A quick one, while I finish a longer piece to post tonight:
Better (and certainly bigger) bloggers than I have already noted General Geoffrey Miller's truth-telling session before the Senate this week, which proved satisfactory in a perverse way to those of us who'd been agonized at his level of impunity -- even as he got off without a reprimand:
WASHINGTON - Interrogators subjected a suspected terrorist to abusive and degrading treatment, forcing him to wear a bra, dance with another man and behave like a dog, military investigators reported Wednesday, saying that justified their call for disciplinary action.
They said they recommended that Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller be reprimanded for failing to oversee his interrogation of the 9-11 suspect at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
But Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, commander of U.S. Southern Command, said he overruled their recommendation and will instead refer the matter to the Army's inspector general. Craddock concluded that Miller did not violate any U.S. laws or policies, according to officials familiar with the report.
The alert may remember this spanky-new commander at USSC: a name like Craddock, a bit more distinctive than the generic Miller or even Sanchez, certainly rang my bell.
You might remember that his name came up last month in conjuction not with Miller but with Sanchez, when the two generals' possible promotion was considered" a growing confidence that the military has put the abuse scandal behind it: "
Under current thinking, his replacement would be Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, a former senior military assistant to Mr. Rumsfeld who now heads the United States Southern Command in Miami.
"A former senior assistant to Mr. Rumsfeld." That's enough to highlight the old-boy-network (with a whiff of our federal Tom Hagen - see previous post) aspect of Craddock's decision:. With the added weight of the military command structure behind it: if Miller was reprimanded, the question could easily linger about who was minding the store while all this was going on. And that wouldn't go well in Senate confirmation hearings (though, with a SCOTUS fight imminent, they may save their fire).
If Craddock gets his mulled-over promotion, of course, the nominee to replace him is - no kidding -- Richardo Sanchez, who authorized the "Gitmo-izing" of Abu Ghraib. (My thoughts on that matter, including its explicit racist Latino-role-model twist, are here.) Of course, Sanchez did nothing wrong: the Army has already told us so. And if you believe that, you haven't been here lately. Or here. Or here, where Elizabeth Holtzman lays out inexquisite detail some of what should be done.)
Meanwhile General Craddock will make like Rove and find legalisms to come to the same conclusion about Miller -- while praying that the Army's Inspector General, to whom he punted, doesn't have the same attack of conscience that has led so many honorable officers to speak out.
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