The Gray Zone

Seymour Hersh should be given his Pulitzer now:

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focused on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq.

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq.

This should have been evident to anyone smart enough to realize that renegades in the military are few and far between. These guys followed orders.

Go read it and report back. It's a must.

P.S. This is unrelated, but I love the incidental music on CNN. They just played their "Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka Tribute" opening, and it included the poignancy of overturning racial segregation with the reflection of asking how far we've really come. All in seven notes. That's the Behind the Music I want to see. The composers of CNN. "The challenge was to give the feeling of the war on terror with full respect for the troops, while valuing all sides of the debate. So I thought, OBOE!"