Hardly a "Thunderbolt" Dan, More Like a Yawn

Another Thunderbolt from Wilkerson

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, November 4, 2005; 12:45 PM

Another shocking accusation by former administration insider Lawrence Wilkerson appears to be going under the media radar today.

On NPR yesterday, the former chief of staff to the secretary of state said that he had uncovered a "visible audit trail" tracing the practice of prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers directly back to Vice President Cheney's office.

Here's the audio of Wilkerson's interview with Steve Inskeep. The transcript is not publicly available, but here are the relevant excerpts:

"INSKEEP: While in the government, he says he was assigned to gather documents. He traced just how Americans came to be accused of abusing prisoners. In 2002, a presidential memo had ordered that detainees be treated in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions that forbid torture. Wilkerson says the vice president's office pushed for a more expansive policy.

"Mr. WILKERSON: What happened was that the secretary of Defense, under the cover of the vice president's office, began to create an environment -- and this started from the very beginning when David Addington, the vice president's lawyer, was a staunch advocate of allowing the president in his capacity as commander in chief to deviate from the Geneva Conventions. Regardless of the president having put out this memo, they began to authorize procedures within the armed forces that led to, in my view, what we've seen.

"INSKEEP: We have to get more detail about that because the military will say, the Pentagon will say they've investigated this repeatedly and that all the investigations have found that the abuses were committed by a relatively small number of people at relatively low levels. What hard evidence takes those abuses up the chain of command and lands them in the vice president's office, which is where you're placing it?

"Mr. WILKERSON: I'm privy to the paperwork, both classified and unclassified, that the secretary of State asked me to assemble on how this all got started, what the audit trail was, and when I began to assemble this paperwork, which I no longer have access to, it was clear to me that there was a visible audit trail from the vice president's office through the secretary of Defense down to the commanders in the field that in carefully couched terms -- I'll give you that -- that to a soldier in the field meant two things: We're not getting enough good intelligence and you need to get that evidence, and, oh, by the way, here's some ways you probably can get it. And even some of the ways that they detailed were not in accordance with the spirit of the Geneva Conventions and the law of war.

Come on Dan, give it a rest. "Thunderbolt?" "even some of the ways that they detailed were not in accordance with the spirit of the Geneva Conventions." Oh boo hoo hoo. Tell me Froomkin, what is in accordance with Geneva Conventions? Tea at four o'clock? Tennis at nine? These people are not covered by the Geneva Conventions, they are non-aligned enemy combatants. They are terrorists, rogues without a nation. They are not signatories of the Geneva Conventions, and they themselves NEVER!, JAMAIS!, GAR NICHT! that's never abide by them. Perhaps in your zeal to attack Vice President Dick Cheney, you've forgotten about Daniel Pearle. Or maybe the four men who were left hanging from the bridge, allow me to refresh your memory...

there were four Western men slaughtered in Fallujah yesterday - all contractors for the Americans, some apparently armed - and they had been dragged from their cars, mutilated, stoned, burnt, beaten with iron pipes. One of them was decapitated, then dragged through the streets behind a car the men were dragged from their car, begging for their lives. They had gasoline splashed on them and were set alight,"

Do you remember now? Geneva Conventions? The prisoners we take are lucky that they get the treatment we give them. We have alway treated prisoners better than our enemies in hopes that when our people are captured, they to will be well treated. It just doesn't happen. Grow up! Stop giving aid and comfort to our enemies.

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