Thursday, February 04, 2010

Rummy sent Bush 2005 WSJ op-ed dismissing torture allegations

Raw Story:

Amidst a new batch of torture-related documents released to
the American Civil Liberties Union on Monday, a letter bearing former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's signature stands out.

On October 25, 2005, Rumsfeld wrote to President George W. Bush, "Attached is an article on the subject of detainees that came from a staff reporter of the Wall Street Journal, which I think covers the subject pretty dam [sic] well."

The letter (pdf link) contains a copy of an October 5, 2005 editorial written by the Wall Street Journal's Robert L. Pollock entitled "The 'Torture Narrative' Unravels."

"It's hardly a secret that Pfc. Lynndie England was sentenced last week for her role as 'leash girl' in the infamous abuses photographed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in late 2003," Pollock wrote in 2005. "But it was also noticeable that the denouement of this spectacular story was relegated to the innards of newspapers that had once given it weeks of front-page treatment. That's almost surely because the trial of the last of the Maryland Army Reservists to face justice--like those of the others that came before her--offered no evidence to support claims that the abuses were caused by a Bush administration that had 'created the climate' or 'set the tone' for 'torture.'"

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