Donald Rumsfeld Lied about Torture Policies, Abu Ghraib

One thing that the newly-released Senate Armed Services report on the treatment of detainees in US custody makes clear is that Donald Rumsfeld lied to Congress and the American public about the Pentagon's role in systematizing torture at U.S. detention centers at Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. Testifying before Congress in 2004, Rumsfled offered the following characterization of the Abu Ghraib abuses:

"To those Iraqis mistreated by the members of our armed forces, I offer my deepest apology. It was inconsistent with our nation, inconsistent with the teachings of the military, and it was fundamentally un-American."

And at a visit to Abu Ghraib prison itself, Rumsfeld said,

"In recent days there's been a focus on a few that have betrayed our values and sullied the reputation of our country," Rumsfeld said, adding that the actions of a few do not represent "the values of America and I know that and you know that and our families know that..."

But since then we have learned that the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib , the photos of which shocked the country, was not a random act carried out by lower level "bad apple" subordinates, but was approved not only by Rumsfeld himself back in 2002, but also by George Tenet, and top Bush Administration officials. Nancy Pelosi, too, was briefed on the torture.

Sy Hersh was on to Rumsfeld's disinformation campaign early on, as the following clip shows:



But today's most explosive revelation is that Rumsfeld used the "enhanced interrogation techniques" in an effort to try to prove there was a link between Saddam Hussein's government and Al Qaida. That's right. In Iraq, torture was used to justify the war.

David at Paradigms Lost
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