Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Feith Bails From Congressional Hearing On Torture, Refuses To Appear With Wilkerson.

Thinkprogress:

Today, the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Rights held a hearing on abusive interrogation to look at the role of administration lawyers in crafting policies allowing the torture of detainees.

Former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith was scheduled to testify today about his role in vigorously pushing to eliminate the standards of the Geneva Conventions and making the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay a “Geneva-free zone.” However, at the opening of the hearing, subcommittee chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) declared that Feith “withdrew from the hearing.” Nadler explained:

Despite his prior commitment to testify, this morning, Mr. Feith informed this committee through his counsel that he would not appear today because he is not willing to appear alongside one of our other witnesses.

Sources on Capitol Hill told ThinkProgress that Feith was afraid to appear with Colin Powell’s former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson, who was also testifying today. After leaving the State Department in protest over Bush’s policies, Wilkerson became an outspoken critic of Bush’s foreign policy and aggressively criticized Feith’s incompetence. From a speech to the New America Foundation in 2005:

Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, whom most of you probably know Tommy Franks said was the stupidest blankety-blank man in the world. He was. Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man.

Read what Feith was so afraid of in Wilkerson's opening testimony here.

1 comment:

airJackie said...

Feith couldn't even get his story right when he was interviewed about his book. He is a flake and as stupid as can be. Now I do understand why Bush/Cheney hired him as it's easy to guide a dummy. For 7 years he thought he was somebody and Cheney used it as much as possible. Now when the stuff its the fan Cheney will blame Feith.