[Dialogue] Cheney accused on prisoner abuse
Harry Wainwright
h-wainwright at charter.net
Wed Nov 30 13:12:28 EST 2005
Colleagues, I did not see this in any US America publication. It took my
going to the BBC to find it! Peace, Harry
_____
BBC NEWS
Cheney accused on prisoner abuse
A top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell has launched a stinging
attack on US Vice-President Dick Cheney over abuse of prisoners by US
troops.
Col Lawrence Wilkerson accused Mr Cheney of ignoring a decision by President
Bush on the treatment of prisoners in the war on terror.
Asked by the BBC's Today if Mr Cheney could be accused of war crimes, he
said: "It's an interesting question."
"Certainly it is a domestic crime to advocate terror," he added.
"And I would suspect, for whatever it's worth, it's an international crime
as well."
I look at the relationship between Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld as being one
that produced these two failures in particular, and I see that the president
is not holding either of them accountable... so I have to lay some blame at
his feet too
Col Wilkerson
This is an extraordinary attack by a man who until earlier in the year was
Mr Cheney's colleague in the senior reaches of the Bush team, the BBC's
Justin Webb in Washington says.
Col Wilkerson has in the past accused the vice-president of responsibility
for the conditions which led to the abuse of prisoners.
But this time he has gone much further, appearing to suggest Mr Cheney
should face war crimes charges, our correspondent adds.
Intelligence questions
He said that there were two sides of the debate within the Bush
administration over the treatment of prisoners.
Mr Powell and more dovish members had argued for sticking to the Geneva
conventions, which prohibit the torture of detainees.
Meanwhile, the other side "essentially wanted to do away with all
restrictions".
Mr Bush agreed a compromise, that "Geneva would in fact govern all but
al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda look-alike detainees".
"What I'm saying is that, under the vice-president's protection, the
secretary of defence [Donald Rumsfeld] moved out to do what they wanted in
the first place, even though the president had made a decision that was
clearly a compromise," Col Wilkerson said.
He said that he laid the blame on the issue of prisoner abuse and post-war
planning for Iraq "pretty fairly and squarely" at Mr Cheney's feet.
"I look at the relationship between Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld as being one
that produced these two failures in particular, and I see that the president
is not holding either of them accountable... so I have to lay some blame at
his feet too," he went on.
In the BBC interview, Col Wilkerson also developed his views on whether or
not pre-war intelligence was deliberately misused by the White House.
He said that he had previously thought only honest mistakes were made.
But recent revelations about doubts in the intelligence community that
appear to have been suppressed in the run-up to the war have made him
question this view.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/4480638.stm
Published: 2005/11/29 12:23:35 GMT
C BBC MMV
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