[quote]100meters wrote:
Hysteria?..well I’d hate to think that pointing out the public record contradicts an opinion piece(in the WSJ) is hysterical. Again, the Schlesinger report contradicts the WSJ and for that matter B.B.
from the report:
The pictured abuses, unacceptable even in wartime, were not part of authorized interrogations nor were they even directed at intelligence targets. … However, we do know that some of the egregious abuses at Abu Ghraib which were not photographed did occur at interrogation sessions and that abuses during interrogation sessions occurred elsewhere.
The report actually goes on to detail, contrary to the WSJ editorial, how decisions made by Bush and others picked by him at the pentagon (Rummy) and the justice dept (Gonzalez) contributed to the abuses at abu ghraib.
There weren’t 2 classes of prisoners in Iraq. This is where the confusion is. Gonzalez gave Bush the “memo”
the memo states roughly that the geneva conventions don’t apply to Guantanamo. Rummy approved the techniques for guantanamo here:
base on the opinions formed at the justice dept. The report shows how Gen. Miller went to Iraq from guantanamo, bringing the interrogation policies with him, that Sanchez then adapted. Prisoners in Iraq are said to be protected by the Geneva conventions as stated by:
MR. McCLELLAN: Absolutely not. First of all, the memo you’re referencing related specifically to al Qaeda and the Taliban. It did not reference Iraq, at all. We have made it clear that we are bound by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq.
Surely the Editors at the WSJ could have googled the Report, so either they are totally ignorant, or they are misleading readers. (probably both)[/quote]
Yes, “hysteria” is the proper description I think.
The WSJ editors weren’t misleading anyone. They were simply applying a legal standard of culpability. As I was saying above, “contributing to abuses” is an awfully hard thing to pin down. They didn’t order abuses.
The Geneva Convention most certainly does not apply in a lot of cases – people were very upset at the conclusion, but I don’t recall seeing a single good argument against the analysis (BTW, it was UC Berkeley law prof John Yoo and others who wrote the memo, not Gonzalez). The analysis was applicable in Iraq, provided the people doing such application understood the key points – namely that terrorists operating in civiilian populations w/out uniforms and targeting civilians were not entitled to Geneva Convention protections. If the administration decided it was bound by Geneva Convention protocols in each case in Iraq, it wasn’t due to legal requirements.
To the extent Bush, via Rumsfeld, is responsible for problems at Abu Ghraib, it is from putting prisoner issues further down on the priority list than those who wish to assign this blame would have liked. The decisions on specific tactics and discipline were made further down, and the rogue element was only at the level where the abuses were actually occurring.
