For Immediate
Release: Thursday, May 14, 2004
Contact: Bob
Weiner 301-283-0821 or 202-329-1700
IRAQI PRISONS:
BUSH BLAMED
(Washington, DC)
-- "President Bush's
direction of 'Bring-em-on,' 'We'll get him dead or alive,' and
do-what-we-want
and the rest of the world be damned trickled down from him to Defense
Secretary
Rumsfeld to military intelligence to prison guards, causing the
prisoner abuse
scandal," asserts Democratic strategist and former White House Drug
Policy and
House Government Operations Committee public affairs director Robert
Weiner.
"Yes,
Bush bears blame for the prison scandal," Weiner argues in a statement
today. "Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's
surprise trip to
Baghdad to speak at Abu Ghraib Prison was an impressive attempt to
rescue U.S.
military morale during the scandal. But to say to the people at
THAT
prison that 'you're doing a great job' when many there may turn out to
have
been complicit or tolerant of what was
going on will come back to haunt Rumsfeld and his boss."
"Many are
calling for Rumsfeld to resign
because of the culture of intimidation and the lack of disciplined
oversight he
clearly instigated and allowed in Iraq, leading to the current mess.
But if
this linkage and potential blame are true for Rumsfeld, why are they
not even
truer for President Bush?" Weiner asks.
Weiner
also asserts a larger-than-reported scandal: "Do any of us
really believe that
seven soldiers and six officers are
all who are involved, that intelligence officials didn't order and
guide and
support the methods of interrogation, and that our highest-ups didn't
know that
it's just Abu Ghraib, when we've heard similar complaints about Cuba's
Guantánamo for two years and about other Iraq and Afghanistan prisons
since
the war
began?" He intimates possible Bush
direct knowledge: "Hasn't the White House proudly pointed out that
President
Bush receives an intelligence briefing every morning -- by the agency
that
oversees obtaining intelligence in the Iraq prisons, the very
intelligence
gathering area which usurped the traditional prison chain of command
over the
interrogators of the detainees?"
Weiner argues,
"To Rumsfeld's vehement assertion that 'the military, not the media'
revealed
the
allegations, we need a little common sense here: Yes, the military had a
news
conference in January but it was not until '60 Minutes II' aired the
photographs last week, and world media repeated the story while all
recoiled in
horror, that the full U.S. apology and corrective action machine swung
into
motion, a gasp to put a new wrapper on a public-relations disaster. I
fear
minimalism in our response when even now, U.S. officials refuse to
reveal the
rest of the photos until the media does."
"It was equally
distressing
to watch DOD's muzzling of General Taguba, who wrote the report on the
Abu
Ghraib prison, in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee on May
11, with
DOD insisting that he be surrounded by a higher ranking general and a
DOD
official who interrupted his answers so that he could barely get out
his
points. It is important to note that the White House clears
congressional
hearing strategy and testimony for administration witnesses," Weiner
concludes.
(This
statement was issued by Robert Weiner Associates Public Affairs and
Issue
Strategies, tel. 301-283-0821 or 202-329-1700)