I have no personal or other connection to The New Yorker. I don’t subscribe. I think I may subscribe on Monday, and one big reason is Seymour Hersh. In his latest article, which everyone should read, Hersh explains that a special-access program (SAP) was approved in Iraq (as had been for Afghanistan) that ultimately ended in the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. The SAP permitted illegal interrogation techniques in Iraq that normally would have required getting approval higher up the chain of command. It was both a power play by Donald Rumsfeld against the C.I.A. and an effort to produce quicker results that accepted the potential for greater abuse. This “black” or covert program of special operatives was approved by Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, General Richard Myers (chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and later in August by Major General Geoffrey Miller (the commander of the detention center at Guantánamo, Cuba, who later was brought over to oversee Iraqi detentions). Bush was informed about the existence of the program. A Rumsfeld protégé, Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence both knew of the program and was instrumental in running it (he recently testified in the Senate hearings). The general who has gotten so much press for his critical report (which concluded that the abuse was the result of a break down in command, and perpetrated by only low-level rogue soldiers) Antonio Taguba, is described as being completely out of the loop, and truly surprised at the abuses.
It remains to be seen whether Hersh has it right, but it sounds credible, as does Hersh, who is known for exposing the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam among other things. [Later note 5/18/04. I became aware today that Hersh has gotten it wrong before, see for example why his work merited “the longest correction ever published” in the New York Times. While I stand by my judgment that Hersh’s report rings true (and there are others that see merit in it), I was incorrect in implying that his credentials were unblemished]
Hersh summarizes the situation from one of his sources:
“The former intelligence official made it clear that he was not alleging that Rumsfeld or General Myers knew that atrocities were committed. But, he said, ‘it was their permission granted to do the sap, generically, and there was enough ambiguity, which permitted the abuses.’”
“This official went on, ‘The black guys’—those in the Pentagon’s secret program—’say we’ve got to accept the prosecution [of the low-level soldiers publicly being charged]. [”The black guys” are] vaccinated from the reality.’ The sap is still active, and ‘the United States is picking up guys for interrogation. The question is, how do they protect the quick-reaction force without blowing its cover?’ The program was protected by the fact that no one on the outside was allowed to know of its existence. ‘If you even give a hint that you’re aware of a black program that you’re not read into, you lose your clearances,’ the former official said. ‘Nobody will talk. So the only people left to prosecute are those who are undefended—the poor kids at the end of the food chain.’”
In other words, the former intelligence official tells Hersh, the people who were the prison guards from the 372nd Military Police Company, and now face charges. The official describes them as “recycled hillbillies from Cumberland, Maryland,” and asks “[h]ow are these guys from Cumberland going to know anything? The Army Reserve doesn’t know what it’s doing.” This point is well worth considering. As Harold Meyerson wrote yesterday in The American Prospect:
“It defies all belief that the young women and men of an Army Reserve unit from West Virginia were some kind of sadistic cult just waiting to be called away from their civilian lives to torture prisoners in Iraq. I doubt they brought the hoods, the dogs, the nightsticks with them. They were doing the very dirty work of an occupation that, as it’s developed, could hardly be more counterproductive to our ultimate goal — the liberalization of the Islamic world — if we’d planned it that way.”
I’ll leave the rest of the details to the Hersh article, but a few things stand out.
First, despite the ‘advantage’ of acting lawlessly, the Iraqi uprising seems to have gotten worse, not better, since the start of the brutal and illegal interrogation techniques. That’s not to mention the downsides in Arab and world public opinion, reciprocal brutality (whether or not this particularly heinous case was because of American brutality against Iraqis), immorality and the likely futility of the policy (Abu Ghraib prison is described at one point in Hersh’s article as inhabited not by “high-value terrorist targets” but “cabdrivers, brothers-in-law, and people pulled off the streets”).
Second, we see the common Bush Administration failure to manage. It may seem strange now, but in the early days of “a new tone in Washington” this MBA presidency was supposed to show us what business management was all about in government. Instead we have a real lack of effective governance - are they always just focusing on the next quarter’s results? Where’s the accountability?
Third, secrecy is the modus operandi of the Bush Administration and seems consistently to be against the interests of the general public. I’m not one to say that secrecy in government is never justified, but I am ready to say I do not think the Bush Administration can ever be trusted with it again.
Finally, there are some that might question Hersh’s decision to reveal the secret programs that are going on. After all, might this not hurt our efforts to combat terrorism? It seems to me that one of the best answers is in the article itself
“The former intelligence official told me he feared that one of the disastrous effects of the prison-abuse scandal would be the undermining of legitimate operations in the war on terror, which had already suffered from the draining of resources into Iraq.”
Iraq was never about the war on terrorism, and it drained and drains that “war.” How could we ever send troops out to war without sufficient armor, numbers, etc.? That this was ever permitted boggles the mind, even as it still contributes to our soldiers being killed and maimed.
Hersh provides America with information that is an incredible service to us all. Now that we have the information, we need to act on it. We need to hold to account those that have destroyed our credibility even as they destroyed our chances for salvaging what decency might have been ours to impart on Iraq, after pre-emptively striking it because of weapons that were never found. While neither presidential candidate speaks in these terms, we must dedicate our efforts to figuring out a way to get all of our troops home as soon as possible, since it becomes clearer each day that no good can come from our current efforts in Iraq.
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