While president Bush was delivering a commencement address to Texas A & M graduates, exhorting the graduates to “develop a set of principles to live by—convictions and ideals to guide your course” and emphasizing character, conscience and role models, Washington Post readers were staring at an article with the following lead paragraph:
A bipartisan panel of senators has concluded that former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials bear direct responsibility for the harsh treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and that their decisions led to more serious abuses in Iraq and elsewhere.
The report goes on:
In the most comprehensive critique by Congress of the military’s interrogation practices, the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report yesterday that accuses Rumsfeld and his deputies of being the authors and chief promoters of harsh interrogation policies that disgraced the nation and undermined U.S. security. The report, released by Sens. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), contends that Pentagon officials later tried to create a false impression that the policies were unrelated to acts of detainee abuse committed by members of the military.
The report states that “The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of ‘a few bad apples’ acting on their own,” and states as fact that “senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”
Not only did the panel that released the report have former Republican presidential candidate John McCain as co-Chairman, it also included 12 Republicans among its 25 members.
The panel, without a single dissent, declared that the Bush administration’s rationale for torture, the one that inflicting humiliation and pain on detainees was “legal and effective, and helped protect the country,” was not only flawed, but that such policies “damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.”
Former Republican presidential candidate, John McCain said, “These policies are wrong and must never be repeated.”
According to the Post, a Rumsfeld aide, of course, tried to smear Senator Levin by saying:
“It’s regrettable that Senator Levin has decided to use the committee’s time and taxpayer dollars to make unfounded allegations against those who have served our nation,” and accused Levin of pursuing a politically motivated “false narrative” that is “unencumbered by the preponderance of the facts.”
The White House declined comment, but Bush told the Texas A&M graduates under applause “If you go home at night, look in the mirror and be satisfied that you have done what is right, you will pass the only test that matters.”
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.