(C) Common Dreams
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What Did Rumsfeld Know? [1]
['The Daily Dish']
Date: 2007-06-18 16:39:00+00:00
The Pentagon top brass were given details and photographs from Abu Ghraib early on in an official investigation that began in January 2004. Yet on May 6, 2004, the Rumsfeld inner circle greeted the general who had provided them with the evidence months before thus:
"Here ... comes ... that famous General Tagubaof the Taguba report!" Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice. The meeting was attended by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J.C.S.); and General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, along with Craddock and other officials. Taguba, describing the moment nearly three years later, said, sadly, "I thought they wanted to know. I assumed they wanted to know. I was ignorant of the setting." In the meeting, the officials professed ignorance about Abu Ghraib. "Could you tell us what happened?" Wolfowitz asked. Someone else asked, "Is it abuse or torture?” At that point, Taguba recalled, "I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, 'That's not abuse. That's torture.' There was quiet."
What is the official Pentagon line about Rumsfeld's alleged ignorance of the evidence months after he was given it? According to this spokesman in the NYT yesterday:
Lawrence Di Rita, a former top aide to Mr. Rumsfeld, said Mr. Rumsfeld had not viewed the photographs because he had been advised by lawyers that doing so "could materially affect the ongoing criminal investigation." He said Mr. Rumsfeld finally looked at the pictures the day before his Congressional testimony, the same day he was briefed by General Taguba.
So you're secretary of defense and have been informed that your troops have grotesquely violated the Geneva Conventions - on tape and JPGs - and you decide you don't want to look into it for months because you don't want to jeopardize the investigation? Are we really supposed to believe this? Now look at who Sy Hersh's source is: not an anonymous leaker, but a general of impeccable integrity and credibility whom the Pentagon had itself relied on to do the investigation. It doesn't get more damning than this.
The obvious explanation, of course, is much, much more plausible than Rumsfeld's ludicrous grandstanding. It is that Rumsfeld knew what he had authorized - and knew the consequences.
He had already revoked some of the torture techniques he had personally authorized and monitored at Gitmo; he understood the import of Abu Ghraib instantly; his first instinct was to cover it up; and when he realized that was impossible, his second impulse was to start acting as if he had never heard of any of this, and to maintain deniability by not looking at the Taguba report until the day before he was due to face the Congress. Our two choices are, as they have long been: incompetent or criminal? I'd say: both.
The most plausible inference is obviously that he covered his tracks and feigned ignorance and did not look at the photographs to create a record of complete deniability. The incompetence comes from ordering torture at Abu Ghraib and not realizing that evidence of it would spread and disseminate through new media that Rumsfeld probably wasn't that familiar with. Rumsfeld then gambled on the public not wanting know as much as he wanted to cover it up. Hence his major concern in that meeting with Taguba: not preventing and exposing appalling war crimes on his own watch - but finding a way to persecute the guy whose duty it was to investigate it. Then, of course, the bluster of a liar caught in the web of his own crime:
"Here I am," Taguba recalled Rumsfeld saying, "just a Secretary of Defense, and we have not seen a copy of your report. I have not seen the photographs, and I have to testify to Congress tomorrow and talk about this." As Rumsfeld spoke, Taguba said, "He's looking at me. It was a statement."
You bet it was a statement. Rumsfeld is not dumb. he knew and knows the consequences of what he approved. He is a war criminal, subject to prosecution. And so the big lie - "we do not torture" - had to be followed by another big lie - "we never knew".
(Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty.)
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[1] Url:
https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2007/06/what-did-rumsfeld-know/227576/
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