Douglas Feith On Torture: "Some People Do Bad Things"

At a hearing about interrogation techniques in Guantanamo, the former Under Secretary of Defense explains away abuse:

After going back and forth with Feith -- in which Feith conceded there were indeed abuses in Defense Dept. detention and interrogation operations -- Rep. Bobby Scott (D.-Va) asked why the abusers might think they could torture detainees. "I don't believe they necessarily did think they did" have authority to torture, Feith said. "Some people do bad things."

A former Human Rights First attorney, Deborah Perlstein, gently read into the record the testimony of a Chief Warrant Officer tried for murder at Abu Ghraib. The individual in question said that he thought he was allowed to suffocate a detainee in a sack because of "a memo written by Gen. Sanchez," the U.S. commander in Iraq from 2003 to 2004, who in September 2003 accepted a series of suggestions from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, then the Guantanamo commander, to "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib. Miller's trip to see Sanchez, of course, occurred on behalf of and with the full knowledge of the Defense Dept.

"I don't think there's a dispute that people misbehaved," Feith said defiantly.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[S1m0n]

Why, so they do, Doug.

So they do.

[pmorlan]

Can anyone get the Feith testimony that's on the cspan website to play? I've tried twice and it won't play. I'm starting to wonder about this testimony because cspan said it was going to broadcast this hearing on cspan this morning at 4 a.m. I set my alarm to watch the hearing but I didn't get up until 5 a.m. At 5 a.m. the banking hearing was on cspan, not the Feith hearing. According to the cspan video on their website the hearing should have been 3 hours long so they evidently did not rerun the Feith hearing at 4 a.m. or it would have still been on at 5 a.m. when I tuned in. I'm starting to wonder if there was something in this hearing that someone doesn't want us to see again.

http://www.c-span.org/

[NYC07]

"Some people do bad things."

And they're always Republican Neo-Cons.

[leftLibertarian]

I would like to do bad things to Feith. Give me 5 minutes with him; that's all I'll need.

[SeriousBlack]

When you look at this guy's picture, don't you want to just backhand him across the freakin' room? (I mean, above and beyond his abject stupidity and his role in getting us mired in Iraq...)

[plainsman]

Someone needs to erase his memory and personality and concept of time and space, and after he's sucking on his thumb, ask him questions.

[FogBelter]

"During his time in the Pentagon in the Reagan administration, Feith was instrumental in getting the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Weinberger and Shultz all to recommend (successfully) to the President not to ratify changes to the Geneva Conventions. The changes, known as Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, would have allowed non-state militants to be treated as combatants and prisoners of war even if they had engaged in practices that endangered non-combatants or otherwise violated the laws of war."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Feith

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE5D7143BF935A25751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

Douglas Feith empowered some people to do bad things.

[sandiaview]

He needs to be tortured for doing bad things.

[CaptainHowdy]

Excerpt: http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2374266

There is ample evidence that a number of prominent militants"including al-Qaeda deputy commander Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and the late al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi"endured systematic torture at the hands of the Egyptian and Jordanian authorities, respectively (see Terrorism Monitor, May 4, 2006). Many observers believe that their turn toward extreme radicalism represented as much an attempt to exact revenge against their tormentors and, by extension, the United States, as it was about fulfilling an ideology. Those who knew Zawahiri and can relate to his experience believe that his behavior today is greatly influenced by his pursuit of personal redemption to compensate for divulging information about his associates after breaking down amid brutal torture sessions during his imprisonment in the early 1980s [3]. For radical Islamists and their sympathizers, U.S. economic, military, and diplomatic support for regimes that engage in this kind of activity against their own citizens vindicates al-Qaeda"s claims of the existence of a U.S.-led plot to attack Muslims and undermine Islam. In al-Qaeda"s view, these circumstances require that Muslims organize and take up arms in self-defense against the United States and its allies in the region.

[lthuedk_1]

From Cheney's shovel to Feith's mind to the justification for lethal preemption.

http://www.light-to-dark.com/the_feith_filter.html

[Krikkit]

Now here's one man I would pay to see get some of his own medicine. What a truly henous and dispicable sub-human.

[Collielady]

"Some people do bad things." Rummy said, "stuff happens". That's neocon philosophy in a nutshell - unless bad things happen to them. They wet themselves just thinking about getting hurt. It's who they are.

[ggmome]

'Bad things' like giving birth to someone like you...

[Rule Of Law]

I'd bet money that all the cats in his neighborhood have mysteriously disappeared. He is a soulless simulacrum of a human being, and the idiot face of a culture that thinks itself beyond any of the rules of common decency.

[SeriousBlack]

Well-stated, Rule. (Much better than I did lol)

[Krikkit]

He's the poster child for the mediocrity of evil.

[harriscrl3]

Yes even 15 year olds. I saw that torture tape it made me want to vomit. We are becoming the monsters we are trying to capture.

[Krikkit]

Let's not lump "we" in with "them." I don't belong to the same species as this toad.