Pentagon Propaganda Shifts in High Gear to Protect Bush from War Crimes Allegation

How a Pentagon gaffe showed us the President is propped up by alot of sping and hype.

Here's a quick case study on what they do, and what you can do to not get fooled. The Pentagon unleashed the media spin to protect the President. In an interview with BBC, Pentagon spokesmen clearly indicated that they will go to any lengths to protect the President, even misleading the public with irrelevancies.

Grenada

The Pentagon's major flaw is characterizing the Abu Ghraib torture and killings as something that should be expected. The Pentagon erroneously argues that personnel in the military are not familiar with "POW Doctrine" as it was "so long ago."

This argument fails. Grenada, Somalia, Bosnia, and Gulf War I example of US forces being put into combat, and having to deal with detainees

Geneva Conventions

The other fiction perpetuated by the Pentagon to avoid war crimes allegations is the fantasy that the "war on terror" is a new war, unlike the Cold War.

If this argument were true [which it isn't], then we are tasked to embrace the fiction that international law only applies when the White House says it does. Such is fiction. The Geneva Conventions apply through Article VI of the US constitution, making all treaties the US has signed the supreme law of the land.

Further, the "change in war name" [from Cold to terror] is unrelated to whether or not the Geneva Conventions apply.

In addition, if we were to embrace the non-sense that "war on terror" is different, thereby "justifying doing something other than what we did during the Cold War," this presupposes that "what we did during the Cold War was in compliance with the Geneva Convention; and that our compliance with detainee rights was still a body of knowledge.

Indeed, it is the "sudden change of events" that is "making everyone so surprised" that the "old body of knowledge" is no longer useful; if this is the case, then "the old body of knowledge related to the Geneva Convention and the Cold War" still exists. The Pentagon has admitted that the "new body of knowledge" is still in its infancy.

The Pentagon has yet to explain how an "old body of knowledge" [that has not gone away, and is only replaced by something new and experimental] could suddenly vanish, yet nothing be left in its wake.

The real answer is that the Geneva Convention remains the law of the land; and the senior leadership knew or should have known that combat operations in Iraq would involve detainees; and they either failed to plan, or planned to torture.

Regardless the planning problems, the end result is that detainees were tortured; the senior leadership knew they had a responsibility to care for the detainees; and the leadership when developing the plan to fight in Iraq was aware, or should have known, the Geneva Convention and failed to adequately ensure the conditions and treatment were consistent with the law of the land.

Bush, through Article VI, could very well be impeached.

War Crimes of 300,000

The other fiction the Pentagon is spewing out is the non-sense that the War in Iraq has "alot of troops" and "the number of abuses relative to those troops is very small" so don't blame us.

That is far too convenient. First, note they are comparing apples and oranges. They use the 300,000 number [for the entire theater] and compare that to the "number of detainees" in an isolated area. One number is for combat; the actual location is a prison. The two are not related.

In fact, if we were to use the Pentagon's 300,000 number, we should be not looking at the abuses in just Abu Ghraib, but also throughout Iraq. Indeed, the Pentagon doesn't want this comparison.

Rather, it chimes in with "there is no evidence" [despite SSgts coming forward and admitting genocide, war crimes, and abuses on the Iraqi population], and the media is singing, "We hear nothing". No surprise given this is the same media that sung praises for the invasion, and now is blaming the public for "not speaking out enough." The media has no credibility.

No useful, reliable intelligence from torture

The other prong of the Pentagon's failed argument to defend Bush from War crimes is to embrace the illusion that "they got good things" from the abuses.

This does two things. The much maligned 9-11 report [meaning, "alot of people didn't like the message which raised questions about Bush] is conveniently "solved" by suggesting "the bad things that happened in Iraq" helped to "contribute" to a good outcome in the 9-11 report.

In short, the Pentagon is taking "a bad situation in Abu Ghraib" and switching the argument form the abuses to the "fruits of that torture" then suggesting "the fruits of the torture" actually made the 9-11 report [that they didn't like] into something positive.

Please, feel free to vomit now.

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