All Good for Bush & Corporate Media: NO ONE Responsible for US Torture, 9/11 Failures and Iraq Intelligence WMD "Failure"
U.S. INTELLIGENCE was "dead wrong" in
its pre-war beliefs about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, a
U.S. presidential commission reported 10 days ago. And just as wrong
about nearly every other charge levelled at Saddam Hussein's Iraq. This
is the third preposterous whitewash foisted on credulous Americans.
Whitewash One was the 9/11 investigation. That commission found no one
responsible for allowing the worst attack on the U.S. since Pearl
Harbor, though Bush and Rice were bombarded with warnings that an
assault was imminent. The awkward fact that then-attorney general John
Ashcroft actually cut spending on terrorism right before 9/11 was
conveniently ignored. Whitewash Two: Torture scandals at Abu Ghraib and
other U.S. detention camps. Seven senior military investigations found
only a few cases of "minor misconduct" and "isolated abuse" by
low-ranking personnel. The torture of prisoners by electricity,
freezing, drowning, sleep and sensory deprivation, beatings, dog
attacks, and sexual humiliation were, claimed the Pentagon, all the
fault of a few trailer trash sadists, though the chain of
responsibility for these war crimes clearly ran right up to the
secretary of defence.Three
whitewashes later, many Bush administration officials arguably guilty
of monumental blundering or even possible criminal acts have instead
been richly rewarded.
Donald Rumsfeld, accused Geneva Conventions violater, was renamed Pentagon chief.
National Security Adviser Rice, asleep on guard duty on 9/11, became secretary of state.
Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz was forced on the World Bank as its new chief.
Loudmouth neocon buffoon John Bolton was nominated UN ambassador;
faithful apparatchik John Negroponte was made intelligence czar.
Only the CIA's hand-kissing chief, George Tenet, lost his job, albeit with a Medal of Freedom.
White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez,
who wrote briefs justifying torture, was named attorney general. Poor
bumbling Colin Powell went from secretary of state to deserved
obscurity. [more]
Pictured above:President Bush bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom in December on
three central figures of the Iraq war: from left, Gen. Tommy R. Franks,
who led the invasion; L. Paul Bremer III, who led the occupation; and
George J. Tenet, who as intelligence director built a case for war. Bremer is responsible for the missing $9 Billion [more]
