His and Hersh: How Bush And Rumsfeld Created The Horror of Abu Ghraib, Then Protected Themselves

I posted this at All Things Democrat in the wee hours of this morning, but it needs as much attention as possible (remember how Rummy dismissed abuses in Iraq prisons as the work of "a few bad apples" - I can agree with this if you say those bad apples are named Georgie Porgy and Donny Dumbsfeld):

While perhaps too many Americans have been closely following interviews with England’s two princes (Harry and William) and the unanswered questions of what happened on the night of their mother’s - Princess Diana’s - death a decade ago, there’s a much bigger issue that needs attention: what Bush and Rumsfeld allowed happen at the Iraq prison Abu Ghraib (and elsewhere).

Hardhitting journalist Seymour Hersh, one of the first to break the stories of abuse of prisoners - many of whom were arrested only for being Iraqis or Muslim or simply looking different from Americans - by American soldiers in 2004, is back in The New Yorker with fresh details that tell us both President Bush and then Pentagon Secretary Donald Rumsfeld LIED LIED LIED about not knowing of the torture and degradation and unnecessary deaths while they worked tirelessly to keep any official investigation into it from looking beyond grunt soldiers and low ranking generals.

Much of the punch packed in Hersh’s latest piece comes from Major General Antonio M. Taguba, the man charged with investigating the abuses at Abu Ghraib when the Bush Administration and Pentagon could no longer look blankly and say, “What’s Abu Ghraib?” Taguba says that Bush and Rummy knew WAY before they say they did about the claims of massive abuses, tortures and even deaths at the prison, that they specifically BLOCKED Taguba from looking any higher up the food chain than lowly GIs and minor generals, and THEN forced Taguba to retire as punishment for trying to investigate as fully and fairly as a decent inquiry should.

The highest “hit” there, of course, was Janis Karpinski, a one star general then titularly in charge of Abu Ghraib but - she says - forced by the Pentagon to allow psy ops and torture proponents run the prison and then busted down when she did as ordered by Rummy; the rest were the likes of Lindy England (the Abu Ghraib poster girl for torture and leash holding as well as frequent model for sex pictures in and around prisoners).

Iraq's Curse (Besides George W. Bush Who Is Also Our Curse)

Offered without comment (since I'm not sure about a few of the items mentioned) is this bit from Edward Wong's piece, similarly entitled, in The New York Times:

PERHAPS no fact is more revealing about Iraq’s history than this: The Iraqis have a word that means to utterly defeat and humiliate someone by dragging his corpse through the streets.

The word is “sahel,” and it helps explain much of what I have seen in three and a half years of covering the war.

It is a word unique to Iraq, my friend Razzaq explained over tea one afternoon on my final tour. Throughout Iraq’s history, he said, power has changed hands only through extreme violence, when a leader was vanquished absolutely, and his destruction was put on display for all to see.

Most famously it happened to a former prime minister, Nuri al-Said, who tried to flee after a military coup in 1958 by scurrying through eastern Baghdad dressed as a woman. He was shot dead. His body was disinterred and hacked apart, the bits dragged through the streets. In later years, Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party crushed their enemies with the same brand of brutality.

“Other Arabs say, ‘You are the country of sahel,’ ” Razzaq said. “It has always been that way in Iraq.”

But in this war, the moment of sahel has been elusive. No faction — not the Shiite Arabs or Sunni Arabs or Kurds — has been able to secure absolute power, and that has only sharpened the hunger for it.

Listen to Iraqis engaged in the fight, and you realize they are far from exhausted by the war. Many say this is only the beginning.

President Bush, on the other hand, has escalated the American military involvement here on the assumption that the Iraqi factions have tired of armed conflict and are ready to reach a grand accord. Certainly there are Iraqis who have grown weary. But they are not the ones at the country’s helm; many are among some two million who have fled, helping leave the way open for extremists to take control of their homeland.

“We’ve changed nothing,” said Fakhri al-Qaisi, a Sunni Arab dentist turned hard-line politician who has three bullets lodged in his torso from a recent assassination attempt. “It’s dark. There will be more blood.”

The rest is here.

Just Close Your Eyes And Pretend Iraq Is Like DisneyWorld!

This is the advice being tendered by some of the weaker minds of the right, including the ever-so-desperate-for-any-attention-at-all adopted son of Ronnie Raygun. [Michael keeps trying so darned hard to be idolized like his dad as he fails to realize he is like his dad... a puppet of the right who can deliver scripted lines.]

Frank Rich of The Times has already reminded the far right that the gipper is dead, but Michael Reagan (Ronald's adopted son and a fairly poor second version which says a lot considering Ronald Reagan did not have one smart moment after the McCarthy witchhunt in the 1950s while Reagan headed the Screen Actors Guild) begs us to give one more to the ol' Gip.

Michael Reagan insists that we should "shut up" the press, ponder only pretty pictures of Iraq (perhaps take some flowers off the thousands of new civilian graves there each month or the hearts blown from bodies of U.S. and coalition soldiers with all the bombings), and demand that nothing but tales of "wonderful Disney-like perfect sweetness" be allowed to go out over the airwaves.

Apparently feeble-mindedness can be passed from one generation to the next even when there is no blood-bond between Daddy-o (Ronald) and sonny boy (Michael). Perhaps eternally-blond Michael would like to stop his chickenhawk status, put on some substandard body armor, and go over to Iraq to document all these pretty pictures. Idiot.

Bush's Wars: Strangely, They Can Only One In Three Direction: Worse, Worser (eh?), And Worst

While Afghanistan's Taliban (the same people Bush and Cheney claim to have annihilated six years ago) adopts President Bush's rule to only allow journalists and the rest of what calls itself media to report lies, the violence in Afghanistan and its neighbor, Iraq, only continues to defy all laws of basic statistics by worsening each and every day (even a lame coin toss should give you the occasional "win" but Bush makes us lose each and every damned time).

Here's what I noted at All Things Democrat:

April was the nation’s bloodiest overall month (we set terrible new records there all the time) since we arrived and May is off to a tragically busy start; many U.S. soldiers along with more than 100 Iraqi civilians were killed in operations just this past weekend.

It’s not a case that this escalating violence is completely about Bush’s so-called surge or escalation of military actions in Iraq. First, we already sent many of the “surge” troops in already and second, many forces are already working on new “surge” orders on the ground. So it’s a fabrication to claim that the heightened violence is only because “insurgents are scared and doing what they can now because they know that Bush means business THIS time.”

Hugely nasty attacks occurred yesterday (Sunday) in Iraq, with bodies found all over Baghdad, including those of at least eight American GIs. [Afghanistan worses every day as well.] At the same time, a major general, in a piece in the Boston Globe, says Iraq will get FAR deadlier still (quite the effortless slam dunk promised):

BAGHDAD — A US Army general yesterday forecast a rise in deaths among American forces in the coming months, a prediction underscored by the announcement that a roadside bomb had killed six US soldiers and a foreign journalist north of Baghdad. Five other American troops died elsewhere over the weekend.

Major General Rick Lynch, commander of the Third Infantry Division, said casualties will climb as American troops dig into enemy territory as part of a stepped-up military operation ordered by President Bush in January. Lynch, who oversees a swath of territory to the south and east of Baghdad, gave his bleak prediction on the heels of the deadliest month this year for American forces in Iraq.

In April, 104 troops were killed, the fourth time since the beginning of 2005 that US deaths exceeded 100 in a single month. At least 25 troops have been killed in May, a grim start to a month in which Democrats are expected to keep up pressure on the White House to plan a withdrawal from Iraq.

So April's Become The Deadliest Month For U.S. Troops (Not to Mention Iraqi Civilians) This Year?

Glad to see that Bush surge is working!

And Bush never loses a chance to tell us of his "hard work", this from a man who averages being "on vacation" two of every five business weekdays of his nearly six-and-a-half-years in office.

Funny, troops in Iraq and Afghanistan often have to work multiple weeks without a day off, and standardly work no less than 12 hour days. But Bush is the one "workin' hard"... yup.

Progress? Now We Have Iraqis Beat and Torture Confessions From Iraqis?

I just don't see that ordering Iraqis to beat and torture Iraqi civilians into making likely less-than-truthful confessions is quite the progress, justice, and democracy we (allegedly) want for post-Saddam Iraq.

Washington Post: Scathing, Scalding "Report on Haditha Condemns Marines"

Yesterday's report in the Washington Post made it abundantly clear just how very past BAD U.S. Marine actions in Iraq's city of Haditha, originally covered up as much as possible, were.

From that piece:

The Marine Corps chain of command in Iraq ignored "obvious" signs of "serious misconduct" in the 2005 slayings of two dozen civilians in Haditha, and commanders fostered a climate that devalued the life of innocent Iraqis to the point that their deaths were considered an insignificant part of the war, according to an Army general's investigation.

Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell's 104-page report on Haditha is scathing in its criticism of the Marines' actions, from the enlisted men who were involved in the shootings on Nov. 19, 2005, to the two-star general who commanded the 2nd Marine Division in Iraq at the time. Bargewell's previously undisclosed report, obtained by The Washington Post, found that officers may have willfully ignored reports of the civilian deaths to protect themselves and their units from blame. Though Bargewell found no specific coverup, he concluded that there also was no interest at any level in investigating allegations of a massacre.

"All levels of command tended to view civilian casualties, even in significant numbers, as routine and as the natural and intended result of insurgent tactics," Bargewell wrote. He condemned that approach because it could desensitize Marines to the welfare of noncombatants. "Statements made by the chain of command during interviews for this investigation, taken as a whole, suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business, and that the Marines need to get 'the job done' no matter what it takes."

Ghastly. And so very unnecessary.