The New York Times has an Elizabeth Bumiller and Richard W. Stevenson story about President Bush chastising Defense Secretary Rumsfeld:
President Bush on Wednesday chastised his defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, for Mr. Rumsfeld's handling of a scandal over the American abuse of Iraqis held at a notorious prison in Baghdad, White House officials said.The disclosures by the White House officials (were made) under authorization from Mr. Bush… The officials said the president had expressed his displeasure to Mr. Rumsfeld in an Oval Office meeting because of Mr. Rumsfeld's failure to tell Mr. Bush about photographs of the abuse, which have enraged the Arab world…
In his interviews on Wednesday with Arab television networks, Mr. Bush said that he learned the graphic details of the abuse case only when they were broadcast last Wednesday… It was then, one White House official said, that Mr. Bush also saw the photographs documenting the abuse. "When you see the pictures," the official said, "it takes on a proportion of gravity that would require a much more extreme response than the way it was being handled."
Another White House official said, "The president was not satisfied or happy about the way he was informed about the pictures, and he did talk to Secretary Rumsfeld about it."…
Pentagon officials said that Mr. Rumsfeld was first notified about the pictures in mid-January, after a soldier turned them over to Army officials, prompting the opening of an investigation. A senior Pentagon official said that Mr. Rumsfeld was told of the allegations of abuse and given a general description of the photographs.
Within weeks, the Pentagon official said, Mr. Rumsfeld told the president about the case. But it is not clear, the official said, whether Mr. Rumsfeld mentioned the photographs or their basic content to Mr. Bush at that point.
Mr. Bush first mentioned the abuse scandal publicly last Friday in the Rose Garden, when he said he shared "deep disgust" about the photographs. That evening, he went to a party at Mr. Rumsfeld's house in the Kalorama section of Washington, where it is not known whether he and his defense secretary talked about the pictures.
Secondly, the story suggests that President Bush chastised Rumsfeld only because of the failure to tell the President that there were pictures of the abuse and not because of the fact of the abuse itself.
The implication of that suggestion is that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners is not, in and of itself, a big deal. It is only if the abuse can be indisputably documented and made public that Mr. Bush and the administration give a flip about abused Iraqis. As long as the prisoners were abused in private and no one knew, who cares?
I deeply hope that implication is false. It is the fact of the abuse, not simply that the abuse was photographed and made public, that is the outrage.
There seem to be four possibilities to explain the Times story. First, Bumiller and Stevenson could have just gotten the story wrong. Perhaps Mr. Bush was upset with Rumsfeld not only because he was not shown the pictures. Perhaps Mr. Bush was upset because the department run by Mr. Rumsfeld had treated human beings in a disgraceful manner. Perhaps he was upset that the military had compromised the interests and safety of the United States and its citizens.
Perhaps the reporters just got it wrong. The involvement of Bumiller as one of the authors makes a reporting error not at all far fetched although my general impression of Stevenson as a reporter is far more favorable.
Secondly, Bumiller and Stevenson’s sources could have provided incomplete information. They might have mentioned only the failure to provide the President with the pictures when, in fact the President chastised Rumsfeld not only for that failure but also for the reasons listed above. That seems an unlikely possibility given the importance of the story and the fact that the White House authorized the release of the information.
Third, Rumsfeld might have briefed the President about the case in terms that did not suggest the extent, severity and nature of the abuse. The President and the White House sources may be using the failure to show the President the pictures as a shorthand way of saying that Rumsfeld misled the President (either by act or omission) about what actually happened. The White House may be trying to say that if the President had known the truth, he would have promptly taken action to correct the situation when Rumsfeld briefed the President in early February. If Rumsfeld knew the details of the abuse and failed to fully inform the President, then Rumsfeld must be fired immediately. As an aside, if that is what happened, how much would you have paid to be with the two of them at the party at Rumsfeld’ house the night Sixty Minutes II ran the pictures?
The final possibility is by far the most troubling. Perhaps Rumsfeld informed the President of the abuse in terms that made clear that Americans had subjected Iraqis to vile torture but the President was not concerned and took no action because he was not told that pictures existed that would make the abuse both public and indisputable.
That is a very unflattering portrait of President Bush. It does, however, fit with the George W. Bush depicted by Tucker Carlson in a 2000 profile in Talk magazine. National Review quotes the Carlson piece:
In the week before [Karla Faye Tucker's] execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask.Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them," he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like 'What would you say to Governor Bush?' "
"What was her answer?" I wonder."Please," Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "don't kill me."
Which is the more likely scenario? I do not know but I think that we will find out relatively soon.
If either of the first two possibilities (reporter error or source error), we will know very soon because the White House will issue a correction today. If the third possibility (Rumsfeld failed to brief Bush in a meaningful way) is true, it seems inconceivable that Rumsfeld will not soon decide that he would prefer to spend more time with his family.
The Times story notes:
Mr. Bush insisted that the defense secretary still had his full support. "Of course I've got confidence in the secretary of defense," Mr. Bush said in an interview with Al Hurra, an Arab television network…On Monday, Mr. Bush is scheduled to make a rare visit to the Pentagon, where he will meet with Mr. Rumsfeld on the defense secretary's turf, receive a briefing on Iraq and make a public statement.
White House officials said that the visit had been planned before the abuse scandal erupted, but they acknowledged that its timing was opportune for Mr. Bush to make a public show of support for Mr. Rumsfeld after the messy events of Wednesday.
I really, really hope that the last possibility is not the truth. If Mr. Bush knew about the torture, in detail, and did not care about it so long as it was not made public, he has shamed the office he occupies and the people of the nation he serves.
Posted by Dwight Meredith at May 6, 2004 07:08 AM | TrackBackMr. Rumsfeld will soon take a sabbatical...an extended leave of absence... be re-assigned... move to private industry.... move to academia... open a chain of car dealerships... but not be fired, oh heavens no! That might imply that a faith-based initiative somehow went astray, something God could never allow. So, though you may think you hear yelling, voices raised in anger, even fists being pounded on desks, that sound you hear coming from the Oval Office is really Mr. Rumsfeld learning the error of his ways -- led to the true path by the Rev. Mr. Bush -- his eyes are being opened -- Praise God! He sees the light! he sees -- he sees -- GOD WANTS HIM TO BUY A SONIC FRANCHISE IN MERIDIAN MISSISSIPPI!
Sorry. Got carried away with the Spirit...
Posted by: Johnny Bender at May 6, 2004 10:02 AMBlogospherians:
Mobilize your friends and simply ask them to email president@whitehouse.gov and demand that Rumsfeld be fired today. Also, express disgust at Bush's failure to act publically to clean out the cesspool immediately upon learning of the abuse. Information about the torture and mistreatment of prisoners has been in the blogs for months. Bush knew. If he didn't actually know, he still should be accountable. We, citizens, should not stand silent or we become accomplices too!
I keep thinking of Mabel King in the Broadway production of the Wiz, singing "Don't Nobody Bring Me No Bad News." I suspect that, for Mr. Tortured-Animals-as-a-Kid, the bad news was the proof, not the abuse itself.
Posted by: Elayne Riggs at May 6, 2004 02:29 PMbush doesn't give a crap one way or another......all he really cares about is his re-election
Posted by: charlie at May 6, 2004 03:46 PMYeah, watch the Sopranos or The Godfather series, and you'll get an idea of who we're dealing with. They don't care about anything except money and power.
Posted by: Vito at May 6, 2004 04:52 PMI agree. Bush should have acted publically to clean out the cesspool immediately upon learning of the abuse. We shouldn't have investigations such as the Army is conducting, which led to a report being cited to great effect by Seymour Hersh. We should have just acted. Fired some people, imprisoned others. Verdict first. Screw the rule of law.
Posted by: bull at May 6, 2004 05:14 PMUh, Bull, prisoner abuse and torture has been in the media since December 02, when the WaPo published a report on CIA interrogation methods at Bagram, Afghanistan, and DoD has been contacted by leading human rights groups since then. So, it took over a year to get the Pentagon to get off the dime. And then once the Taguba report comes out early 2004, three months later neither Rumsfeld nor Bush has taken time to read its 53 pages?
The bottom line is these atrocities have been known about for a long time, and BushCo didn't do squat til the nasty photos came out. Then he's all shocked--shocked! Completely full of shit.
As far as your sarcastic (I think) statement "screw the rule of law," that seems to be our attitude, insofar as concerns the Geneva Convention.
Posted by: rock of the westies at May 6, 2004 07:27 PMI am deeply puzzled by your apparent view that the failure to be briefed about the pictures should not have been relevant to Bush's reaction.
Absent the photos, we have a story about prison abuse being reported by some US soldiers and handled within the chain of command. One hopes that the President expressed his support for a comprehensive investigation, but at this point no one is alleging otherwise.
Add the photos to the story, and we have a public relations debacle. Don't you think they are an important part of the story separate from the procedural questions about the investigation? Mightn't Bush think so too?
Salon had this story last March, without the photos. Who knew?
A familiar blog was on this in mid-April, without photos.
I really do think the photos are an important part of the story separately from the abuse and the military's response to it.
Posted by: Tom Maguire at May 6, 2004 08:46 PMYou missed the most obvious reason that the photos were the crucial issue for Bush:
He's an ignorant, illiterate, incurious man-child.
Of course he had to see pictures. The words meant nothing to him, nothing. To process the words and conjure up a vision of the reality they represented simply isn't possible for Bush.
That would entail something like introspection, and then he would have seen, as others have pointed out, that these are hardly isolated incidents, but rather the logical and necessary outcome of the Bush Gulag that stretches from Guantanomo to Afghanistan.
As long as he only focuses on the photos, that's all he has to address.
Posted by: phein at May 6, 2004 09:59 PMNext time you place your hand on the gas pump to put gas in your tank and wait for 20 seconds, or use some petroleum product or derivative, think of where it came from and of these photos of destruction, death and misery. Ask yourself is it worth it? Do I really equate Arabs and animals?
Posted by: photos at May 6, 2004 10:31 PMI'm at the office right now so I can't provide a link, but MSNBC (I think it was) has a timeline showing that Bush was informed of the state of affairs in Abu Ghreib circa 13th January.
That's almost five months ago.
And, sadly, I think that puts Bush's remarks into context.
Posted by: Anarch at May 6, 2004 10:57 PMWill Bush fire Rumsfeld? No chance.
I'm guessing he's pissed because of the bad press - nothing else.
Did Bush chastize Rumsfeld? I doubt it.
Most likely, he had Rummy over to explain that he'd be the public whipping boy because the buck can't ever land on Bush's desk.
Posted by: Mark-NC at May 6, 2004 10:58 PMUh, rock, I was responding to the jerking knees I saw above and elsewhere: Bush should have acted in January! Well, he received a report of allegations of abuse in January. What is it that he should have done? Because an investigation was ongoing, that apparently wasn't enough. My post was merely extrapolating from that, uh, "logic."
Posted by: bull at May 7, 2004 08:37 AMBull, what could he have done?
Well, let's think. Perhaps he could have said, I hope you immediately separate those who are accused of these things from the Abu Ghraib prison. Or he could have said, holy sh*t, we have PRIVATE contractors doing military interrogations over there? Let's wind that program down! Or he could have said, hey, do you think it is a good idea to conduct interrogations in the same prison that Saddam conducted his interrogations in?
Three things he coulda said. But this is supposing he has common sense. The evidence for that isn't in yet.
Posted by: roger at May 7, 2004 09:37 AMThe implication of that suggestion is that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners is not, in and of itself, a big deal. It is only if the abuse can be indisputably documented and made public that Mr. Bush and the administration give a flip about abused Iraqis. As long as the prisoners were abused in private and no one knew, who cares?
As rock of the westies pointed out, it's obvious that the administration didn't care. Or rather, they did care. They wanted those prisoners to be abused. They were evildoers.
Add the photos to the story, and we have a public relations debacle.
Tom Maguire, the debacle was that the public didn't know about this. Without those photos the US public would be clueless.
I mean, do you suppose that the Iraqis didn't know? What effect do these practices have on Iraqi attitudes? (By "practices" I don't mean just Abu Ghraib, but our whole handling of detainees; our rules of engagement that have resulted in so many Iraqi civilian deaths; etc). Why do you think that Iraqi support for the US presence has plunged since the invasion?
Posted by: No Preference at May 7, 2004 06:55 PMAw, golly, Tom, who'd'a thunk the "the betrayal of everything we as a country stand for wasn't any big deal unless there was photographic evidence which would convince the american people and the world that we were running this war like a pack of adolescent barbarians" argument would have come from you?
I mean, other than me, of course.
Posted by: julia at May 7, 2004 09:27 PMI don't know about y'all...but I see cracks in the bushie armor. The stench from the bodies within is starting to stink.
Posted by: Steve Plonk at May 11, 2004 10:06 AM