Salon: How High Does It Go?

[kskiska]

The more we find out about what happened at Abu Ghraib, the less it looks like a case of renegade soldiers.

By Eric Boehlert

Last week, as the Bush administration struggled to contain the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal, Peter Feaver, a Duke University professor and former National Security Council staff member, suggested a worst-case scenario for the White House: If "a senior civilian, or maybe even Rumsfeld, signed a memo that indicated, yes, sexual humiliation for prisoners is OK."

Now Seymour Hersh has summoned that worst-case scenario to life with an article in the May 24 issue of the New Yorker, providing evidence alleging that Rumsfeld secretly approved a plan to use harsh interrogation methods on prisoners in Iraq -- including methods that "encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners." The Pentagon labeled the article "outlandish, conspiratorial and filled with error and anonymous conjecture," but it did not specify the errors and had the sound of a classic nondenial denial. Rumsfeld's attempt to dismiss the piece did not forestall bipartisan calls in Congress for further investigation, with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, declaring that Hersh's article raises the scandal to "a whole new level."

At the same time, Newsweek reports this week that in the wake of 9/11, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush that the Geneva Convention articles that deal with interrogating prisoners of war might not apply to the war on terrorism. Newsweek's revelation suggests that Gonzales' memo may have established a foundation for the torture that followed.

For weeks the Pentagon has suggested that the prison abuse cases arose from too little oversight at Abu Ghraib. That was clearly the finding of Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who investigated the abuse allegations for the Army. But what if the opposite were true and those overseeing Abu Ghraib initiated the unlawful treatment? The more that is exposed, the more the Abu Ghraib scandal looks less like a case of renegade soldiers. How high up the chain of command does it go?

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http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/18/chain/index.html

[theivoryqueen]

1. This crop of senators have a lot of investigatin' to do

Wonder how long it'll take them to complete all the investigations they are investigating?

[yellowcanine]

2. Shrubs only defense will be that he didn't read the memo.

How pathetic is that?

[JPZenger]

3. Geneva Convention: Obsolete & Quaint, Wrote WH Lawyer

Excerpt from AP article: "White House counsel Alberto Gonzales reportedly wrote President George W. Bush a memo about the terrorism fight and prisoners' rights under the Geneva Convention.

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

Apparently, the White House refused to let this issue be reviewed by attorneys from the State Department or the military branches, because they knew they would strongly oppose it.