arjun!

Why just Rumsfeld, I would actually pin the blame on the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld troika. And I believe Rumsfeld is actually what the hoarding says in the pic whose link I've provided below!!
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed...image/31593130

thanks,been a member for 3 years but reached 500 only now.lol

yep! Is it not ironic that the very same people who wax so much about "our military" and about "being patriotic" are the ones scre**** the men and women up the military up big time?

Where are the "national security is paramount" folks now when this news became public? missing in action?

[Stavroforos]

National security is paramount.

[Heinz Guderian]

Rumsfeld represents Old America. Obama is New America.

[humvee2800]

Way too put 250 years of american history and attach it too rumsfeld, and put the future in the hands of someone who so far is empty promises.

[Heinz Guderian]

Way too put 250 years of american history and attach it too rumsfeld, and put the future in the hands of someone who so far is empty promises.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Europe

[Arjun]

Being interviewed on Countdown, General Janis Karpinski asks a simple question with massive impact

"If these torture techniques were really for the good of our country and were OK, THEN WHERE WERE YOU when the soldiers in a COMBAT ZONE carrying out YOUR ORDERS were prosecuted?!? How DARE YOU speak up now to defend yourself when you wouldn't defend those on the front line!"


A very good question indeed!





I want to see the response to General Kapinski's question from Those here in TWC who keep on claiming that the Republican party is the one that supports the nation's troops and that the Democrats are all commie-anti Military activists

[Martin N]

Rumsfeld represents Old America. Obama is New America.

I havnt seen no difference from obama as bush was to be honest, except hes black, his policies, his foreign policy, economic policy, homeland policy, all the fricking same shame that change we can believe in is now down the drain.

[Heinz Guderian]

The "soldiers" wouldn't have been punished if they did nothing but what was cleared by the White House. Also, I didn't see anything about waterboarding at Abu Gharab

So you agree that Rumsfeld green lighted this behaviour? Behaviour which is unbecoming of a normally highly disciplined and moral army? He made a fervent pro-American Army guy such as myself view the US armed forces with suspicion. When i was 10, i got angry at school at the history teacher when he said that the US lost in Vietnam. My old school friends still take the piss out of me for it cos i went ape-**** To me at the time, the US army not being painted in a good light would make me get pissed.

Then 911 happened.

Another thing, I went through "stress positions" at military school when I was 13-18 (DI's chair, front leaning rest, etc.). Big ****ing deal, I will never understand the amount of pity people have for terrorists. We should go by the Geneva Convention and execute them all as partisans/spies IMO.

Did they stack you naked in pyramids cos i went to a boys Roman Catholic School and it happened all the time to me. If you were really good, they made you the top of the pyramid.

I havnt seen no difference from obama as bush was to be honest, except hes black, his policies, his foreign policy, economic policy, homeland policy, all the fricking same shame that change we can believe in is now down the drain.

OK, i was referring to when Rumsfeld said that the European countries that did not agree and participate the Iraq War were "Old Europe" and that countries that did such as Poland and Bulgaria were "New Europe". Srsly click on that link i posted about Old Europe.

I was using irony, and in this case, i failed.

[Admiral Piett]

Very good video.

[Arjun]

Very good video.

yeah, it sickens me that those who gave those orders go scot free while the poor soldiers get to do time, and are still in jail.

[s.rwitt]

Rumsfeld represents Old America. Obama is New America.

God I hope you're wrong.

[Arjun]

U.S. Soldier Who Killed Herself--After Refusing to Take Part in Torture
With each new revelation on U.S. torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gitmo, I am reminded of the chilling story of Alyssa Peterson.

Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Ariz., native, served with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a "non-hostile weapons discharge."

A "non-hostile weapons discharge" leading to death is not unusual in Iraq, often quite accidental, so this one apparently raised few eyebrows. The Arizona Republic, three days after her death, reported that Army officials "said that a number of possible scenarios are being considered, including Peterson's own weapon discharging, the weapon of another soldier discharging, or the accidental shooting of Peterson by an Iraqi civilian." And that might have ended it right there.

But in this case, a longtime radio and newspaper reporter named Kevin Elston, not satisfied with the public story, decided to probe deeper in 2005, "just on a hunch," he told me in late 2006 (there's a chapter about it in my book on Iraq and the media, "So Wrong for So Long"). He made "hundreds of phone calls" to the military and couldn't get anywhere, so he filed a Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] request. When the documents of the official investigation of her death arrived, they contained bombshell revelations. Here's what the Flagstaff public radio station, KNAU, where Elston then worked, reported:

"Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed."

read the rest Here

______________________________

God I hope you're wrong.

Whats your take on this new revelation regarding the Abu Ghraib issue and the statement by General Karpinski ? just wondering cos i assume you are/were in the military?

[s.rwitt]

Whats your take on this new revelation regarding the Abu Ghraib issue and the statement by General Karpinski ? just wondering cos i assume you are/were in the military?

There's nothing really new about Karpinski saying she is totally innocent and that Bush/Rumsfeld told her to pile Iraqis naked on top of each other and photograph them. As soon as this disgrace (Abu Gharab) happened she was making the media circuits pleading her innocence. She, as the "General" in charge was in the end responsible for the despicable and inexcusable behavior of her subordinates. She is a disgrace of an "officer". I hope that we in the USMC never have one that emulates her behavior in any way.

[Pious Agnost]

Wasn't it her legal duty to disobey, anyway?

[bushbush]

There's nothing really new about Karpinski saying she is totally innocent and that Bush/Rumsfeld told her to pile Iraqis naked on top of each other and photograph them. As soon as this disgrace (Abu Gharab) happened she was making the media circuits pleading her innocence. She, as the "General" in charge was in the end responsible for the despicable and inexcusable behavior of her subordinates. She is a disgrace of an "officer". I hope that we in the USMC never have one that emulates her behavior in any way.

way to blame the little guy, so she ran her own little kingdom there? NO! She took orders from above as well. it would be naive to think this whole crap was her own idea.

[s.rwitt]

way to blame the little guy, so she ran her own little kingdom there? NO! She took orders from above as well. it would be naive to think this whole crap was her own idea.

"The little guy"? She was the general in charge of Abu Gharab for ****s sake! You have no business using the word "naive" when you post **** like this, just by doing so you show how little you know about how the US military operates. An officer is responsible for the conduct of their subordinates unless it's an isolated incident going against SOP (do you even know what that is?). This was ongoing abuse that she (The "General") had plenty of time to discover and put a stop to. She didn't. That's not only derilection of duty but also negligence and just plain poor leadership.

Wait....you actually believe that Bush and Rummy told her (the General) to have her subordinates make Iraqi detainees form naked pyramids and then threaten them with dogs, then take pics of it don't you? You actually believe that, right? Oh god....

[Heinz Guderian]

Wait....you actually believe that Bush and Rummy told her (the General) to have her subordinates make Iraqi detainees form naked pyramids and then threaten them with dogs, then take pics of it don't you? You actually believe that, right? Oh god....

So you dont believe the Senate Report in the OP?

[s.rwitt]

I didn't see anything about stripping the prisoners naked, making them form pyramids, shocking them, and taking pics with them all the while having dogs threaten them, no.