Centerfield

Jon,

I still think that Rummy should quit, but you are right that there are too many people focusing on this situation. The President said he is going to stay, he more than likely will, people should move on to the systematic failures where that led to the prison abuse.

There are some on the left that are so quick to bash Bush they don't even stop to think what it is they would do differently. If they did, they probably would realize that Kerry would do little to nothing different in Iraq.

This is the President's fault of course... I thought McCain and Biden where both right on MTP when they said that this administration needs to start being straight forward about the fiscal and human cost of this war. I think hate toward Bush comes not from his policies, neccesarily, but the fact that it seems his administration thinks they can go to war without being honest with the American people about why.

This is all another good reason to fire Rummy in my book, since he is a major part of the inner-circle secrecy that is so apparent in the Bush administration.

Posted by: Mathew Pruitt at May 17, 2004 11:30 AM

What I find completely creditable from that article - because it corroborates with non-anonymous evidence - is that intelligence agents involved in some out-of-hand operation told the soldiers at Abu Ghraib what to do.

I think it's possible that a mil intel or CIA op suggested "softening up" strategies, or even just said "soften 'em up," but I've not yet seen any evidence at all that the actual abuses we've seen on the news were anything but the work of one small shift unit of Army Reserve naives and sociopaths, a chance collection of Jukes and Kallikaks. And the mountain of evidence they produced against themselves, in the form of those pictures and videos, so far supports that.

I'll repeat what I said in a post farther down about Hersh's article:

I'd be more impressed if the article came from almost anyone other than Hersh, a darling of the far left who's made Rumsfeld and Bush a personal crusade and has been consistently wrong so often it's almost an indicator of truth. (Anyone else remember THE DARK SIDE OF CAMELOT? Or Lenny Cusack?) Hersh is not even remotely an impartial source.

Hersh has acquired quite a reputation as a muckraker by putting his conclusions in front of his facts when doing his research, and then whittling the available information until only what fits his conclusions remains. He's not known for being terribly picky about the veracity of his evidence, as long as it points the way he wants it to.

Hersh would have us believe, on his say-so alone, that a Black Ops program was extended to cab drivers in Abu Ghraib by the CIA and milintel, and that they (DoD and Carbone and the SAP team) chose that shift unit to do it. Hersh would have us believe that Gen. Karpinski's on-record removal from the unit command for refusing to enforce basic discipline measures was a cover up for the real scandal, a cover up begun before there was a scandal. If this were so, then that imples mil intel and CIA ops chose that shift unit as their accomplices, on the basis that they were morons AND that they couldn't talk about their orders. Sorry, Hersh just exceeded my suspension of disbelief by several orders of magnitude.

Especially when Hersh's explanation of why this isn't already obvious from the evidence is:

“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, it's true because there's no evidence, and the shift unit can't talk about it because it's Black Ops. It's true because the very people involved, those "kids at the end of the food chain," say that isn't what happened. It's true because they admit they concealed their abuses from their own superiors.

Yeah. Right. Hersh often makes a lot of soup from a very small bone when he has an ax to grind. This time he forgot the bone.

Posted by: Tully at May 17, 2004 12:12 PM

I'm trying to keep an open mind about the article but I have my doubts, especially from the points you both bring up.

If it's true that there are pictures between soldiers having consensual sex in front of detainees, I find it hard to believe that this was part of an interrogation technique. It doesn't mean that other pictures weren't used for interrogation, but it casts some doubt on who was in control and what processes were in place.

I also have a little trouble believing Rumsfeld would say, or others would be privy to, quotes right out of a B-Movie script where Rumsfeld supposedly is quoted as saying to the Whitehouse, "We’ve got a glitch in the program. We’ll prosecute it. The cover story was that some kids got out of control.”

There could be something there, but I think I'll wait until other more reliable sources come out with the story.

Posted by: Will at May 17, 2004 01:54 PM

I pretty much agree with the above posts. I have always wondered about Hersh's credibility. He seems to have gained his reputation because he reflects what the left wants to believe. That's not to say he may not be right--I have no idea really and there is undoubtedly more here than we have seen.

With regard to Tully's reference to The Dark Side of Camelot, it's interesting that, among historians, Kennedy's reputation has been going up. Recent books, such as Dallack's biography of Kennedy and other books about JFK's foreign policy seem to cast a lot of doubt on Hersh's analysis of Kennedy. I think you always have to be suspicious of any work that casts its subject in such a black or white light, which seems to be what Hersh does.

Posted by: MWS at May 17, 2004 03:22 PM

So, again what do you want to do about getting "needed" Intel Info?

Some of the guidelines permitted would have been worse. These items were just stupid and embarrassing for the most part.

I want ways to get Intel Info from known terrorists
that would avoid another Madrid bombing... or anything remotely similar here.

Alex

Posted by: Alex at May 17, 2004 05:46 PM

Hersh is biased. Period. Openly and admittedly and extremely so. And sloppy to boot. Yes, even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and again. But I can never believe anything he writes unless he provides solid and independently verifiable sources, because of his long reputation for manufacturing his "facts."

I could write a very long book on Sy Hersh's journalistic crimes, but I see that National Review has a "flashback" reprint article out already on why Sy Hersh lacks any serious credibility. The December 2001 article can be found here.

The record is clear--Hersh may be famous, he may have won every journalism award in existence, but he simply isn't credible.

Posted by: Tully at May 18, 2004 12:54 PM

Jon - I don't see how it logically follows that however light the sourcing was that Hersch and his editors therefore engaged in "wishful thinking." That strikes me as a very prejudicial charge to make.

How many times have we seen convicted felons released, sometimes many years after the fact, when new evidence surfaced which conclusively proved their innocence? The defense attorney in the trial that resulted in the conviction would be loosely analogous to Hersch. Was the defense lawyer engaging in "wishful thinking" by asserting the innocence of his/her client merely because the evidence wasn't as strong as one would have liked it to be?

It just seems to me that describing Hersch and his editors as engaging in wishful thinking while presenting even less supportive evidence then Hersch did is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Posted by: Kevin at May 18, 2004 03:55 PM