General: Bush knew about Abu Ghraib

Stanzel was responding to questions about a New Yorker magazine report quoting retired Major-General Antonio Taguba, as saying "the president had to be aware" of the abuse of prisoners by US military guards.

Taguba also said Donald Rumsfeld, the former defence secretary who had initially denied knowledge of the lurid photographs of prisoner abuse, was at best, "in denial".

"The photographs were available to him – if he wanted to see them."

Referring to Rumsfeld's May 7, 2004, testimony before congress in which he said he had no idea of the extent of the abuse, Taguba said Rumsfeld was "trying acquit himself, and a lot of people are lying to protect themselves".

...

"From what I knew, troops just don't take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups," Taguba told the New Yorker, adding that his orders were to investigate the military police only, and not their superiors."

Eleven US soldiers have been convicted for abuses related to detainees at Abu Ghraib.

"These troops were not that creative," he said.

"Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/77131B26-2EF0-4A4D-8A0B-5558F1D9C018.htm

The buck(s) may stop at the Oval Office but, in this White House, shit runs downhill. Blame Dan Bartlett.

that evidently no one's going to do one damn thing about.:grr: :cry: :banghead:

--as people with a weight of responsibility in very scary times (with a ruthless, out-of-control tyranny in the White House)--if their first act as a Democratic Congress (or even their second act, or their third act, or their fourth act, or...) had been to rid our country of electronic voting machines, run on "trade secret," proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations--the coup d'etat that occurred at the same time as the Iraq War Resolution (October 2002). But they not only have done absolutely nothing to restore transparent vote counting, they are preparing a worse-than-lame bandaid bill that will centralize control of the secret code in the President's hands!

After four years of non-transparent vote counting (2004, 2006), and the war industry's new "quagmire" fully established in the Middle East, they NOW offer us a lousy "paper trail" and a lousy stinking 2% audit, with all votes STILL "counted" by "trade secret" code--reviewable ONLY by a President-appointed "commission"--and a wealth of existing, draconian state laws against getting a recount.

Their solution to the Iraq War--a war opposed by 70% of the American people--is to ESCALATE it, and to lard $100 billion MORE of our future tax dollars into Dick Cheney's retirement fund. Their solution to the most fundamental assault on our democracy ever perpetrated--"trade secret" code tabulating all our votes--is to lard more billions on the Bushite corporations who have stolen two national elections, and to put the President in charge of the code. How about the People being in charge, huh? How about vote counting that everyone can see and understand? No way.

The job of this Diebold/ES&S (s)elected "Democratic" Congress is to consolidate all the enormous gains pioneered by Bush in favor of our Corporate Rulers: A President who writes his own laws (the "unitary executive"). A President who claims "war powers" (by perpetrating an unjust and heinous war) that enable him to do anything he wants, in his opinion--torture, detain, spy on--all in the name of a "war" that was never anything more than a police matter, and has been deliberately been made into a "hot war." Vast secret budgets, vast lack of accountability--all favoring corporate looters. Six years of multiple tax cuts for the rich and the corporate--money that we will never get back--and a $10 trillion deficit, to be paid for by the poor.

You think any of these things is going to be undone by the Democratic Party leadership? Think again. They are the protectors of these fascist gains, including a fascist "election" system run on secret code.

This is why most of what this "Democratic" Congress has done seems so puzzling. We have not understood what their real job is, and who they are truly beholden to. Even the best of them (most of them) were (s)elected by "trade secret" vote counting formulae, with the people--in their great anger-- outvoting the machines in some cases. But too often, when they punched "D" they got "SB" for "secret Bushite." Diebold/ES&S also control the primaries--the choice of candidates--and, what money can't buy, Diebold/ES&S can tweak into place with small, undetectable vote shifts, 'disappeared' votes and so on (--piece of cake with secret code).

These are...Democrats? Think again. These are "Blue Dogs" who want to cut everything but the war budget. The "D" by their name is virtually worthless, as to holding them accountable to the people. There are about 40 of them, and they control the vote in the House, making it impossible for the better reps in the House to deal with the dinosauric Senate (only 1/3 of which was up for reelection in '06). But the better reps in the House--with only a few exceptions (Dennis Kucinich, John Conyers and a few others) have said nothing, have done nothing, and have actively suppressed grass roots dissent about, the secret vote counting coup d'etat.

Maybe they don't dare mount significant opposition to the war machine. I can understand not wanting Anthrax envelopes or a bullet in the head (RFK, 1968). But transparent vote counting--the foundation of our democracy--is another matter. It is, or should be, non-partisan. It should be a fairly safe thing to advocate for (although you gotta wonder, after what happened to Kevin Shelley in California), and it would be EASY to restore. You don't have to dislodge Rovebots in the DoJ. You don't have to establish "lack of confidence" in our torture-memo writer AG. You don't have to impeach the war criminals in the White House. You just have to restore vote counting that everyone can see and understand, so that FUTURE elections are not stolen.

And they haven't done it. And they won't do it. And that tells me who they really are, and just how much compassion and patience they deserve for their failure to stop mind-boggling lawlessness at home and abroad.