New Hersh Article New Yorker Monday: Rumsfeld May Be Toast

[Zorra]

Will this be Rummy's swan song? Scroll to bottom of article.

From the Independent UK:

Many commentators have suggested that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were part of a post-9/11 "anything goes" culture emanating from the top of the Bush administration, and in particular Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary and architect of the Iraq war. Now Seymour Hersh, the investigative journalist who broke the scandal open, is reporting in the forthcoming issue of The New Yorker that it is rooted in a decision approved last year by Mr Rumsfeld to expand a secret operation against al-Qa'ida to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. The result was that secret operatives, some with aliases, worked side by side with the military police now in the limelight, and imbued them with their uncompromising methods.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/media/story.jsp?story=...

[teryang]

1. He's a war criminal

That's the bottom line. The committee had him on the ropes the other day, when he stuttered and croaked, "well, the Geneva Conventions don't directly apply..." That was a virtual admission of guilt.

Who's is going to pop the black head of this government?

[Poiuyt]

2. I don't want Rumsfeld to be toast

I want him to be the boat anchor that drags Bush down

[Ridley Park 704]

6. i'm with you.

Keep the bum in power. He's doing great things.

Getting a better man in there only allows Bush to put all this behind him.

[RafterMan]

11. Amen

Rummy is not the problem.

He may be part of the solution.

[Piperay]

15. Same here...

the longer he stays the more he is a millstone around chimpys neck, bwahahahhahaha.

[Zorra]

3. Now AP has posted this in more detail

Report: Rumsfeld OK'd Prisoner Program
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK (AP) -- 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

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 New Yorker reporter Seymour 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.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Prison-A...

[Political_Junkie]

4. It's on-line right now.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa_fact

[Kool Kitty]

9. I think you all should read this entire article.

Amazing. They should not be able to twist out of this one. And the major players here seem to be Rummy and that little shit, Steve Cambone (along with the General that went to Iraq in the summer, Miller, I believe and Boykin). And, according to the article, the little Pretzeldent seems to have knowledge of it, too.

[Hobarticus]

10. This HAS to stick....

This is disgusting. Everyone had their dirty little fingers in this pie, and it was planned, this was no aberration.

[slaveplanet]

12. telling paragraph

“They weren’t getting anything substantive from the detainees in Iraq,” the former intelligence official told me. “No names. Nothing that they could hang their hat on. Cambone says, I’ve got to crack this thing and I’m tired of working through the normal chain of command. I’ve got this apparatus set up—the black special-access program—and I’m going in hot.

[slaveplanet]

13. More

In a separate interview, a Pentagon consultant, who spent much of his career directly involved with special-access programs, spread the blame. “The White House subcontracted this to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon subcontracted it to Cambone,” he said. “This is Cambone’s deal, but Rumsfeld and Myers approved the program.” When it came to the interrogation operation at Abu Ghraib, he said, Rumsfeld left the details to Cambone. Rumsfeld may not be personally culpable, the consultant added, “but he’s responsible for the checks and balances.

[Postman]

5. They got reckless...

their secret torture operation worldwide was working fine until they expanded it to Abu Ghraib on your run-of-the-mill Iraqi.

As long as it was secret, secluded and limited - no one knew the wiser and in the overt world, that equated to the US following the Geneva Conventions. Was it a lie? Yes. They got reckless. Their hubris, their lack of accountability and their lawlessness has gotten their ass in a sling.

[JackDragna]

7. Rumsfeld has as much chance of being fired..

..as I do of bodyslamming the city of Cleveland. This administration is all about covering each other's butts and never admitting failure. There's a chance he could be pressured to resign, but even that might be a sign of failure. It was no mistake when Bush couldn't think of a mistake he made: right-wingers like him don't think they err. Ever.

[Hobarticus]

8. Please, oh PLEASE keep Rumsfeld!

Every time he rah-rahs Rumsfeld, more people see how out-of-touch Bush is.

Just how much of a hypocrite is he, every time he bows his head in prayer while keeping a soulless ghoul on payroll? Even the religious right is starting to catch the smell of a convenient Christian.

[0rganism]

14. As Rumsfeld is the albatross around bush's neck, I hope he keeps his job

until early November.

Nothing damns bush quite like the company with which he surrounds himself.