Donald Rumsfeld will be the hole that finally sinks the Bush battleship. Defense attorneys for an army sergeant currently on trial for torture acts at Abu Ghraib have called Major General Geoffrey Miller to take the stand at
Santos Cardona's court martial. The defense is attempting to shift culpability higher up the chain of command to Miller and beyond by showing that direction to use extreme interrogation techniques came from the Secretary of Defense through Miller. The WaPo writes that this is something of a foregone conclusion:
Witnesses have testified that Miller went to Iraq at Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's request and wanted to "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib.
It's a nugget buried in an AP story that sheds further light on the depravity of Rumsfeld....
The lawyer, Harvey Volzer, said Rumsfeld took a personal interest in individual interrogations of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, including the ones in which Cardona, a dog handler, is implicated.
The secretary of defense had video teleconferences with civilian contractors who were conducting questioning of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Volzer added.
This, at least to me, is not implausible. DoD lawyers deny the allegation, but Rumsfeld's management style, the infamous micromanagement, lends credibility to it. It's logical that a micromanager would utilize the tools of technology available to him to direct interrogations from a distance. Rumsfeld was virtually directing torture in Abu Ghraib from his office in DC. Civilian contractors, unconstrained by laws in a lawless land, were Rumsfeld's proxys, conducting inhuman acts while Rummy observed and guided. I'll bet he needed extra ice for his shorts those days too. Bastard. All those harpies who think Rummy's sexy must be obsessed with bondage scenarios. Rummy is so emblematic of the sickness that has gripped post 9/11 America.
Bush's strenuous defense of Rumsfeld should earn him a new moniker: torturer-in-chief.
Porn for Rummy: