Demosophia

Seymour, let's talk, shall we, heart to heart?

Another article by Sy Hersh.

In interviews, however, retired and active-duty officers and Pentagon officials said that the system had not worked. Knowledge of the nature of the abuses—and especially the politically toxic photographs—had been severely, and unusually, restricted.

So, with a little less irony, Sy is saying, basically, that they weren't anxious to jump off a cliff? That's pretty hard to believe, frankly. I mean, can we be confident they weren't masochistic enough to want those pics on the internet? How perverse!

The Pentagon official told me that many senior generals believe that, along with the civilians in Rumsfeld’s office, General Sanchez and General John Abizaid, who is in charge of the Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, had done their best to keep the issue quiet in the first months of the year.

Well those unmitigated BASTARDS! Imagine, trying to hold down the cacophony of accusations so that we could, with some deliberation, actually fight a war in which Americans were risking their lives? But, amazingly, the Pentagon decided to wave the red flag in front of the press anyway, didn't they? Way back in January? "Come 'n get it!" And this Gerry Springfield of the press corps, bless his heart, managed to make a sweet deal with the attorney of one of the defendants. Yeah, he's almost a saint. Sorta, kinda.

The official chain of command flows from General Sanchez, in Iraq, to Abizaid, and on to Rumsfeld and President Bush. “You’ve got to match action, or nonaction, with interests,” the Pentagon official said. “What is the motive for not being forthcoming? They foresaw major diplomatic problems.”

So the accusation is that they, surprisingly, "weren't forthcoming?" That's IT? They said, in effect, "We aren't going to deliberately subject our troops to the inevitable onslaught of enemy propaganda that these pictures would surely enable, but we'll tell you that something is out there, and you can dig what you think you need to dig to find and reveal it yourself." Sorry, but that's not really much of a coverup, frankly. Maybe I'm insufficiently reckless, but that seems like a pretty decent and honorable policy, in fact. Do you protect your testacles when someone swings a baseball bat at them? Coward!

In fact, it appears, that like the issue of WMDs the Bush administration pretty much functions on the idea that you just ignore bad facts, or anything that goes against your prevailing wish and ideology. No evidence of WMDs? Just twist and interpret until you can say there are, and then ignore all evidence to the contrary.

Uhm, purely a technical detail of course, but Hersh has not exactly established that the White House knew thing one about this. Of course we all know that gum'nt has telepathic powers... but technically speaking, this is just... er, BS?

Secrecy and wishful thinking, the Pentagon official said, are defining characteristics of Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, and shaped its response to the reports from Abu Ghraib. “They always want to delay the release of bad news—in the hope that something good will break,” he said. The habit of procrastination in the face of bad news led to disconnects between Rumsfeld and the Army staff officers who were assigned to planning for troop requirements in Iraq.

I'm just gonna cut to the chase here. Hersh is intelligent. If he's saying that there's a penchant within this administration to ignore facts that, if acknowledged openly, would lead to a more effective prosecution of the war, then fair enough. Where do I sign up? I'm not totally convinced that's true, but I'm open. Where are we heading though, with Hersh's muck? And just to promote the relevent eloquence of an individual I wouldn't mind calling a friend:

Cleaning out the military of miscreants is of a piece with ridding it of its institutional blindness. Nothing, least of all illusion, survives contact with the enemy. Neither wishful thinking nor the fantasy of safety in flight will help us in our hour of need. And while we may sincerely say 'my country right or wrong, my mother drunk or sober', better right and better sober. -- Wretchard

Parsing reality during times like these is not always a matter of "us and them," and just so the reader doesn't forget that there are other things going on, check out Wretchard's update on Fallujah. Though we are winning, the political and ethnic divisions within Iraq are apparently the real uncertainty, as they've always been.

Rumsfeld said that he had not actually looked at any of the Abu Ghraib photographs until some of them appeared in press accounts, and hadn’t reviewed the Army’s copies until the day before. When he did, they were “hard to believe,” he said. “There are other photos that depict . . . acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman.” Later, he said, “It’s going to get still more terrible, I’m afraid.” Rumsfeld added, “I failed to recognize how important it was.”

And we should decry the fact that we have a Cabinet Secretary who is capable of reflecting on his own mistakes in judgment? That's the point? Sorry, I'm just not on board. This article doesn't really seem like much of a revelation.

Posted by Demosophist at May 10, 2004 05:05 PM | TrackBack