Bipartisan Senate report: Rumsfeld and other top administration officials directly responsible for abuses of detainees
Forget the BlagObamagate crap sucking up most of the available media bandwith. Here is the lead paragraph of the current top story from the Washinton Post online:
"A bipartisan Senate report released today says that former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials are directly responsible for abuses of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and charges that decisions by those officials led to serious offenses against prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere."
Full story is here. Massive kudos to reporter Joby Warrick for laying it out clearly and the WaPo for putting this front and center where it belongs. The report makes it clear that the sanctioning of prisoner abuse (TORTURE) originated with The Decider himself. This should get top billing from all news orgs and be seared into the brains of all Americans. Not to mention providing further motiviation for war crimes prosecutions.
BTW, the report was released by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain.
From the Executive Summary section of the report:
"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of “a few bad apples” acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees."
December 11, 2008 6:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Come Watson the game is afoot ."
Sherlock Holmes
Thanks putty- wonder what the the John Durham investigation is going to turn up ?
Lots of moving parts - hopefully we will have some criminal referrals come from this - the first witness for the prosecution- how about Gen Taguba !
December 11, 2008 10:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
"The true genesis of the decision to use coercive techniques, the report said, was a memo signed by President Bush on Feb. 7, 2002, declaring that the Geneva Convention's standards for humane treatment did not apply to captured al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. As early as that spring, the panel said, top administration officials, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, participated in meetings in which the use of coercive measures was discussed. The panel drew on a written statement by Rice, released earlier this year, to support that conclusion. " -- from the WaPo article
December 11, 2008 7:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for this! About time!
December 11, 2008 7:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yet more blowback caused by the administration's torture policies comes from Marc Ambinder:
Then there is this from Balkanization about Silvestre Reyes (D), the House Intelligence Chairman's recommendation to P-E Obama:
As Jack Balkan points out, the past 8 years have "compromised a good chunk" of the country's military, intelligence and political experts and serves to show how hard it is for countries with previous human rights abuses to transition to democracy. And how hard it is for democracies that have employed the practice of torture to stop.
December 11, 2008 10:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Reyes should fucking be impeached as well. Get his fat ass out of Congress.
This, today, from Think Progress.
If the Democratic Party can't dump this pig, well...
I'd better stop here.
December 12, 2008 2:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, no worries. The pardons will come within 40 days now, and then we (in the US) can all just forget it ever happened. Not a word about this on any US TV news show, I bet. Hey, we can't look back, gotta look forward, right?
Oh, and why the f@$k is this not on the TPM front page?
December 12, 2008 2:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, and... nice job, Armed Services Committee. Especially nice gob on the timing. Lame duck Congress, lame duck Administration, 40 days before the end of the Admin (and the pardons, of course). Couldn't have gotten this done, oh, a year or so ago, could you?
Thanks, Nancy and Harry, for taking impeachment off the table. Nothing to see here. Move along. We had More Important Things to do.
It's moments like this when I can't figure out which party I hate more -- mine or the other one.
December 12, 2008 2:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Special mention has to go to John McLame.
Presumably this report has been in the works for months, at the very least.
Did you hear anything from McLame during the Endless Campaign that came even remotely close to the conclusions of this report?
Didn't think so.
Nice timing, war hero. Oh, and fuck you.
December 12, 2008 2:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
gharlane,
I share your passion , but pray your cyncisms is unfounded.. Please consider that Obama 44 is on record that torture will be punished -Lets all take a deep breath and see what happens- Meanwhile Scott Horton says we have reason to be optimistic regarding accountability for war crimes committed .
And I pray too that Senator McCain returns to his bedrock values , and that he will also support accountability for gwb 43 's war crimes.
My hunch is after the nightmare 2008 campaign & the dissolution of all best governance practices -that McCain will support punishing these neocon war crimes.
December 12, 2008 4:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
I know a lot of this has come out in bits and pieces in various places over the last few years, but it's amazing to see it all laid out explicitly in a report from the Senate Armed Services Committee! This is ENORMOUS news and needs to be built on aggressively by the Obama administration and the new Congress.
December 12, 2008 8:31 AM | Reply | Permalink