Truth - Al Franken [113]
When an FBI report about prisoner abuse at Gitmo was leaked to the press, Rush was ready with another zinger:
LIMBAUGH [Quoting an AP article]: “One detainee wrapped in an Israeli flag, some were shackled hand and foot in fetal position for eighteen to twenty-four hours, forcing them to soil themselves.” (Gasping in mock horror.) I thought they did that anyway over there. This is news to me that this is news.
Major General Geoffrey Miller so impressed his superiors with his work commanding the detention facility at Gitmo that he was brought over to Abu Ghraib to work his special kind of torture magic.
Donald Rumsfeld took a very hands-on approach to the torture. He personally approved the lifting of restrictions on abusive interrogation methods, like clothing removal, hooding, and the use of dogs to terrify prisoners. His approach to the torture cover-up was equally hands-on. In a March 2005 press conference, Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman General Peter Pace took a page from my favorite old vaudeville team, Deny and Obfuscate.1
REPORTER: I wonder if you would just respond to the suggestion that there is a systemic problem rather than the kinds of individual abuses we’ve heard of before?
RUMSFELD: I don’t believe there’s been a single one of the investigations that have been conducted, which has got to be six, seven, eight or nine . . .
PACE: Ten major reviews and three hundred individual investigations of one kind or another.
RUMSFELD: And have you seen one that characterized it as systematic or systemic?
PACE: No, sir.
RUMSFELD: I haven’t either.
Both of them must have been skimming the reports, particularly General Taguba’s finding of “systemic and illegal abuse of detainees” and General Fay’s report of “systemic problems and issues.”
When the photos from Abu Ghraib surfaced, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who served as a JAG officer in the Air Force for six years on active duty and continues to serve as a reservist, was incensed. He didn’t buy the “a few bad apples” line that many of his fellow Republicans were parroting. “Not only should we focus on the privates, and the sergeants, and the specialists who did criminal activity,” Graham said in a hearing, “but we also should have a higher accountability.”
Since that time, many more details have emerged. We know now, for example, that 108 detainees have died in our custody during the almost four years we’ve been in Iraq and Afghanistan. One hundred and fourteen American POWs died in North Vietnamese captivity during the eleven years of the Vietnam War.
George H. W. Bush’s personal physician, Dr. Burton J. Lee III, who served in the Army Medical Corps, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed:
Torture demonstrates weakness, not strength. It does not show understanding, power or magnanimity. It is not leadership. It is a reaction of government officials overwhelmed by fear who succumb to conduct unworthy of them and of the citizens of the United States.
As Lindsey Graham feared, no one above the rank of captain is scheduled to be court-martialed for crimes at Abu Ghraib or anywhere in Rumsfeld’s global network of detention centers, many of them secret. And the worst part is that the White House refuses to put an end to this once and for all. The day I wrote this, the White House blocked a Senate vote on a measure sponsored by John McCain (himself a victim of torture as a POW in Vietnam) and a bipartisan group of senators that would create a uniform code prohibiting inhumane interrogations.
Which brings me to another funny story.
I am, as far as I know, the only comedian who has performed at Abu Ghraib. It was during my last visit to Iraq with the USO. The leader of our tour was Sergeant Major of the Army Ken Preston. As the highest-ranking noncommissioned officer in the Army, he’s a living god to ordinary soldiers. When Ken Preston was introduced, our host, the commander of the base, actually said—without a trace of irony—“Let