{"id":107,"date":"2004-05-16T10:44:48","date_gmt":"2004-05-16T17:44:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/?p=107"},"modified":"2004-05-16T10:44:48","modified_gmt":"2004-05-16T17:44:48","slug":"seymour-hersh-is-the-new-bob-woodward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/2004\/05\/16\/seymour-hersh-is-the-new-bob-woodward\/","title":{"rendered":"Seymour Hersh is the new Bob Woodward."},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow, two in a row. The Gray Zone<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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. Rumsfeld\u00d5s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of \u017dlite combat units, and hurt America\u00d5s prospects in the war on terror.<\/p>\n

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon\u00d5s 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. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld\u00d5s long-standing desire to wrest control of America\u00d5s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.<\/p>\n

Rumsfeld, during appearances last week before Congress to testify about Abu Ghraib, was precluded by law from explicitly mentioning highly secret matters in an unclassified session. But he conveyed the message that he was telling the public all that he knew about the story. He said, \u00d2Any suggestion that there is not a full, deep awareness of what has happened, and the damage it has done, I think, would be a misunderstanding.\u00d3 The senior C.I.A. official, asked about Rumsfeld\u00d5s testimony and that of Stephen Cambone, his Under-Secretary for Intelligence, said, \u00d2Some people think you can bullshit anyone.\u00d3<\/i><\/p>\n

And yet again, the NYT<\/a> looks dumb. The Post<\/a> has a slightly different piece of the same puzzle, but they didn’t get what Hersh got. <\/p>\n

The NYT did get Pfc. England’s sworn testimony<\/a>, though:<\/p>\n

The detainees were stripped, handcuffed together, and told to lie on the floor, she said, then forced to run and crawl up and down the hallway. “Was there anything done to these detainees that you felt was `going too far?’ ” she was asked. “No,” she replied.<\/i><\/p>\n

Anyone else remember this scene from Apocalypse Now<\/a><\/i>:<\/p>\n

\t\tWILLARD
\n“I was sent on a classified mission, sir.” <\/p>\n

\t\tKURTZ
\n“Ain’t no longer classified, is it?
\nWhat did they tell you ?”<\/p>\n

\t\tWILLARD
\n” They told me that you had gone totally insane and that your
\nmethods were unsound.”<\/p>\n

\t\tKURTZ
\n” Are my methods unsound?”<\/p>\n

\t\tWILLARD
\n” I don’t see any method at all, sir.”<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wow, two in a row. The Gray Zone. 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. Rumsfeld\u00d5s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of \u017dlite combat units, and hurt America\u00d5s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-foreign-affairs","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4uks-1J","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}