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President Bush has publicly announced support for his Secretary of Defense which, by default, tells those pesky retirees they can to go to hell. That certainly reestablishes order in the ranks of senior active duty officers who had any ideas of complaining about Rumsfeld's determined autocracratic management.
As if that show of NeoCon solidarity and civilian superiority were a cue, Rummie immediately showed us his humble side - he apologized to Congress.
Yup! He apologized to Congress for generating public fears about an unusual military experiment involving a massive explosion in the Nevada desert on June 2.
Though Defense Department budget documents clearly describe the planned explosion as the simulation of a low-yield nuclear device, that just wasn't true. That's what the man said.
The test will merely detonate the equivalent of nearly 600 tons - yes, 600 TONS - of TNT and, yes, Pentagon officials admit, it will produce a mushroom cloud - but there's no need for concern in Peoria or even in Las Vegas, 90 miles south.
This not Condi's "mushroon cloud" - she was talkin' WMDs, not 600 tons of TNT; she was talkin' terrorist intent, not regime change with 600 Tons of TNT; she was talkin' dictator, not the messianic Leader of the Free World with 600 tons of TNT in his pocket! Got that? This is different.
The DoD civilians are just trying to understand the damage that multiple conventional weapon strikes would inflict on fortified underground targets as opposed to using a single nuclear weapon. Let's call it killing two birds with 600 tons of TNT. Rumsfeld is absolved and critics of the Iran invasion are undercut.
A kinder and gentler Donald Rumsfeld Pentagon? No more "casualness and swagger"? No more strong opposition from the Joint Chiefs about plans to initiate a nuclear attack? No more nitwit rationale defending talk of nuclear bunker-busters as a ruse to alarm only Iranians and Liberals?
Well, not quite.
Referring to the Army Inspector General's report on the abuse and torture of Gitmo detainee Mohammad al-Qahtani, Human Rights Watch is calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Rumsfeld's culpability. HRA contends, "The question at this point is not whether Secretary Rumsfeld should resign, it’s whether he should be indicted!”
I expect Average American argue this is just meant to alarm potential detainees, Liberals and average Americans.
Doin' a heck of job, Rummie! Doin' a heck of a job, BAA Boy!
Thanks for the tip.
Here's part of what is said:
"The Pentagon has acknowledged that al-Qahtani's mistreatment was not unplanned. "Al-Kahtani's interrogation was guided by a very detailed plan, conducted by trained professionals in a controlled environment, and with active supervision and oversight," wrote Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, in an email to Salon.com. "Nothing was done randomly."
"Human Rights Watch has obtained an unredacted copy of al-Qahtani's interrogation log, and believes that the techniques used during al-Qahtani's interrogation were so abusive that they amounted to torture.
"The interrogation log reveals that al-Qahtani was subjected to a regime of physical and mental mistreatment from mid-November 2002 to early January 2003. For six weeks, he was intentionally deprived of sleep, forced into painful physical positions (known as stress positions) and subjected to forced exercises, forced standing, and sexual and other physical humiliation.
"After refusing water, al-Qahtani was forced to accept an intravenous drip for hydration and, on several occasions, was refused trips to a latrine, so that he urinated on himself at least twice. He was also threatened with forced enemas, and on one occasion was forced to undergo an enema.
"A six-week regime of sleep deprivation, forced exercises, stress positions, white noise, and sexual humiliation amounts to acts that were specifically intended to cause severe physical pain and suffering and severe mental pain and suffering," said Mariner. "That's the legal definition of torture."
"In 2005, the Judge Advocates General of the U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps told the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services that the techniques used on al-Qahtani violated the U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation, and would have been illegal if perpetrated by another country on captured U.S. personnel. The U.S. State Department also regularly condemns as torture the same techniques in its annual Country Report on Human Rights, citing their use in countries such as North Korea and Iran."
And thanks for revealing this atrocity committed in the name of our nation.
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