More Lies for the Crusade

An Army general who has been criticized for his role in the treatment of prisoners at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has contradicted his sworn congressional testimony about contacts with senior Pentagon officials.

Gen. Geoffrey Miller told the Senate Armed Services Committee in May 2004 that he had only filed a report on a recent visit to Abu Ghraib, and did not talk to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld or his top aides about the fact-finding trip.

But in a recorded statement to attorneys three months later, Miller said he gave two of Rumsfeld's senior aides - then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary for Intelligence Steve Cambone - a briefing on his visit and subsequent recommendations.

"Following our return in the fall, I gave an outbrief to both Dr. Wolfowitz and Secretary Cambone," Miller said in the statement on Aug. 21, 2004, to lawyers for guards accused of prisoner abuse, a transcript of which was obtained by the Tribune.

"I went over the report that we had developed and gave them a briefing on the intelligence activities, recommendations, and some recommendations on detention operations," Miller said.

Specific interrogation techniques, he said, were not discussed.

Miller's statement about the meeting, if true, suggests that officials at the very top of the Pentagon may have been more involved in monitoring activities at the prison than previously disclosed. Abu Ghraib was later at the center of a scandal surrounding prisoner abuse, which has led to punishments for U.S. soldiers.

Miller, Cambone and Wolfowitz, who is now acting director of the World Bank, declined to respond to written questions about Miller's contradictory statements. Rumsfeld, Cambone, Wolfowitz and Miller have denied any knowledge of prisoner abuse.

In the Aug. 21 statement, Miller says that he never spoke directly to Rumsfeld about his Abu Ghraib visit or his subsequent recommendations for new, tougher interrogation tactics there.

Miller's name came up again this week, when he was named in a military investigation made public Wednesday into FBI allegations that detainees held at Guantanamo Bay were being mistreated. The report recommended that Miller be reprimanded for not monitoring the interrogation tactics used on one detainee, Mohamed al-Qahtani, who allegedly intended to be the 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 plot.

Miller's superior officer, Gen. Bantz Craddock, overruled the reprimand, arguing that there was no evidence that laws had been broken.

Cambone has asserted that he was not briefed by Miller after the general returned from Abu Ghraib. During his appearance on May 11, 2004, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Cambone said he and Miller did not speak about Abu Ghraib after Miller's return from the September 2003 fact-finding mission.

Wolfowitz, who also testified before Congress in May 2004 about prisoner abuses, was not asked during the hearings whether he had been briefed by Miller...

Thanks to Digby for the tip. Digby also has a good read on this:

Here's the thing. After artillery officer Miller showed such pluck and spunk down at Gitmo with his novel interrogation techniques, they sent him to Iraq to see what he could do. See, the Iraqis weren't behaving like the grateful liberated people they were expected to be. He made an evaluation and then sent his "best guys" from Gitmo to Abu Ghraib to implement his techniques. We have recently had it confirmed that many of the techniques authorized by Miller at Gitmo were of the same ilk as those captured in the pictures at Abu Ghraib.

And in a bizarro world decision worthy of Wil E Coyote, after the scandal broke they sent Miller in to "straighten things out."

...It looks now as if he was doing all this with the express knowledge and permission of Rumsfeld's top brass and presumably Rumsfeld himself. (Remember Rumsfeld weighed in on "interrogation" techniques in some detail --- "why shouldn't they have to stand for longer than four hours, I do!") This is not surprising either.

These guys picked a sadistic amateur to run both Gitmo and Abu Ghraib because his predecessors were insufficiently willing to "take the gloves off." This is in keeping with their over-arching theory about how to fight the War on Terror. It's worked out awfully well.

Today, we know that Bush administration loose lips are sinking ships all over the place, and their zeal to fear monger at home combined with their desire to treat the wogs with maximum ferocity has resulted in the US actively encouraging terrorism. It's a f*cking miracle we've escaped another hit, and it's no thanks to anything these clowns have done.

I know Digby would disagree, largely because it's irrational to think anyone could be this stupid, but it's all going according to the Dominionist plan.