Establishing the connection between the Bush White House and Abu Ghraib

[kpete]

Establishing the connection between the Bush White House and Abu Ghraib
COMMENTARY | May 22, 2009

Denying that White House policy was directly responsible for the vile abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib has been the central goal of a five-year disinformation campaign by Bush officials. 'Torture Team' author Philippe Sands argues that newly-disclosed records show how blatantly Bush officials were willing to lie in order to lead reporters away from the truth. Eighth in a series of articles calling attention to the things we still need to know about torture and other abuses committed by the Bush administration after 9/11.

By Dan Froomkin
[email protected]

Soon after the photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib went public, Bush administration officials contrived a high-stakes disinformation campaign to prevent the American people from linking the White House to the vile, sadistic treatment of detainees in that Iraqi prison. They repeatedly insisted that the abuses were just the work of a few “bad apples.” They scoffed at the notion that their orders circumventing historic limits on interrogation were remotely responsible.

Five years later, they’re still at it, with former vice president Dick Cheney waging a clever campaign that would have the debate over government-sanctioned torture turn on what techniques were employed at the CIA’s secret prison -- and whether they “worked.” But the national debate should be a much broader one, as there is an ever-growing body of evidence definitively linking decisions made by Bush and Cheney not just to the torture at the CIA’s black sites, but to the pervasive, inhumane treatment of detainees – many of whom were utterly innocent -- at prison facilities such as Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo as well. As desperately as the Bush team wanted to avoid the taint of Abu Ghraib in the 2004 re-election campaign, they appear now to be equally intent on minimizing the scale of their misdeeds in order to tamp down the public demand for some sort of thorough, official investigation into their conduct.

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It was in this environment, on June 22, 2004, that Gonzales was sent out to engage the White House press corps. His specific charge was to explain how the original “torture memo” — an August 1, 2002 memo sent to him by Jay Bybee, then the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel — had nothing to do with anything. The opinions in the memo, Gonzales earnestly told reporters, “in reality, they do not reflect the policies that the administration ultimately adopted.” He dismissively referred to “necessary, over-broad discussions in some of these memos that address abstract legal theories” and insisted they were “not relied upon by decision-makers…

“As for the incidents at Abu Ghraib,” Gonzales said, “they were not authorized and have nothing to do with the policies contained in any of these memos. The President has made clear that he condemns this conduct. He has made clear that these activities are inconsistent with the specific policy guidance.” “White House Says Prisoner Policy Set Humane Tone,” proclaimed the New York Times headline the next day.


more at:
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=00351

[Demeter]

1. I'll Bet You a Nickel Cheney Had the Torture Videos FedEx'ed

or maybe even a live TV feed to an undisclosed location. Then he distributed it as snuff porn.