Friday, October 15, 2004
Senior Pentagon officials are planning on taking action against Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, the man who ran the Iraqi prison system at the time of the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib -- they're going to promote him. From the Sydney Morning Herald:
I always think that there's nothing these people can do to shock me anymore, but somehow they always manage...
Senior Pentagon officials, including the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, have told colleagues they are determined to pin a fourth star on General Sanchez.
Mr Rumsfeld and others recognise that General Sanchez remains politically "radioactive," according to an unnamed Defence Department official, and would wait until after the presidential election next month and continuing investigations of the Abu Ghraib affair have faded before putting his name forward.
[ ... ]
Support for General Sanchez among the senior-most policy-makers in the Pentagon reflects the Bush Administration's insistence that the prisoner abuse - which began in Abu Ghraib outside of Baghdad and then turned the spotlight on US military jails in Afghanistan and the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - was an aberration.
I always think that there's nothing these people can do to shock me anymore, but somehow they always manage...
