Rereading Seymour Hersch in The New Yorker. Christ, it’s searing. Explain to me what the Rumsfelds of this world, the Gonzales’, explain to me what the prize is. Or is it just that when you no longer feel what other humans feel, you are capable of anything.
These mild men. Not-men. Our own, pale Eichmanns.
The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservist 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 prisoner in Iraq.
According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s 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.
“Generate more intelligence.” That’s bureaucrat for: “If you torture them, people will give up the really valuable information.”
Jesus, the gasping stupidity of it all.
A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.
In other words, it’s all about Rummy’s (pardon me while I puke) career.
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, “Any 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.”
It’s all about Don. No one else is real.
It’s all about Don’s search for career laurels. And a deeply fucked idea of what laurels are.
Jesus would puke too.
