More on Abu Ghraib and the Bush Adm. Playing Politics -- the Depravity of Power

From MSNBC:

In May 2004, at the height of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, a senior political Republican Party operative was given the reassuring word that Vice President Dick Cheney had taken charge, with his usual directness. The operative learned that Cheney had telephoned Donald Rumsfeld with a simple message: No resignations. We’re going to hunker down and tough it out.

Cheney’s concern was not national security. This was a political call—a reminder that the White House would seize control of every crisis that could affect the re-election of George Bush. The Abu Ghraib revelations, if left unchecked, could provoke more public doubt about the wisdom of the war in Iraq, and about the sometimes brutal intelligence operations that were used to wage it. The White House and Pentagon also would have to work together to prevent Congress and the press from unraveling an incendiary secret—that undercover members of an intelligence unit that operated in secret in the name of every American had been at Abu Ghraib. The senior leadership in the White House has been aware since January of the mess at Abu Ghraib, and, more importantly, of the fact that photographs and videotapes existed, and might someday reach the public. As we have seen, the military chain of command had ignored the possibility of higherup involvement and moved quickly to prosecute the military police who had committed the acts—“the kids at the end of the food chain,” as a former senior intelligence official put it: “We’ve got some hillbilly kids out of control.”

And here is a damning series of questions:

Some of the most important questions are not even being asked. How did they do it? How did eight or nine neoconservatives who believed that a war in Iraq was the answer to international terrorism get their way? How did they redirect the government and rearrange long-standing American priorities and policies with so much ease? How did they overcome the bureaucracy, intimidate the press, mislead the Congress, and dominate the military? Is our democracy that fragile?