Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Stephen Carbone, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, is testifying before Congress today. The L.A. Times notes,

Already, he has acknowledged that he tapped the commander of the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to go to Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad last August in an effort to improve collection of intelligence from thousands of Iraqi prisoners held there.

Lawmakers will probably pursue that lead today in trying to determine whether Cambone encouraged or approved of policies enlisting military police to help soften up prisoners for interrogation. Weeks after those policies were implemented, seven Iraqi prisoners were abused and sexually humiliated by MPs whose behavior was recorded on pictures since beamed around the world.


And who's Carbone's deputy?

"Somewhere at the bottom of this you'll find Cambone and his deputy, Boykin," said a former military intelligence official, referring to Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, Cambone's top deputy. "I think Cambone and Boykin are reflective of the whole neoconservative philosophy that these prisoners are undeserving of treatment as prisoners of war."

Yup -- Boykin. Mr. "I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.” That guy.

******

Of course, when you read in Newsweek that

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 for more than 24 hours at a time or depriving them of light.

and then see the lines from Rummy to Carbone and from Gitmo to Abu Ghraib, you know this fish stinks from the head.

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