Seymour Hersh says Iraq Torture Policy goes straight to Rumsfeld..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

right-hand side of page, video of Hersh...

bush*/cheney...Rumsfeld...Meyers....Boykin....Miller...Papas/Karpinski(ms)

Feith and Cambone in there.

he is under Boykin's command...Boykin is who should have been there at the hearings today

is surely not under Boykin's command, he's a civilian. As Under Secretary of Defense for Intellegence (since 05/03), Rumsfeld is his boss.

http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/cambone_bio.html

:evilgrin:

Anyone who missed it might enjoy the transcript.

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HERSH: I think you have to go, certainly above Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez is the guy running the operations. I think-I think there were instructions handed down above his level, absolutely.

MATTHEWS: What did you make of Evan Thomas's piece in Newsweek this week that took it right to the secretary of defense? He led his piece with this incredible, I thought, statement here about this thing. Just a second now. I've got it.

"Donald Rumsfeld likes to be in total control. He wants to know all the details, including the precise interrogation techniques used on enemy prisoners. Since 9/11 he has insisted on personally signing off on the harsher methods used to squeeze suspected terrorists held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The conservative hard-liners at the Department of Justice have given the secretary of defense a lot of leeway. It does not violate the spirit of the Geneva Conventions, the lawyers have told Rumsfeld, to put prisoners in ever-more-painful 'stress positions' or keep them standing for hours on end, to deprive them of sleep or strip them naked. According to one of Rumsfeld's aides, the secretary has drawn the line at interrogating prisoners"- catch this- "for more than 24 hours at a time or depriving them of light altogether."

It sounds like we have a micromanager on our hands, now denying responsibility-this is Rumsfeld-for what these picture are showing.

HERSH: You're getting into where-I haven't reported some of that stuff. But I can tell that you Evan Thomas is a hell of a good reporter.

MATTHEWS: So we have from Evan Thomas that the secretary of defense, who's in the dock on this issue politically, as being a micromanager from the top.

We've got-we've got General Kimmitt telling us this morning on the show, we were showing a tape at length in a moment here, telling us they came from very, very high up, how these people were treated.

And then we've got Karpinski, the general who's got overall responsibility for that prison, saying the ideas that we saw in these pictures reflect the ideas given them by military intelligence.

So it sounds to me like almost a perfect chain of command here for hell.

HERSH: Yes. I can just say to you that the photos are very interesting.



(guess I missed a 'here' there)

The wider the spread the higher it goes.

Cheney controls Rummy and since Bush wants everyone to believe that he is 'in charge' he must accept responsiblity or admit that he is not in charge.

this was not a "lack of leadership" that allowed a handful of bad apples to run amok ... the abuses were POLICY ... and policy came from the top ... bush, and rove, were panicked that WMD's were not found ... bush had omellette all over his face ... they needed to push and push hard to squeeze the truth out at any cost ... it was all about politics, plain and simple ... it had nothing to do with strategic operations ...

here's an excerpt from Condi's testimony before the 9/11 commission ... notice how she states how "hands on" bush was and especially notice that she had daily contact with Rumsfeld to discuss a "variety of topics" before meeting with bush ...

can you imagine this conversation:

Rice: so Rummy, now that the military is in charge of interrogations, have we made any progress on WMD's ...

Rumsfeld: not yet ... we've been politely asking the prisoners lots of questions but they just haven't given us any information ...

no, that's not the way it would have happened ... of course Rumsfeld disclosed how hard they were pressing and what techniques they were using ... he would have bragged about them knowing that bush was anxious for answers ... and that information was fed directly back to bush ... bush knew, cheney knew, rumsfeld knew, powell knew, wolfowitz knew ... and they all knew all the way down the chain of command ... and each and every one of them is guilty of war crimes and each and every one of them should go straight to jail ...

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/politics/08RICE-TEXT.html?ei=5070&en...

(Note: free subscription to NY Times required)

(from the 9/11 sworn testimony of Condeleeza Rice)

At the beginning of the administration President Bush revived the practice of meeting with the director of central intelligence almost every day in the Oval Office, meetings which I attended along with the vice president and the chief of staff. At these meetings the president received up-to-date intelligence and asked questions of his most senior intelligence officials. From Jan. 20 through Sept. 10 the president received at these daily meetings more than 40 briefing items on Al Qaeda. And 13 of those were in response to questions he or his top advisers posed.

In addition to seeing D.C.I. Tenet almost every morning I generally spoke by telephone to coordinate policy at 7:15 with secretaries Powell and Rumsfeld on a variety of topics. And I also met and spoke regularly with the D.C.I. about Al Qaeda and terrorism.

Siegenthaler with Barry McCaffrey. The general said we should look at when Rumsfeld went to Iraq and when prisoner policies changed.

Maybe I heard him wrong, because if I heard it right . . . I figure McCaffrey would only say something like that if he already knew most of the answer. Being as he has beaucoup mil connections, in and out of Iraq.

Maybe the army is marching on Donald.

Being a "control freak" there aint nuthin ole Scummy didn't want to be in on, especially nut twisitng.