Copper Green, Fear Up Harsh, the Allah Factor

You've probably read or heard about Sy Hersh's latest bombshell:

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

The Pentagon denied Hersh's report—calling it so much bullshit, more or less—but the WaPo has a similar and document-based account:

According to the plan [to interrogate a Syrian jihadist who refused to talk], interrogators needed the assistance of military police supervising his detention at the prison, who ordinarily play no role in interrogations under Army regulations. First, the interrogators were to throw chairs and tables in the man's presence at the prison and "invade his personal space."

Then the police were to put a hood on his head and take him to an isolated cell through a gantlet of barking guard dogs; there, the police were to strip-search him and interrupt his sleep for three days with interrogations, barking and loud music, according to Army documents. The plan was sent to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.

But the fact that a plan for such intense and highly organized pressure was proposed by Col. Thomas M. Pappas -- a senior military intelligence officer in Iraq who took his job at the insistence of a general dispatched from the Pentagon -- suggests a wider circle of involvement in aggressive and potentially abusive interrogations of Iraqi detainees, encompassing officers higher up the chain of command, than the Army has previously detailed.

Remarkably awful stuff, and at this point, the war between intelligence and Defence has reached a pretty fevered pitch—they're both putting statements out there that contradict each other so thoroughly that one or both of them must be lying. I'd say that thus far Donald Rumsfeld's been far more successful in waging the war against US intelligence than he has against terror.

Before I've said that I thought Donald Rumsfeld ought to be fired—that I've believed for some time, of course—but I really didn't think that the altar called for blood until today. Bush is not in an easy position to fire Donald Rumsfeld. Were he the strong central executive that he paints himself to be, he'd sit everyone down and say, "Look, the people who read my newspapers for me are saying that Iraq is taking me down with it. Hate to do this, but I have to let one of you go—you're going to take some blame for Iraq, I'm going to tell America that I'm cleaning house, I've got a bold new plan, I'm going to really clean up over the next 4 years. Because if I don't do something, I'm out of a job. Now Condi, fire up the SNES. I get the blue controller, damnit, I'm President." Etc. But how can Bush fire Rumsfeld, who has more knowledge of/authority over the war in Iraq than Bush? How can Bush fire Rumsfeld without admitting a drastic mistake, his apparent first since took office? Then again, how can Bush not fire Rumsfeld? Etc.

Whatever—it's all sort of academic since the nation's going to hell. The nation's "finest Secretary of Defense" authorizing sexual humiliation? Does no one realize that the Geneva Conventions exist as much to protect our soldiers as they do are enemies?

Posted by Kriston at May 16, 2004 7:29 PM