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June 19, 2007
The Incredible Lightness Of Being Tony Taguba
Sacre bleu, mes amis!
Once again, eet ees ze time of Listening to ze Generals!
We can nevair keep zis straight, you see. Zis business of ze listening, eet is of ze most tiresome, n'est pas?
All ze time avec le "Attendez-vous! N'attend pas! ... do we listen or don't we? Et bien.
Today, we listen:
Taguba wrote in his report of "[n]umerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees . . . systemic and illegal abuse." But he wasn't allowed to trace the behavior to its root cause.Writes Hersh: "'From what I knew, troops just don't take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups,' Taguba told me. His orders were clear, however: he was to investigate only the military police at Abu Ghraib, and not those above them in the chain of command. 'These M.P. troops were not that creative,' he said. 'Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority. I was limited to a box.'"
But surely here is a confusion? Did not General Taguba testify to Congress that he believed these men acted on their own volition? Would thees not be... how do you say... the lying which is wrong/bad? This is a great confusion. Was he lying then, or now? How are we to know?
"We did not find any evidence of a policy or a direct order given to these soldiers to conduct what they did. I believe that they did it on their own volition and I believe that they collaborated with several MI (military intelligence) interrogators at the lower level,"
Furthermore, though General Taguba works for the Commander in Chief and is bound to follow orders, does not your American UCMJ exempt heem from ze duty to follow ze unlawful ordairs?
Most confusicating.
Finally, why did he not speak up before this zis? A General, he has... again, my English, eet ees not so good... ze secure retirement. Surely his integrity, eet would matter more than following an order that compromised his honor as an officer?
Undoubtedly thees Hersch person, he will explain eet all to us. After all, eet ees not as though either his credibility or the thoroughness of his research had ever been called into question:
Hersh’s career as an author has run the gamut from intensively researched exposés to dubious scandalmongering. And its wilder swings in the latter direction came close to endangering his career. His first two books after leaving the Times—1983’s exhaustive, 700-page account of seemingly inexhaustible Kissinger moral trespasses, The Price of Power, and 1986’s The Target Is Destroyed: What Really Happened to Flight 007 and What America Knew About It—were critically applauded. But his next book, 1991’s The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, relied heavily on a source whom Hersh later characterized in an interview as a liar. And after the publication of The Dark Side of Camelot in 1997, Hersh’s reputation took another dip.The reviews of Hersh’s singularly tumescent account of the Kennedy presidency were savage. Gail Collins wrote in The Nation that Hersh’s book on JFK was “best read as a sort of journalistic tragedy.” In the Los Angeles Times, Edward Jay Epstein decreed that Hersh “must have invented” some of his facts and that the book “turns out to be, alas, more about the deficiencies of investigative journalism than about the deficiencies of John F. Kennedy.”
More damaging than the book’s critical reception were revelations that Hersh had fallen for a set of forged Kennedy documents—including a handwritten note from JFK offering Marilyn Monroe hush money to keep quiet about their affair—peddled by Lawrence X. Cusack III, a con man. The phony docs didn’t make it into The Dark Side of Camelot, but the moral of the story stuck: The onetime giant of investigative journalism had let himself be duped again. Hersh’s next book, on Gulf War syndrome, was almost completely ignored.
These are deep, emotional truths. In matters of such importance, are the literal facts so important?
Last July, not too long after the Abu Ghraib story broke, Hersh spoke to the annual membership conference of the American Civil Liberties Union. He stood before the crowd and in mid-speech appeared to talk to himself. “Debating about it,” he muttered, then paused. “Um.” Clucked his tongue. “Some of the worst things that happened that you don’t know about. Okay? Videos,” he said. “And basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children, in cases that have been recorded, the boys were sodomized, with the cameras rolling, and the worst above all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking. That your government has. They’re in total terror it’s going to come out.”What Hersh said wasn’t entirely correct. His book Chain of Command would deliver the authoritative Seymour M. version: “An attorney involved in the case told me in July 2004 that one of the witness statements he had read described the rape of a boy by a foreign contract employee who served as an interpreter at Abu Ghraib,” Hersh wrote. “In the statement, which had not been made public, the lawyer told me, a prisoner stated that he was a witness to the rape, and that a woman was taking pictures.”
Horrifying stuff. But key details were different from the impression Hersh gave to the ACLU crowd. And the Sy version raced halfway across the Internet before Seymour M. could get his boots on.
Many who blogged the revelation believed that Hersh was talking about multiple rapes committed by American soldiers. Nearly everyone took it for granted that Hersh had seen the videotapes himself because he’d described their horrifying soundtrack. And everyone did assume that there were in fact videotapes, which there may not be. (“Was it a video camera or a digital camera? Nobody was quite sure,” Hersh told students at Tufts later in the year.) The speech was so widely blogged that the ACLU says Hersh asked it to remove part of the video—including the sodomy allegation—from the organization’s Website, which it proceeded to do.
That was Hersh’s first encounter with streaming online video, something that makes a spoken remark as replicable and as easy to distribute as the written word. He’d never heard of it before. “I actually didn’t quite say what I wanted to say correctly,” Hersh now says. “It wasn’t that inaccurate, but it was misstated. The next thing I know, it was all over the blogs. And I just realized then, the power of—and so you have to try and be more careful.”
Yet a more careful Hersh may not be what the world needs at this moment. Former Washington Post reporter Scott Armstrong puts it this way: Say Hersh writes a story about how an elephant knocked someone down in a dark room. “If it was a camel or three cows, what difference does it make? It was dark, and it wasn’t supposed to be there.” And nobody else had yet described it. Sometimes, says Warren Strobel, “it’s worth it for him to be wrong.”
Perhaps not.
Posted by Cassandra at June 19, 2007 08:16 AM
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Comments
It's all about the ineffable je ne sais quoi...y'know?
Posted by: camojack at June 19, 2007 10:30 AM
Okay...I am missing something here. Connect the dots for me please. Is it worth it for Hersch to be wrong? Considering the nuance with which he described what happened, his journalistic career and the damage he has done, I would say him being wrong and having it proven would be worth it.
Scum like Justin Raimondo make inflammatory statements about how horrible the troops are, that they really didn't sign up to do the right thing but to get their collective rocks off by indulging in their perverted fantasies against a helpless minority population.
And you have people believing that battlefield atrocities committed by a small percentage of troops are the tip of the iceberg because of it.
Posted by: Cricket at June 19, 2007 11:29 AM
Clearly you do not understand.
Irak is another VietNam and every outrage I find is another My Lai, where American soldiers brutally and personally (as opposed those more impersonal forms of sexual assault) rape, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turn up the power, cut off limbs, blow up bodies, randomly shoot at civilians, raze villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shoot cattle and dogs for fun [as opposed to just the normal "earning a paycheck" stuff we learned in Basic], poison food stocks, and generally ravage the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
Of course the Junior Senator from Massachusetts never actually SAW us do any of those things either, at least according to him. And of course if he had, he would have been obligated under the UCMJ to report them as an officer and commander.
And we all know he would never lie.
But he FEELS as though he saw them, and that is close enough for government work.
It is all part of the horror of war.
Posted by: Sy Hersh at June 19, 2007 11:46 AM
...which I continue to document so well.
Damn. Sometimes I get so tired.
Posted by: Sy Hersh at June 19, 2007 11:47 AM
The Iceberg is large.
It is Very, Very Large. And I... I have shown you the Tip.
Be afraid.
Posted by: Sy Hersh at June 19, 2007 11:48 AM
Bite me.=)
Posted by: Cricket at June 19, 2007 11:50 AM
Is that the iceberg on Caption This?
Posted by: Snarkyone at June 19, 2007 11:51 AM
Bite me.=)
And biting! I forgot biting!
In between hooking generators to their whatzits and personally raping them, we nibbled their tender bits in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.
Posted by: Sy Hersh at June 19, 2007 12:01 PM
[rummaging...]
Somewhere I'm sure there is a video.
[chomp]
OW!!!!
Posted by: Sy Hersh at June 19, 2007 12:02 PM
By the way young lady, would you like to come up to my flat and learn more about my Tip?
I promise you, it is enthralling.
Posted by: Sy Hersh at June 19, 2007 12:06 PM
Oh that was...just...I can't help it...I have been laughing for a couple of minutes now. Must have a six pack by now.
Posted by: Cricket at June 19, 2007 12:14 PM
Oh that was...just...I can't help it...I have been laughing for a couple of minutes now.
Hmmm...where have I heard these words before?
Oh yes. My last date.
*sigh*
Posted by: Sy Hersh at June 19, 2007 12:17 PM
Well, this should cheer you up: Pakistan has its knickers in a twist because QEII, bless her, has decided to knight Salmon Rushdie in a manner reminiscent of recognition.
Hey, any copies of his book still around? I never did get a chance to read it.
Posted by: Cricket at June 19, 2007 12:31 PM
This...Pakistan of which you speak... is she pretty? Her twisty knickers, what color are they?
Do you think she would like to see my Tip?
[muttering] Surely someone would like to see it. I keep shopping it around but so far no takers. Ummm...she does not bite, does she?
Posted by: Sy Hersh at June 19, 2007 12:49 PM
Funny, the NY Times has an article about this that is somewhat different:
'While his inquiry was limited to the conduct of the military police guarding the prison, he said he had strongly suspected that the guards had been influenced by military intelligence units, who were in charge of interrogating prisoners. Seven members of the military police, all enlisted soldiers, were convicted for their role in the abuse.'
This is more in line with his original testimony, and doesn't suggest he said that higher ups were involved. It does seem strange that he would say limit his investigation was limited to just the actions of the MP's and not look at contributing factors such as the 'suggestions' from the intel people there.
He does say he thinks Rumsfled knew about the allegations of abuse before he (Rummy) said he did ... but again that is a far cry from suggesting that 'higher ups ordered or condoned it'.
Posted by: Frodo at June 19, 2007 01:02 PM
You, sir, have not seen My Anonymous Source.
Like My Tip, it is buried deep.... deep, I tell you. At any rate, I have Spoken.
Abu Ghuraib is My Lai.
Irak is VietNam, and Istanbul is Constantinople
Old Constantinople's still has Turkish delight
On a moonlight night
Evr'y gal in Constantinople
Is a Miss-stanbul, not Constantinople
So if you've a date in Constantinople
She'll be waiting in Istanbul
Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it, I can't say
(People just liked it better that way)
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks'
Excuse me. I am feeling dizzy.
I need to lie down.
Posted by: Sy Hersh at June 19, 2007 01:27 PM
Excuse me. I am feeling dizzy.
I need to lie down.
Is that because you have a tick instead of a tip?
Posted by: Cricket at June 19, 2007 02:31 PM
The fugging guy can't even spell Iraq write.
Hello, Mark from Loserville.
Goodbye, patience.
Posted by: spd rdr at June 19, 2007 02:46 PM
Sy,
Things will be OK. You just need to build a little birdhouse in your soul for me.
Posted by: Blue Canary at June 19, 2007 02:58 PM
Oferchrissakes.
Build a fire instead.
Posted by: spd rdr at June 19, 2007 03:04 PM
Ah, like the flaming torch in my soul that rages in a torrent of longing for the return of Jon Cary and AlGore.
It burns... or is that burrito I had for lunch?
Posted by: Sy Hersh at June 19, 2007 03:16 PM
Yes, everything *is* catching on fire.
Posted by: Fingertips at June 19, 2007 03:17 PM
At any rate, the birdhouse of my soul is lined with pages from the New York Times.
Only the best.
Posted by: Sy Hersh at June 19, 2007 03:18 PM
Foolish knuckle-dragging lawyer.
You hate me because I Speak Truth to Power. But even you cannot quench the raging flames of Justice.
I will not be Silenced. I will bring the Truthiness.
At midnight on the boulevard of broken dreams, I will meet you and we shall go mano a mano. Bring KoolAid, but do not expect me to share it.
I drink alone.
Posted by: Sy Hersh at June 19, 2007 03:24 PM
Fire is the limit of usefulness.
But cheese tastes good.
Posted by: spd rdr at June 19, 2007 03:28 PM
Fire? Cheese?
You really oughta try my Cheeseburger!
Posted by: Parrot in Paradise at June 19, 2007 03:40 PM
What kind of cheese would you suggest with a vintage Blue state KoolAid?
These decisions are so worrisome.
Posted by: Sy Hersh at June 19, 2007 03:41 PM
Consider this: If you were a moron...
Posted by: spd rdr at June 19, 2007 03:48 PM
Egad and forsooth. Garcon! Where is the demmed feller anywho?
Pardon me whilst I pour myself a stiff Shirley Temple to brace my sagging spirits. Apparently those CLE Sensitivity Training sessions have not had the desired effect.
You, sir, have wounded me to the quick.
Posted by: Sy Hersh at June 19, 2007 04:02 PM
Wounded? Hell. I've flayed your sorry ass. Lie down and be done with it, troll. You'll get no further quarter from me.
Posted by: spd rdr at June 19, 2007 04:07 PM
Unless, of course, I have allowed myself to become an idiot to Princess Cheese Danish Bikini. In which sase I offer my humblest middle finger in gratitude.
Posted by: spd rdr at June 19, 2007 04:12 PM
[deep bow]
Never an idiot, sir. Never that.
Sy Hersh will always be beaten by the hockey goons of this world. It is, alas, Cruel Fate.
Posted by: Sy Hersh at June 19, 2007 04:32 PM
Goon? Are you ^&*%$# serious, %^&*$#@ a$$&*le? You want me to come down there and have Ol' Bullet take a piece out of your **&^%$# a$$? I ain't no &*&^%$#@$ goon, you @$#%*&^(%&@#%$&*%# piano playing pipsqueak. I'm a
Posted by: spd rdr at June 19, 2007 04:44 PM
piano playing pipsqueak???
I just spit out half my drink.
Posted by: Sy Hersh at June 19, 2007 04:47 PM
Ahhhh....life is never dull around here....and that's the way I like it. :)
It's a good thing I left my drink upstairs else it'd be on the keyboard now.
Posted by: Liberace at June 19, 2007 04:52 PM
We are a lively crew, I'll say that for us.
Posted by: Sy Hersh at June 19, 2007 04:53 PM
Aye, we're a feisty lot, we are.
Argghhh...
Barwench...a pint of your best all round.
It's on the blackguard Sy this night.
Posted by: Jack Sparrow at June 19, 2007 04:56 PM
Y'all hoist a few for me, OK?
Posted by: Cass at June 19, 2007 05:03 PM
*gonna remain behind my rock pile with my spirits today, or as a wise CPO once muttered, "Never get outta boat..."*
Posted by: bthun at June 19, 2007 05:23 PM
"Ya can't swim in a boat." said an even wiser CPO.
Posted by: spd rdr at June 19, 2007 05:36 PM
I make this stuff up as I go along along, folks.
So sue me.
Posted by: spd rdr at June 19, 2007 05:40 PM
"So sue me"
Words to live by. Salute! =8^}
Posted by: bthun at June 19, 2007 06:34 PM
On a side note this headline stuck me as funny:
NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg leaves GOP
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070619/ap_on_el_pr/bloomberg_politics;_ylt=AuBi1xqXm4uIgkxG278Ua1QDW7oF
Ehhhh, when was he ever in the GOP?
Posted by: Frodo at June 19, 2007 09:58 PM
You say what ever you want Sy Hersh. Sy, I'm your only friend. I'm not your only friend. But I'm a little glowing friend. But really I'm not actually your friend. But I am. Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet. Make a little birdhouse in your soul. You are my Particle Man, hero of the misspoken word.
Posted by: I Might Be a Giant at June 19, 2007 10:52 PM
So, were both Sy and Tagubo working from a statement of non attributability?
Posted by: Nuance is in at June 19, 2007 11:05 PM