August 10 , 2004

I have, over the course of many months and many columns, contended that the POW torture scandals at Abu Ghraib, as well as the ones in Guantanamo, were symptomatic of extensive across-the-board changes in American military policy. And those changes could only have been planned, engineered and initiated from the highest levels within our government.

The proof of this assertion is simple: two-star Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller was specifically transferred to Abu Ghraib to institute Guantanamo torture methods and transferred to the theater command of three-star Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. The head of Army intelligence in Iraq is Maj. Gen. Keith Alexander who is one-star Brig. Gen Janis Karpinski’s biggest critic. Massive disruption of military management occurred when intelligence-oriented elements of the military invaded the domain of what normally constituted military police functions. Karpinski is an MP General. Additionally, these military police functions pertain to combatant enemy soldiers, not randomly rounded-up Iraqi civilians.

As usual, the government creates an untenable situation, which spirals out of control, and then offers as justification and reason for its failure the fact that they were caught up in an untenable situation. The latest evidence of this is the report from the 9-11 Commission. The reason the government couldn’t protect US on 9-11 is because of the protection system the government had in place.

The Commission report should have identified inept, incompetent under-performers who deliberately conspired to suppress information and destroyed data and evidence. They then blacklisted and harassed whistleblowers. And that would include FBI Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General John Ashcroft. By the way, where are these two guys nowadays? Where’s Rumsfeld?

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has dropped out of sight. If he hadn’t he might adversely affect President George W. Bush’s re-election chances. This Abu thing is about to blow, and here’s why. The POW prisoner torture was a “must do” war policy change. The 9-11 terrorist attack will not go away! Why? Because President George W. Bush trusted his neoconservative advisors, chief among them Paul Wolfowitz, and his Project for the New American Century [PNAC] plan to attack Iraq to secure the Western Front for Israel in the upcoming Mid Eastern War. And the war in Iraq is escalating seriously and will bring along with it more focus on the torture of Iraqi prisoners.

Early on, four-star General, Eric Shinseki, the former Army Chief of Staff, warned Bush and his PNAC-dominated neoconservative warmongers, that the colonization of Iraq would require “several hundred thousand troops.” I guess that’s why Shinseki got his fourth star - the man knew what he was talking about. The Iraqi war is ratcheting up just as Shinseki knew it would, and guerilla-type house-to-house fighting cannot be suppressed unless confronted by massive, overwhelming force. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz promised a cakewalk, but instead, stepped on the cake!

Things started going south after Bush proclaimed victory, so intelligence was vital - how to get it and get it fast? Donald Rumsfeld had the answer, conferred with Army Intelligence, which in turn incorporated techniques for humiliating and breaking Arabs from the experts: the Israelis. This required a massive coordinated effort! In fact, so massive was this required deviation from standard American military policy that it created egregious violations of the Geneva Convention. White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales got involved and wrote a memo to Bush warning him of the legal and international implications.

The policy was operationally engineered by DoD Undersecretary of Defense Stephen Cambone, and approved by Bush, Rumsfeld and even Attorney General John Ashcroft. Regrettably, according to the provisions of the Geneva Convention that representatives of the United States signed and agreed to, all these players had to be involved. This was necessitated by a “new kind of war.” Hence, the need to create new terms and definitions to avoid the existent legalese: “enemy combatant,” “insurgents,” etc.

Pfc. Lynndie England, the female soldier made famous by her finger-pointing and dangling cigarette pose at Abu Ghraib, as well as her man on the leash act, is now facing court martial at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. England is pregnant, and her life is now being threatened by American government because of her participation in making pornography at the Iraqi prison, and not just for posing as a dominatrix with Iraqi prisoners. She faces 38 years, virtually the rest of her life in a cage, while the people who created the circumstances she fell into sip Dom Perignon and sample fois gras at all the right DC and high-level officer club parties.

Theodore E. Lang>>

© THEODORE E. LANG 7/12/04 All rights reserved

Ted Lang is a political analyst and a freelance writer.

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