Bob's Links and Rants

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Friday, May 07, 2004

So What Are You Going to Do About It?
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld revealed Friday that videos and "a lot more pictures" exist of the abuse of Iraqis held at Abu Ghraib prison.

"If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse," Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "I mean, I looked at them last night, and they're hard to believe."

...
"The American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience," Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told reporters after Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"We're talking about rape and murder -- and some very serious charges."


Are Rush and the other wingnuts still going to pretend this is just frat hazing, just GI's blowing off some steam? Claim that Rummy and Senator Graham (the bad Senator Graham) are just cheese-eating America-haters? Or are they going to leave that to total morons like Joe Lieberman?

By the way, I don't think all of the Bushies are the same. I think the Bush and Rice are basically clueless, willing to lie on the flimsiest of evidence, but more ignorant than deceitful (although plenty of both). Colin Powell is a polished, informed liar. Rummy and Wolfowitz have a whole lot of bad ideas and a very cavalier attitude towards human life, but I think they generally tell the truth (although that can be very hard to judge with Rummy, since he often talks a lot without saying anything). Cheney and Ashcroft are evil incarnate: Liars, murderers, you name it. The same category as Saddam.

So I think Rummy just didn't consider running a tight ship in the prisons to be a priority, and thought that bending the rules to get some actionable intelligence was okay. It probably never occurred to him how far it would go, and once he found out he probably was genuinely shocked, unlike Bush, who has no humanity at any level. Cheney and Ashcroft probably think the torture didn't go far enough.

Anyway, this is one more of dozens of statements in their own words, any one of which should have been sufficient to impeach and indict most of the administration long ago. Basically, any part of their administration which finally receives scrutiny reveals crimes of great magnitude. But they've ridden through all of them so far, and the traitor(s) in the White House who revealed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent is still there. Very slowly, however, the tide seems to be turning--a recent poll I believe showed more Americans now think the war was a mistake than don't. What a shame the Democrats have a candidate who only nips at the periphery of these crimes (because of his complicity), rather than attacking them at their rotten core.