Rumsfeld okayed abuses says former U.S. general

From Reuters courtesy of AlterNet:

Karpinski, who ran the prison until early 2004, said she saw a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld detailing the use of harsh interrogation methods.

"The handwritten signature was above his printed name and in the same handwriting in the margin was written: "Make sure this is accomplished"," she told Saturday's El Pais.

"The methods consisted of making prisoners stand for long periods, sleep deprivation ... playing music at full volume, having to sit in uncomfortably ... Rumsfeld authorized these specific techniques."

The Geneva Convention says prisoners of war should suffer "no physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion" to secure information.

"Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind," the document states.

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Of course, the fact that the torture orders came down from the very highest levels has been obvious from almost the moment the Abu Ghraib story broke, what with all those White House legal memos justifying it in the abstract, and the shocking consistency of methods from Baghdad to Kabul. The only thing that's different now is that people are starting to talk, which is only one reason that Rumsfeld has been charged with war crimes in Germany--god, I love the irony on that! The point is that it's time to face facts: in addition to running our country into the ground, stealing at least one Presidental election, all that, the White House gang is a bunch of twisted, evil war criminals.

The only thing keeping that fact from being more widely accepted in the US is the strange belief that Americans are somehow unlike the rest of the human race, that Americans don't do such things.

Well, that's bullshit. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Americans are no different. And these guys on the Bush team are as bad as people can get. As I've said many times, I don't support the death penalty, but it's pretty clear that this whole gang of mafiosi deserves death--I mean, I'll settle for life in prison, but, in the grand scheme, there's very little difference between them and this guy below.


Hermann Goering testifying at Nuremberg.

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