A Rumsfeld Vindication

Wall Street Journal ^ | August 26, 2004 | Editorial

[OESY]

Since Operation Enduring Freedom began in October 2001, the U.S. has handled about 50,000 detainees in Afghanistan, Iraq and other venues of the war on terror. Among those, about 300 allegations of abuse have arisen. And as of this month 155 investigations have resulted in 66 substantiated cases of mistreatment. Only about a third of those cases were related to interrogation, while another third happened at the point of capture....

[T]he report says that "No approved procedures called for or allowed the kinds of abuse that in fact occurred. There is no evidence of a policy of abuse promulgated by senior officials or military authorities."

...Senator Jack Reed, for one, would seem to owe some apologies.... Also ... all those journalists who applauded his demagogy as some kind of gotcha moment, and who threw around words like "torture" so glibly.

Worse than being wrong, these accusations have endangered the lives of soldiers by forcing a retreat in interrogation techniques so severe that it's hampering the U.S. ability to fight the counterinsurgency in Iraq....

But in fact the timeline shows the military chain of command operating as it should to clear up confusion over what was permissible.

...It notes that much of the ICRC criticism used to bludgeon the Pentagon stems -- as we've noted in this column -- from a radical interpretation of the laws of war under which "interrogation operations would not be allowed," and which "would deprive the U.S. of an indispensable source of intelligence in the war on terrorism."....

While the Abu Ghraib abuses deserve to be punished, like other wartime excesses, the allegations that they had anything to do with so-called "torture memos" and a Pentagon "culture of permissiveness" are nothing but a political smear.

[blackdog]

If Kerry wants to have heads roll over Iraqi prisoner treatment, just how vocal was he when our govenment treated the ones at Waco, or the Elian Gonzales Family?

Sheesh! This is one messed up country with a mindset which lasts as long as a flashbulb.