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Go read Spencer Ackerman and Paul Glastris on the Schlesinger report on Abu Ghraib issued yesterday.
Here's Spencer Ackerman on Schlesinger's curious description of violent interrogation techniques "migrating" to the Iraq context:
In seeking to explain what led to the torture committed by U.S. military police and intelligence officers at Abu Ghraib, former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and his colleagues use variants of the word "migrate" over a half-dozen times in the 92-page text. That is, the Schlesinger panel posits a simple explanation for how brutal interrogation techniques--initially reserved for Al Qaeda and Taliban "enemy combatants," whom President Bush decided were exempt from the Geneva Conventions--came to be used on Iraqi prisoners, whom the administration never determined fell outside the Geneva rules. Those techniques simply--as Schlesinger would have it--"migrated."
. . .
But, of course, no policy "migrates." Officials actively provide instructions to other officials. Or, failing such active authorization from their superiors, some officials take individual initiative based on what they judge to be relevant prior circumstances. A combination of these two factors is what Schlesinger surely means by the "migration" of interrogation policy. What his preferred euphemism glosses over are the questions of who told what to whom, with whose approval.
Paul Glastris takes it from there, asking:
To what degree, if any, do Bush administration policymakers, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in particular, bear responsibility? Obviously, nobody at the top ordered this kind of sick (and militarily counterproductive) abuse, or wanted it to happen. But did their decisions to some extent “set the conditions” for it?
. . .
From what I can tell, Rumsfeld’s leadership contributed to the problem in three ways. First was his best-case-scenario planning, or lack of planning, for what might happen after Saddam’s regime fell . . .
Second, and most disastrously, was Rumsfeld’s decision to put too few troops in Iraq, and to shut down anyone who questioned that decision . . .
Third was Rumsfeld’s efforts to parse or otherwise get around legal constrains on how prisoners at Guantanamo could be interrogated, and his decision to apply some of those looser standards to Iraq . . .
This third issue is the one I’m most curious about. . . It should be noted that the panel did not believe that Rumsfeld should resign or be fired for what happened at Abu Ghraib . . . I agree. He should resign or be fired for screwing up the entire war.
UPDATE: Greg Djerejian, back at work after a late summer vacation, has more.