It's time for Rumsfeld to go

"The only people who have been pushed aside in this
administration are the truth tellers . . ."
World of Hurt

May 9, 2004
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

Good golly, you knew Rummy wasn't going to pretend to stay
contrite for long. Not with lawmakers bugging him about the
Pearl Harbor of PR, as Republican Tom Cole called it.

The flinty 71-year-old kept it together as John McCain
pounced and Hillary prodded. But soon he was once more
giving snippy one-word answers to his inquisitors, foisting
them on his brass menagerie or biting their heads off
himself.

By Friday evening, when the delegate from Guam, Madeleine
Bordallo, pressed him on whether "quality of life" was an
issue in the Abu Ghraib torture cases, you could see
Donald-Duck steam coming out of his ears.

"Whether they have a PX or a good restaurant is not the
issue," he said with a veiled sneer.

Rummy was having a dickens of a time figuring out how a
control-freak administration could operate in this
newfangled age when G.I.'s have dadburn digital cameras.

In the information age, he complained to senators, "people
are running around with digital cameras and taking these
unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against
the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not
even arrived in the Pentagon."

Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, mourned that America
was in a "world of hurt." If Gen. Richard Myers knew enough
to try to suppress the CBS show, Mr. Graham asked, why
didn't he know enough to warn the president and Congress?

Donald Rumsfeld, a black belt at Washington infighting,
knew the aggrieved lawmakers were most interested in an
apology for not keeping them in the loop. He no doubt was
sorry - sorry the pictures got out.

The man who promised last July that "I don't do quagmires"
didn't seem to be in trouble on Friday, despite the
government's blowing off repeated Red Cross warnings.

But who knows what the effect will be of the additional
"blatantly sadistic and inhuman" photos that Mr. Rumsfeld
warned of? Or the videos he said he still had not screened?


Dick Cheney will not cut loose his old mentor from the
Nixon and Ford years unless things get more dire.

After all, George Tenet is still running the C.I.A. after
the biggest intelligence failures since some Trojan ignored
Cassandra's chatter and said, "Roll the horse in." Colin
Powell is still around after trash-talking to Bob Woodward
about his catfights with the Bushworld "Mean Girls" -
Rummy, Cheney, Wolfie and Doug Feith. The vice president
still rules after promoting a smashmouth foreign policy
that is more Jack Palance than Shane. And the president
still edges out John Kerry in polls, even though Mr. Bush
observed with no irony to Al Arabiya TV: "Iraqis are sick
of foreign people coming in their country and trying to
destabilize their country, and we will help them rid Iraq
of these killers."

The only people who have been pushed aside in this
administration are the truth tellers who warned about
policies on taxes (Paul O'Neill); war costs (Larry
Lindsey); occupation troop levels (Gen. Eric Shinseki); and
how Iraq would divert from catching the ubiquitous Osama
(Richard Clarke).

Even if the secretary survives, the Rummy Doctrine - using
underwhelming force to achieve overwhelming goals - is
discredited. Jack Murtha, a Democratic hawk and Vietnam
vet, says "the direction's got to be changed or it's
unwinnable," and Lt. Gen. William Odom, retired, told Ted
Koppel that Iraq was headed toward becoming an Al Qaeda
haven and Iranian ally.

By the end, Rummy was channeling Jack Nicholson's Col.
Jessup, who lashed out at the snotty weenies questioning
him while they sleep "under the blanket of the very freedom
I provide, then question the manner in which I provide it."

Asked how we can get back credibility, Rummy bridled.
"America is not what's wrong with the world," he said,
adding: "I read all this stuff - people hate us, people
don't like us. The fact of the matter is, people line up to
come into this country every year because it's better here
than other places, and because they respect the fact that
we respect human beings. And we'll get by this."

Maybe. But for now, the hawks who wanted to employ American
might to scatter American values like flower petals all
across the world are reduced to keeping them from being
trampled by Americans. As Rummy would say, not a pretty
picture.

E-mail: [email protected]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/opinion/09DOWD.html?ex=1085103155&ei=1&en=0835036cefc68755

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Top Stories - Reuters


Pentagon OK'd Harsh Prison Techniques at Guantanamo

Sat May 8, 8:47 PM ET Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo!



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Defense Department last year approved interrogation techniques for use at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba that include forcing inmates to strip naked and subjecting them to loud music, bright lights and sleep deprivation, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.



The techniques were approved in April 2003 and require approval from senior Pentagon (news - web sites) officials and in some cases Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the paper reported on its Web site, citing unnamed defense officials.


It cited a document outlining 20 procedures that require interrogators to justify the harshest questioning techniques as a "military necessity," quoting an official said to possess the document. Some techniques require "appropriate medical monitoring," the report said.


Similar methods have been approved for use on detainees in Iraq (news - web sites) with links to terror or insurgent groups, though it was not clear whether they were approved for use at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, the Post said.


A Pentagon spokeswoman declined to comment on the report, referring questions to U.S. Southern Command in Miami.


Army Col. David McWilliams, a spokesman for Southern Command, confirmed that the U.S. military approved a sliding scale of interrogation techniques in the spring 2003, but denied that the list includes forcing detainees to strip.


"Not only is there no protocol that calls for disrobing a detainee, it was never considered," McWilliams told Reuters. "We do not do it."


He said approved standards are for "making sure that we could work with more difficult detainees, but do it in accordance with the standards of accepted international law and international techniques for interrogation."


McWilliams declined to comment on other interrogation techniques.


The Post story said prisoners could be made to stand for hours and questioning a prisoner without clothes was permitted if he was alone in his cell.


Pictures of grinning American soldiers abusing naked Iraqis at Abu Ghraib -- the largest prison in Iraq and notorious for torture under President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) -- have caused an international outcry.


The United States holds about 600 foreign nationals at the Guantanamo Bay prison, captured in what President Bush (news - web sites) calls the global war on terrorism.


This week the U.S. military punished two Army Reserve soldiers who assaulted prisoners while working as guards at Guantanamo, defense officials said.


The United States began detaining terrorism suspects -- most caught in Afghanistan (news - web sites) -- at the remote Guantanamo base in January 2002. About 150 prisoners have been transferred to their home countries either for outright release or for continued detention by those governments, the Pentagon has said.

c.i.
c.i. did you notice that General Miller is the same officer who instituted these polices at Getmo who has been sent to Iraq to straighten out the prison facility? Talk about guard the hen house with the fox.

BBB

Yes, BBB, that was mentioned on a tv program yesterday. This administration has the gall to tell us this represents only a small part of our military. Anybody want to buy the Golden Gate bridge?

Torture
"Some techniques require "appropriate medical monitoring," the report said."

Physical torture for "detainees" who have no charges brought and no human rights.

No doubt they'll try to wring every semantic ploy out of it like it was out of a dirty dishrag. Like Lady Macbeth trying to wash her hands clean of blood.

c.i. -- during the Vietnam conflict I had a live in relationship with a Marine officer. I heard the word "Chink" enough referring to both the South and North Vietnamese to turn me completely sour with the many service people who frequented our apartment. Once burned...

LW, John McCain continued to use "gook" for many years. I wrote to him that it was offensive to most Asians. He apologized and said he will not use that word again. Understanding the torture he experienced, I also understand why he used the word, but he's good enough of a person to admit it was wrong, and discontinue its use. I would have voted for him in 2000.

The two G words I would think are just as offensive to Asians as the N word Afro-Americans. I heard a lot of the N words from the white servicemen as well.

Nice thread, fellas. Strong arguments on both sides.

Personally, I was never really a huge fan of Rumsfeld before. But this most recent event is the "straw that broke the camels back" for me. As bothered as I am that these things happened in the prison, I'm more bothered that he kept such news from the president for so long.

No, Rumsfeld is not required to update the president on every slight commited by the troops, but Jeez-Louise... Anyone could tell photos like that, once released to the public, would make some serious waves in the water.

The other less than stellar aspects of his might not be fully accountable to him (war cost estimate, actual number of troops needed as opposed to proposed number, post war misunderstanding of how we would be recieved, etc), but this one lands squarely on him.

I feel like grabbing him by the shoulders, shaking him and saying "Come ON, man! What were you thinking!?"

JO, This guy deserves more than a shake.

And yet, as I believe that Mr. Blatham suggested the other day, the American people are not crying out for Rumsfeld's resignation. A latest survey reveals that 7 out of 10 people do not feel he should resign. It is unbelievable.

These are only allegations. We'll have to wait for confirmation.
***************
Iraqi Detainees Allege Torture in U.S.-Run Jails
Sun May 9,12:44 PM ET Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo!


By Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Torture, abuse and humiliation of prisoners is widespread in U.S.-run detention centers in Iraq (news - web sites), and not limited to a few cases, non-governmental organizations in Iraq and an American Christian group said Sunday.


"We are here to tell the world that the cases of torture of Iraqi prisoners are not isolated incidents and they are not limited to Abu Ghraib prison, nor to the six U.S. MPs," a spokeswoman for the Iraqi Human Rights Organization (IHRO) told a news conference in Baghdad.

Seven U.S. Military Police (MPs) have been charged with abusing Iraqi prisoners after a global scandal erupted with the publication of photographs of naked detainees being humiliated at Abu Ghraib prison just outside Baghdad.

U.S. spokesman Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said Specialist Jeremy Sivits would face a court martial in Baghdad next week, accused of abusing detainees.

President Bush (news - web sites) has said the acts were "the wrongdoing of a few" and did not reflect the character of the 200,000 military personnel who have served in Iraq.

But rights groups disputed those assertions.

"These are part of a systematic method of torture and inhuman treatment," the IHRO spokeswoman said.

ELECTRIC SHOCKS, PISTOLS

People who said they had been victims of torture and relatives of detainees told the news conference of their degrading treatment in the U.S. prisons.

None of the accounts could be verified independently and there was no immediate comment on these specific cases from the U.S. military. However, Kimmitt told a separate news conference all allegations would be investigated.


"The primary objective is to point out that there are systematic abuses taking place in the American prisons," said Stewart Vriesinga of the Christian Peacemakers Team.


"Iraqis are treated in a dehumanized way."


Issam al-Hammad said the Americans came to his village near al-Qaim on the Syrian border looking for his father, Abid Hammad al-Mahoosh, a major general in the disbanded Iraqi army.


He wasn't there, so they took Issam and his three brothers, the youngest of them age 16. "We spent five and a half months in four detention centers," Issam al-Hammad said.


Al-Hammad, who is in his late 20s, said they were beaten and given electrical shocks. "I was naked apart from my underpants and they poured water on my back and then electrified me with an electrical stick," he said.


Several times American officers pointed a pistol at one of the brothers to force the others to talk, he said. "They told me if you don't talk we will bring your mothers and sisters here," al-Hammad said.


FATHER "DIED AFTER TORTURE"





The al-Hammad brothers showed a photograph of a body marked extensively with bruises and burns, which they said was their father, who surrendered to U.S. forces after his sons were detained.

"Our father handed himself to the Americans three days after we were arrested. For two months he was tortured, and when he died because of the torture they dropped his body at the front gate of a hospital and left him there," Issam al-Hammad said.

The brothers said they had a hospital autopsy report stating their father died of a heart attack caused by extensive torture.

"We are not looking for compensation. We want to expose what happened to our father to the rest of the world and make sure other detainees won't suffer like us," al-Hammad said.

Najim Abdul-Majid, 45, a Baghdad shop owner detained with his 17-year-old son last August, said during interrogation his captors would chain him to the ceiling for three hours. "Beating and humiliation was the norm," he said.

"Once they took me to watch my son being tortured with electricity. He was tied to a pole while two wires were dangled on his back," he said.

Accused of storing explosive material, Abdul-Majid said he spent six months in Abu Ghraib prison before being released with an apology. His son was still in detention, he said.

Military newspaper blames Rumsfeld, Myers for "professi
I tried to learn more about the Military Times Weeklies newspaper, but can't find much except for its advertising home page. So I don't know how valid the article's critisim represents the thinking of the military press and the source may be suspect. ---BBB

Military newspaper blames Rumsfeld, Myers for "professional negligence"
5/10/04

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A leading military newspaper said that US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld set the tone for the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq by refusing to give captives rights due prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

"This was a failure that ran straight to the top," said the editorial appearing in the May 17 edition of the Military Times weeklies.

"Accountability here is essential -- even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war," it said.

Owned by Gannett, the Military Times publishes the Army, Navy and Air Force times, weeklies that are widely read by servicemembers and distributed on US military bases around the world.

The editorial said the soldiers caught in photographs and videos abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison are referred to around the Pentagon as "the six morons who lost the war."

"But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons," it said.

Responsibility, it said, "extends all the way up the chain of command to the highest reaches of the military hierarchy and its civilian leadership."

"The entire affair is a failure of leadership from start to finish," it said.

"Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld set the tone early in this war by steadfastly refusing to give captives the rights accorded to prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention," it said.

"From the moment they are captured, prisoners are hooded, shackled and accorded no rights whatsoever. The message to the troops: Anything goes."

The editorial also faults General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for trying to persuade CBS television to refrain from airing the images while failing to read the army's own damning internal report detailing the abuses.

"On the battlefield, Myers' and Rumsfelds' errors would be called a lack of situational awareness -- a failure that amounts to professional negligence," it said.

BBB, I agree 100 percent with that article; the blame belongs to the top of the heap. This administration and the top brass of the military are now blaming the lower echelon enlisted men and women with court martials. How deplorable!

I'm thinking that the blame should run the length of the chain of command. Top to bottom. Everyone in their has a brain, and a conscience. Everyone knows what is "right" and "wrong" with regards to the treatment of other human beings.

If the leaders encouraged the dehumanization of the captives - more blame can be attributed to them. However, the people who dish it out have gotta be accountable too.

Few friends rush to aid Rumsfeld
Few friends rush to aid Rumsfeld
May 10, 2004
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Amid the political firestorm after the Army confirmed maltreatment of Iraqi prisoners, Donald Rumsfeld was provided no cover. It was not surprising that partisan Democrats went for the secretary of defense's throat. The shocker was how few friends of the Bush administration jumped to his aid. There were reasons that transcended the atrocities at Abu Ghraib.

While the White House officially vowed Rumsfeld's retention, there was no reinforcement in his natural political constituency. Last week, I talked to Republican members of Congress, GOP fund-raisers and contributors, defense consultants and even one senior official of a coalition partner. The clear consensus was that Rumsfeld had to go. ''There must be a neck cut,'' said the foreign official, ''and there is only one neck of choice.''

Rumsfeld is paying the price for the way he has run the Department of Defense for more than three years, but the price is also being paid by George W. Bush. From the first months of the Bush administration, I have heard complaints by old military hands that the new secretary's arrogance and insularity were creating a dysfunctional Pentagon. That climate not only limits the government's ability to deal with the prisoner scandal but also may have been its cause.

Rumsfeld is a man of extraordinary talents. When I first covered him almost 40 years ago, he was a House member from Chicago's North Shore whose future seemed limitless. But he alienated the party's Old Guard leadership, the reason he left Congress in 1969 to head the Nixon administration's poverty program.

The Rumsfeld style was apparent when he was still in his 30s and President Richard Nixon named him ambassador to NATO. On his first day in Brussels, Belgium, he publicly humiliated a young briefing officer with a barrage of questions he was not prepared to answer. It was a management technique that he perfected in high federal office and as a successful corporate CEO.

In 2001, a few months after Rumsfeld was brought back for a second hitch at the Pentagon, an old friend of his gave me a disturbing report. A former senior government official who was now a defense industry consultant, he told me Rumsfeld was a disaster waiting to happen. Rumsfeld, insulated by his inner circle, was at war against the uniformed military, the civilian bureaucracy, and both houses of Congress.

This same former official last week told me the Iraqi prisoners fiasco was the inevitable outgrowth of Rumsfeld's management style. ''If it had not happened with this,'' he told me, ''there would have been a different disaster.''

The ''kill the messenger'' syndrome, other Pentagon sources say, clogs up avenues of information.

To well-informed outsiders, Rumsfeld's fate seems assured. Stratfor, the private intelligence service, reported last week: ''The amazing thing is not that the White House is preparing Rumsfeld for hanging but that it has taken so long.'' The report added that Rumsfeld ''consistently managed to get the strategic and organizational questions wrong.''

That harsh view is widely shared inside the Pentagon.

The problem for Bush is that sacking his war minister in time of war is not the same as dismissing a feckless secretary of the treasury. As Rumsfeld's aides circled the wagons last week, his supporters accurately conveyed the adverse fallout with this argument.

The Democrats demanding Rumsfeld's scalp are really aiming at Bush. Rumsfeld's scalp would signify that the war in Iraq is a failure and, by extension, so is Bush. When Rep. Charles Rangel is ahead of the Democratic lynch mob in calling for Rumsfeld's impeachment if necessary, he is pursuing his relentless opposition to U.S. foreign policy.

The solution to Bush's dilemma was hinted at when he promised Rumsfeld would ''stay in my Cabinet.'' That triggered speculation: Would Rumsfeld switch jobs with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice? Would he replace the beleaguered George Tenet at the CIA? Whatever the solution, it was hard to find anyone outside Don Rumsfeld's E-ring at the Pentagon who felt he should remain there.

The president again said he supports Rummie, and that Americans should be thankful for his service to our country.

...to hell