General McChrystal
Who was responsible for overseeing one of the worst torture and abuse centers in Iraq?
“Was the colonel ever actually there to observe this?” “Oh, yeah. He worked there. He had his desk there. They were working in a big room where the analysts, the report writers, the sergeant major, the colonel, some technical guys–they’re all in that room.”
To Garlasco, this is significant. This means that a full-bird colonel and all his support staff knew exactly what was going on at Camp Nama. “Do you know where the colonel was getting his orders from?” he asks. Jeff answers quickly, perhaps a little defiantly. “I believe it was a two-star general. I believe his name was General McChrystal. I saw him there a couple of times.” Back when he was an intelligence analyst, Garlasco had briefed Stanley McChrystal once. He remembers him as a tall Irishman with a gentle manner. He was head of the Joint Special Operations Command, the logical person to oversee Task Force 121, and vice-director for operations for the Joint Chiefs.
He’s now running Obama’s war.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/05/stanley-mcchrystal-a-history-of-torture
.html
Cheney’s boy…..how did this happen? Someone is sticking it to Obama?
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Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, describing McChrystal’s role in what he calls an “executive assassination wing” of the military’s joint special operations command that Hersh claims reported directly to Vice President Cheney’s office (NPR, March 30, 2009)
≈ Cross-posted from my diary — Gates Axes Top General in Afghan War ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."So we see who rules the American Military: Cheney.
Oui – thanks for the links – the assassination ‘wing’ is interesting. But not too surprising!
I can only conclude that Obama was not aware of this stuff.
Why would you feel forced to conclude that? Looking at Obama’s appointments and other actions in toto it does not seem at all like the only conclusions.
I don’t feel at all forced to this conclusion, and agree that you could easily conclude that Obama was aware but felt the appointment was necessary to appease the Pentagon hierarchy or that McChrystal’s experience was the solution to the US’s problems in Afghanistan.
But my conclusion is based on the view that the President – any President – doesn’t have the personal capacity or even the White House staff capacity to know everything about everyone. Senior people in the Pentagon no doubt thought McChrystal was the right person for the job and put him forward, presumably convincing the Defense Secretary before the President. It’s quite conceivable that if those nominating McChrystal knew of his torture connections, they didn’t see this as an issue worth informing the President about. After all, just like the NYT, very few in the Pentagon would have considered what happened under McChrystal to be torture anyway.
And at the moment, at least, I’m falling on the side of seeing Obama as decent enough not to appoint people who supervised or condoned torture if he knows they did so.
OK, thanks for the clarification. Unfortunately, looking at the sum of Obama’s decisions and actions, including his appointments, I don’t fall on the same side you do.