Hook, line and sinker. Having given his readers a bit of a heads-up yesterday about Rumsfeld henchman Stephen Cambone, Eric Schmitt lets himself get played by same on today's front page. Here's Schmitt's lead:

The Army general who first investigated abuses at Abu Ghraib prison stood by his inquiry's finding that military police officers should not have been involved in conditioning Iraqi detainees for interrogation, even as a senior Pentagon civilian sitting next to him at a Senate hearing on Tuesday disputed that conclusion.

The officer, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that it had been against the Army's doctrine for another Army general to recommend last summer that military guards "set the conditions" to help Army intelligence officers extract information from prisoners. He also said an order last November from the top American officer in Iraq effectively put the prison guards under the command of the intelligence unit there.

But the civilian official, Stephen A. Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence, contradicted the general. He said that the military police and the military intelligence unit at the prison needed to work closely to gain as much intelligence as possible from Iraqi prisoners to prevent attacks against American soldiers. Mr. Cambone also said that General Taguba misinterpreted the November order, which he said only put the intelligence unit in charge of the prison facility, not of the military police guards.

"Rumsfeld Aide and a General Clash on Abuse"

Schmitt calls this "unusual sparring between a two-star Army general and one of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's most trusted aides," and claims that the tiff "cast a spotlight on the confusing conditions at the prison last fall when the worst abuses occurred." In support of which, he highlights a quote from Ted Kennedy in a one-sentence graf:

"How do you expect the M.P.'s to get it straight if we have a difference between the two of you?" said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts.

All due respect to Sen. Kennedy, but that's about the dumbest and least productive reaction he could have had. It's ludicrous to conflate a disputed point of interpretation in an Armed Services Committe hearing with command confusion (between the MP reservists and military intelligence) on the ground. And it's more ludicrous still to conflate whatever Gen. Taguba does or doesn't understand—Taguba, who reported after the fact on abuses in the gulag—with Cambone, part of the chain of command that created and condoned the system of detainee abuse. All Kennedy's doing is letting Cambone off the hook.

"Unusual" the sparring may have been, but unusual doesn't necessarily mean interesting, much less meaningful. At least Kennedy has the excuse that he was reacting in the moment. Schmitt, on the other hand, and with every opportunity for reflection, lets himself get distracted by something shiny ("Oooh, look! A public spat!"), in the process ignoring the main, in fact the only question: who is responsible for having determined the policy of abusive interrogations? Cambone's sitting there in plain view, as much an architect of the policy as anyone so far identified, and Schmitt is unable or unwilling to focus on him. More to the point: Schmitt fails to recognize that Cambone has "contradicted" Taguba only nominally, while in fact confirming the underlying issue as Taguba has already identified it, namely that interrogations at Abu Ghraib were structured to serve the purposes of military intelligence. Military intelligence was "in charge of the prison facility" but not in charge of the MP guards? Talk about a distinction without a difference ...

It's not as if Cambone was sent over to appear with Taguba because the Pentagon was committed to forthrightness, to providing as much information as possible. He was there precisely to obscure the issue, and on the evidence of the NYT coverage his phony little disagreement with Taguba did an admirable job of it. Eric Schmitt's responsibility in these hearings isn't to react to personality, as just another spectator: it's to understand the policy stakes and to report them, whatever smoke screen some operative like Cambone tries to cast in front of things. Better luck next time, I guess, Eric.

posted by michael  3:20:55 PM  
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Media terrorists. Via Wonkette:

The release of yet more photos of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners has sparked a very lively debate about whether the media should have run the pictures to begin with. It turns out they shouldn't have. Kaus explains: See, he believes that "there is a large amorphous group of 'swing voter' Arabs who might support terrorism but who might also be persuaded to live in peace." If you believe that, too, then "you really didn't want these photos published, because they are what will lose us the swing voters and produce the blowback. . . Not only does it follow that the photos are best left unpublished; it also follows that the Pentagon was doing the right thing when it attempted to keep them secret."

"Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: We Blame the Media"

Shorter Mickey Kaus: Insufficiently rigorous media self-censorship causes terrorism.

Shorter shorter Mickey Kaus: Touch, but don't look.

Shorter Mickey Kaus by implication: The best way to promote the cause of free and open society in the Arab world is through a regime of secrecy at home.

{With apologies to Busy Busy Busy.}

posted by michael  12:26:27 PM  
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Toxic consequences II. Missed this WaPo article from Sunday (when I was taking a little sanity break from blogging/surfing): "As Insurgency Grew, So Did Prison Abuse" (Scott Wilson and Sewell Chan). I'll note it now, as it substantiates my last week's speculation about how the creation of a torture policy for the Iraq gulag—determined by the Pentagon's dispatching Gitmo Miller to Iraq last summer—might have mapped to the security situation and to the needs of force protection. (Thanks to Orcinus for pointing out the article.)

Less than two weeks after 1,000 pounds of explosives demolished U.N. headquarters here on Aug. 19, driving the organization from Iraq, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller arrived in Baghdad from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was warden of the U.S. detention facility for suspected terrorists. Miller's mission in Iraq signaled new zeal to organize an intelligence network that could hit back at the insurgents, but through unorthodox means. ...

The worsening war outside the walls of the U.S. prison system in Iraq had a direct bearing on the abuses that occurred inside the facilities, according to Iraqi and American sources. Through the summer and fall of 2003, when detainees at Abu Ghraib prison suffered mistreatment now notorious throughout the world, the security situation in Iraq and the treatment of Iraqi prisoners ran parallel courses, both downward.

U.S. officials were under mounting pressure to collect wartime intelligence but were hobbled by a shortage of troops, the failure to build an effective informant network and a surprisingly skilled insurgency. In response, they turned to the prison system. ...

Interviews with U.S. officials, former prisoners and Iraqis who have supported the occupation, along with findings outlined in the Army's internal investigation of prison abuses, make clear that there was a connection between changes in conditions inside the prisons and the struggle to control an increasingly hostile country.

A crucial article, exactly on point. The Post, by the way, has been absolutely eating the Times' lunch—its breakfast and dinner, too—on the story of the Bush-created gulag. They were as bad as everybody else in the prewar period, but seem to have been stung into an attempt to make up for it now.

posted by michael  11:21:23 AM  
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