Posted on 05/16/2004 10:05:01 AM PDT by Paul Ross
Pentagon Denies Report's Rumsfeld Claims
Associated Press. NEW YORK (May 16) -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the expansion of a secret program that encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners to obtain intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq, The New Yorker reported Saturday.
The Defense Department strongly denied the claims made in the report, which cited unnamed current and former intelligence officials and was published on the magazine's Web site. Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita issued a statement calling the claims "outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture.''
Rumsfeld tours with the commander of the prison system in Iraq.
The story, written by reporter Seymour Hersh, said Rumsfeld decided to expand the program last year, broadening a Pentagon operation from the hunt for al-Qaida in Afghanistan to interrogation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
Seven soldiers are facing military charges related to the abuse and humiliation of prisoners captured by the now-infamous photographs at the prison. Some of the soldiers and their lawyers have said military intelligence officials told military police assigned as guards to abuse the prisoners to make interrogations easier.
According to the story, which hits newsstands Monday, the initial operation Rumsfeld authorized gave blanket approval to kill or capture and interrogate ``high value'' targets in the war on terrorism. The program stemmed from frustrating efforts to capture high-level terrorists in the weeks after the start of U.S. bombings in Afghanistan.
The program got approval from President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and Bush was informed of its existence, the officials told Hersh.
Under the program, Hersh wrote, commandos carried out instant interrogations - using force if necessary - at secret CIA detention centers scattered around the world. The intelligence would be relayed to the commanders at the Pentagon.
Last year, Rumsfeld and Stephen Cambone, his undersecretary for intelligence, expanded the scope of the Pentagon's program and brought its methods to Abu Ghraib, Hersh wrote.
Critics say the interrogation rules, first laid out in September after a visit to Iraq by the then-commander of the prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amounted to a green light for abuse.
Defense Department officials deny that, saying prisoners always are treated under guidelines of the Geneva Conventions.
"No responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any program that could conceivably have been intended to result in such abuses as witnessed in the recent photos and videos,'' Di Rita said in his statement. "This story seems to reflect the fevered insights of those with little, if any, connection to the activities in the Department of Defense.''
Di Rita also said Cambone has never had any responsibility for any detainee or interrogation programs.
The intelligence sources told the magazine photos of the sexual abuse were used to intimidate prisoners and detainees into providing information on the insurgency. It was thought that some prisoners would do anything - including spying on their associates - to avoid dissemination of the shameful photos to family and friends.
One intelligence official said the CIA ended its involvement with the program at Abu Ghraib prison by last fall.
"They said, 'No way. We signed up for the core program in Afghanistan - pre-approved for operations against the high-value terrorist targets - and now you want to use it for cabdrivers, brothers-in-law, and people pulled off the streets,''' the source said.
Seymour Hersh's article had to be removed from FR because the scum at the New Yorker don't allow even parts of articles to be posted.
In any case, as this article says, it cites entirely anonymous sources. Furthermore Seymour Hersh has an established record as a liar.
Either the sources don't exist, or more probably they are embedded clintonoids willing to lie for the cause.
>Pentagon Denies Report's Rumsfeld Claims
Do these journalists only have to make it to the 8th grade or something? Jeez, it gets worse and worse.
indeed, but the white house must call him on it, else it stands as "fact" as portrayed by the media.
The intelligence sources told the magazine photos of the sexual abuse were used to intimidate prisoners and detainees into providing information on the insurgency. It was thought that some prisoners would do anything - including spying on their associates - to avoid dissemination of the shameful photos to family and friends.Oh, well, that explains why the Iraqis had bags over their heads and the only people you could plainly identify WERE THE DAMNED US SOLDIERS who were grinning and leering and waving at the camera!
Even among liberal reporters, Hersh has a reputation as someone who manufactures quotes and sources. The guy is a 14 carrot jerk.
This is classic Hersh - I have strong suspicions that some of the former high ranking intelligence officials he is utilizing were CIA appointees during the Clinton Administration. They get to frag the Secretary of Defense and the President, anonymously.
The other big problem with this and all of the abuse stories is that they have to insinuate that Rumsfeld and other senior officials would have believed that either tacit acceptance or direct ordering of such abuse would lead to significant intelligence yields. I don't think anyone can maintain that with a straight face.
It is infuriating to see the knives coming out for Rumsfeld on this - but it tells you how desperate the Democrats are.
LOL, well to be kind- you have not established that he is a jerk.
Right on! If you don't think this isn't dangerous, partisan politics being played by the media, just recall the media's lack of outrage during the Clinton administrations war in Serbia/Kosovo. While mistakes were reported, the media never dwelled on any of the atrocities US/NATO forces committed...even when intentional.
The deliberate targetting of Serbia's state run TV station on April 23, 1999, led to deaths of some 20 civilians. Along with this was the continued targetting, from March 24 to June 10, of more than 10 radio and TV broadcasting facilities...as well as 36 transmitters. Hmm, I wonder if John Kerry had the same condemnation for these attacks that killed civilians as he did for the US forces in Iraq who only shut down the newspaper of the rogue Shi'ite cleric, Sadr. In the Sadr case, Kerry and the media condemned the US for silencing the "legitimate voice" of an Iraqi citizen...even though Sadr did not speak for the Iraqi people, and was calling for the deaths of Americans.
This was far different from the state-run TV station in Belgrade that was running interviews between Milosevich and US/NATO officials at the time. I can only imagine the outage if this administration intentionally targetted the propaganda hubs of our enemies who are still calling for the deaths of Americans...or at the least, lying about the war effort.
Where was the media's outrage when a US pilot was ordered to take out the bridge near Belgrade as passenger train No. 393 made its way into the city. From photos taken from the pilots own camera, the train was plainly visible as he fired his missiles, collapsing the bridge and destroying the commuter train. Civilians deaths were listed as high as 27...yet I just don't recall the outrage from our media as a child as young as 10 was dragged dead from the debri.
Unlike the journalists in Iraq looking to report the latest American atrocity, they were nowhere to be found on the ground in Serbia/Kosovo to show just how much death and destruction was levied on these people. As Christianne Amanpour was only too happy to tell...and show us, how evil Slobo was, during the Iraq war she actually had the nerve to accuse the US media of carrying the WH's water. This despite the fact that no jounalists staked out Belgrade hospitals to show us the anguish and death of families destroyed by US bombs.
The lack of coverage and concern continued in Serbia, from the intentional targetting of electrical grids and public untilites, leading to life-providing services being cut off to hundreds of thousands of CIVILIANS within and around the city. These bombings were especially controversial since they were aimed at civilian-supporting infrastructure...which was all off limits according to the very Geneva Conventions that liberals now claims to care so much about. Where was the media's outrage? In fact, where were their calls for accountability for the "higher-ups"...especially on May, 7 1999 when US missiles destroyed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing 3 embassy employees?
I just don't recall the editorializing for Cohen's resignation, as these stories barely made a wimper in the US press. And this was even after the blunder in Sudan, when we destroyed the Al Shifa pharamceutical facility...a target picked by Richard Clarke as a VX nerve plant. Heck, we can even go back to Waco and that disaster if we really want to assign blame...but I just don't recall the media's (and democrats) outrage and obsession over any of these events. The same people moaning about sleep deprivation and unlawful psy-ops in Iraq, had nothing to say about those same techniques used in Waco.
Yes, what these soldiers did was disgusting, as it dishonered all those serving. But in no way do these events come close to the death and destruction that we've seen over the last decade. This is evidence that our media will endanger the lives of our soldiers and citizens to advance their own political agenda.
The only truth to the story - Rumsfeld authorized soldiers to kill or capture and interrogate - notice nothing about torture/humiliate.
This is where it starts: A complete and total lie! It is a lie made up with un-named sources, which will soon blossom into "un-named high-level official sources" in the Pentagon, "former Penatagon officials" "ex-such & such" "former-this-and-that".... And even though the story is completely false, all the networks will run with it like it's true in a way that sounds less baseless "rumor-like" and more actual "news-like"... then, the liberal Senators will speak out in outrage and demand for Rummy's resignation or dismissal, or else they'll impeach...plus the obligatory "call for an investigation" so that they can "grand stand" before the cameras while grilling all the administration and Pentagon and joint chiefs...
This is only May... Think how bad it will get by September - October... They will be blaming President Bush and his administration for every death by sickness or injury in the United States, every financial diffiiculty of every American...everything and anything that you feel is wrong with your life can be traced back to the "failed policy of the Bush Administration..."
Somehow I see impeachment on the horizon... not for any real fault or infraction of the law, but even based on some trumped-up lie, wouldn't it be great for the liberal Rats to have impeachment procedings going on during a Presidential campaign?
Now they're headlineing the accusation withoout the denial!
MSM has got to be punished. Does anyone have a list of their biggest advertisers? I'll be happy to send each a daily boycott message.
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