"Things started going south after Bush proclaimed victory, so intelligence
was vital - how to get it and get it fast? Donald Rumsfeld had the answer,
conferred with Army Intelligence, which in turn incorporated techniques for
humiliating and breaking Arabs from the experts: the Israelis."
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The Real Abu Ghraib Scandal
WHEN WILL THE REAL GUILT BE EXPOSED?
Posted August 10, 2004 thepeoplesvoice.org
By: Ted Lang
I have, over the course of many months and many columns, contended that the
POW torture scandals at Abu Ghraib, as well as the ones in Guantanamo, were
symptomatic of extensive across-the-board changes in American military
policy. And those changes could only have been planned, engineered and
initiated from the highest levels within our government.
The proof of this assertion is simple: two-star Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller
was specifically transferred to Abu Ghraib to institute Guantanamo torture
methods and transferred to the theater command of three-star Lt. Gen.
Ricardo Sanchez. The head of Army intelligence in Iraq is Maj. Gen. Keith
Alexander who is one-star Brig. Gen Janis Karpinski's biggest critic.
Massive disruption of military management occurred when
intelligence-oriented elements of the military invaded the domain of what
normally constituted military police functions. Karpinski is an MP General.
Additionally, these military police functions pertain to combatant enemy
soldiers, not randomly rounded-up Iraqi civilians.
As usual, the government creates an untenable situation, which spirals out
of control, and then offers as justification and reason for its failure the
fact that they were caught up in an untenable situation. The latest
evidence of this is the report from the 9-11 Commission. The reason the
government couldn't protect US on 9-11 is because of the protection system
the government had in place.
The Commission report should have identified inept, incompetent
under-performers who deliberately conspired to suppress information and
destroyed data and evidence. They then blacklisted and harassed
whistleblowers. And that would include FBI Director Robert Mueller and
Attorney General John Ashcroft. By the way, where are these two guys
nowadays? Where's Rumsfeld?
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has dropped out of sight. If he hadn't
he might adversely affect President George W. Bush's re-election chances.
This Abu thing is about to blow, and here's why. The POW prisoner torture
was a "must do" war policy change. The 9-11 terrorist attack will not go
away! Why? Because President George W. Bush trusted his neoconservative
advisors, chief among them Paul Wolfowitz, and his Project for the New
American Century [PNAC] plan to attack Iraq to secure the Western Front for
Israel in the upcoming Mid Eastern War. And the war in Iraq is escalating
seriously and will bring along with it more focus on the torture of Iraqi
prisoners.
Early on, four-star General, Eric Shinseki, the former Army Chief of Staff,
warned Bush and his PNAC-dominated neoconservative warmongers, that the
colonization of Iraq would require "several hundred thousand troops." I
guess that's why Shinseki got his fourth star - the man knew what he was
talking about. The Iraqi war is ratcheting up just as Shinseki knew it
would, and guerilla-type house-to-house fighting cannot be suppressed unless
confronted by massive, overwhelming force. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz promised
a cakewalk, but instead, stepped on the cake!
Things started going south after Bush proclaimed victory, so intelligence
was vital - how to get it and get it fast? Donald Rumsfeld had the answer,
conferred with Army Intelligence, which in turn incorporated techniques for
humiliating and breaking Arabs from the experts: the Israelis. This
required a massive coordinated effort! In fact, so massive was this
required deviation from standard American military policy that it created
egregious violations of the Geneva Convention. White House Counsel Alberto
Gonzales got involved and wrote a memo to Bush warning him of the legal and
international implications.
The policy was operationally engineered by DoD Undersecretary of Defense
Stephen Cambone, and approved by Bush, Rumsfeld and even Attorney General
John Ashcroft. Regrettably, according to the provisions of the Geneva
Convention that representatives of the United States signed and agreed to,
all these players had to be involved. This was necessitated by a "new kind
of war." Hence, the need to create new terms and definitions to avoid the
existent legalese: "enemy combatant," "insurgents," etc.
Pfc. Lynndie England, the female soldier made famous by her finger-pointing
and dangling cigarette pose at Abu Ghraib, as well as her man on the leash
act, is now facing court martial at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. England is
pregnant, and her life is now being threatened by American government
because of her participation in making pornography at the Iraqi prison, and
not just for posing as a dominatrix with Iraqi prisoners. She faces 38
years, virtually the rest of her life in a cage, while the people who
created the circumstances she fell into sip Dom Perignon and sample fois
gras at all the right DC and high-level officer club parties.
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© THEODORE E. LANG 8/07/04 All rights reserved.
Ted Lang is a political analyst and a freelance writer and maintains a website
at www.tedlang.com
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