Revelation lead to Rumfelds door
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Senior CIA officials, both past and present, have
reportedly leaked that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld approved the extreme
interrogation methods used against Iraqi detainees under U.S. control.
Revelations Lead to Rumsfeld's Door
Revolutionary Worker #1241, May 23, 2004, posted
at http://rwor.org
As we go to press, senior CIA officials, both past and present, have
reportedly leaked that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld approved the extreme
interrogation methods used against Iraqi detainees under U.S. control. Their
accounts appear in a New Yorker article by investigative journalist
Seymour Hersh (May 24 available at http://newyorker.com).
These revelations have far-reaching implications--first because they document
that the approval of torture was made at the very highest levels of the
government, and second, because an intensifying inner-ruling class struggle has
now erupted with such ferocity that it is breaking into the headlines.
If confirmed, Hersh's allegations would almost certainly undermine Rumsfeld
personally. But they will also affect the ability of the U.S. government to
pursue its current course in Iraq and could shake the very legitimacy of the
whole current ruling clique.
The heads of the U.S. government have, all of them, denied that they
authorized torture--in Iraq or anywhere else. They have blamed a few vicious
low-level prison guards for all the extreme abuse that has come to light. And
now, it appears that they have been exposed--standing at the very center of a
monstrous web of lies and horrific brutality.
Seymour Hersh's article opens with the following words:
"The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal
inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which
had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in
Iraq."
Hersh continues: "According to interviews with several past and present
American intelligence officials, the Pentagon's operation, known inside the
intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged
physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to
generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq."
Hersh claims that in the fall of 2001, Rumsfeld set up a special kind of
military covert "black op" called a Special Access Program (SAP). For
this SAP, the Pentagon, CIA and NSA gave advance approval to quickly capture,
assassinate, or brutally interrogate anyone targeted, anywhere in the world.
Hersh reports that President Bush was informed of the operation. A former CIA
official summed up, "The rules are `Grab whom you must. Do what you want.'
"
This SAP was first focused on al-Qaida and Taliban forces in Afghanistan, and
then its reach was extended far more widely, including to counterinsurgency
operations in Iraq.
SAP torture and assassination methods were first applied in Iraq during the
push to capture Saddam Hussein. Then, with the rapid growth of the Iraqi
insurgency last fall, the Pentagon was reportedly frustrated by the failure of
U.S. military and CIA forces to penetrate the resistance. Rumsfeld approved and
his Deputy Stephen Cambone implemented SAP operations targeted on the
anti-occupation resistance forces among Iraq's people--including specifically
"getting tough" with Iraqis held in U.S.-controlled prisons. Military
interrogators in Iraqi prisons were brought under the control of SAP operations.
Hersh reports that the methods approved for Abu Ghraib included sexual
humiliation--which were recommended based on detailed scholarly study of
"Arab culture and psychology." Photos were taken of extreme sexual
humiliation in order to blackmail prisoners into acting as informants.
This approval, these methods and the SAP itself have, up until now, been
among the most closely guarded state secrets. They were so super-covert that
they had no budget, no office, and were not even officially classified "top
secret"--they simply didn't officially exist, except for any information
they extracted by torture, which was funneled to the military command.
One of Hersh's CIA sources sums up that the special operation developed
against al-Qaida was now used against "cabdrivers, brothers-in-law and
people pulled off the streets."
Rumsfeld, his Pentagon commanders and the whole Bush administration denied
that torture--in Abu Ghraib or anywhere else--had official approval. This was
repeated by Rumsfeld in his appearances before Congress last week. Commenting on
Rumsfeld's denials, a senior CIA official said to Seymour Hersh, "Some
people think you can bullshit anyone."
Before Hersh's article had even appeared in newsstands, Pentagon spokesman
Lawrence Di Rita denounced it as "outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled
with error and anonymous conjecture."
However, even before Hersh's latest report, there has been clear evidence
that the torture, murder and bizarre sexual abuse of prisoners were being
carried out on a worldwide scale. Every day new revelations have come out about
how the U.S. military and CIA treated prisoners--rape, forced public
masturbation and anal penetration, biting dogs, violent beatings, severe burning
of prisoners, electric shock and telling prisoners their female relatives would
be hunted down and raped. Many cases are surfacing that document prisoners being
beaten and tortured to death.
And it was increasingly unmistakable that all this had been approved (and
even demanded) at the very highest levels of the U.S. government--including in
the Pentagon, the CIA, the Justice Department, and ultimately the White House
itself.
This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker Online
http://rwor.org
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