Taguba
If you’ve been reading the news lately, you should be aware of the story that the man charged with investigating Abu Ghraib has now come out with the true story behind the investigation. The upshot: he was ordered to limit his investigation to the soldiers who were in the photos, and to turn a blind eye to people at “higher levels”; Rumsfeld knew about the images when they denied they knew, and there was an intent to deceive investigators and the public about who knew what, and when. Taguba was threatened because of his report, to the extent that “I thought I was in the Mafia.” And there’s much more, a lot of incriminating stuff.
The story ends:
“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”
Next step: wait for the Bush administration to smear the hell out of this soldier so as to cover their asses. Again.
That’s a nice question for the morning gaggle for the Washington Press corp.
SNOW: Next question? Yes, Mr. Kane, your question please.
KANE: Yes, will you, meaning the White House and echelons of the Republican political apparatus, be implementing your traditional smear campaign upon General Taguba for morally indicting the Administration for violations of code of conduct,the laws of land warfare, the constitution and the Geneva Convention?
Or now that Rumsfeld is out, might you be pinning blame on him?
What’s your deflection strategy this time? And I have follow up.
SNOW: BLAH, BLAH, BLAH…
….later
SNOW: Mr. Kane, you had a follow up?
KANE: Yes, now that the cat is out of the bag, and everybody and his brother knows the administration is engaged in torture on a routine basis….,
SNOW: Excuse me, Mr. Kane, are you refering to enhanced interroration techniques.
KANE: Yes, enhanced interrogation techniques, a rose that smells just a sweet, please forgive me, I’m a bit of a luddite and prefer to use the old fashion terms before the Nazi’s invented ‘enhanced interrorgation techniques’… any way, regarldless to how you refer to that rose, will you still deny that you do eit/torture?
SNOW: Well, yes of course we’ll deny it. Legally we have to , and legally its not a fact until proven in a court of law. If we are engaged in torture we are violating the constitution. So we aren’t doing that until someone proves it in court. But even so, what sherrif is going to stop us from doing it anyway. You might as well not pursue that, because who wants a constitutional crisis with us, when we don’t give a fiddler’s fart about the constitution.