They Knew...

Steve Bates, The Yellow Doggerel Democrat, in a comment on this blog, stated that he hoped Bush would be "disgraced in front of the American public" like Nixon and forced to leave office. He also resurrected the term "high crimes and misdemeanors." There are so many things which could potentially blow up to give Steve his wish, but the situation in Iraq seems to be the one thing with the most potential.

The lies that got us there, the incompetent planning for the post-war period, the no-bid contracts to Halliburton, GITMO and abu Ghraib; they are all just ticking time bombs in Bush's second term.

Today, MSNBC has a report that could speed up the ticking of one of those bombs:

A confidential report to Army generals in Iraq in December 2003 warned that members of an elite military and CIA task force were abusing detainees, a finding delivered more than a month before Army investigators received the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison that touched off investigations into prisoner mistreatment.

[snip]

The investigation, by retired Col. Stuart A. Herrington, also found that members of Task Force 121 -- a joint Special Operations and CIA mission searching for weapons of mass destruction and high-value targets including Saddam Hussein -- had been abusing detainees throughout Iraq and had been using a secret interrogation facility to hide their activities.

[snip]

Herrington asked the officer [the officer in charge of a secret detention facility in Baghdad] whether he had alerted his superiors to the problem, and the officer replied: "Everyone knows about it."

And there's the rub, no? Everyone knows about it. Since this was a joint CIA - Army mission, at the very least, the Secretary of the Army and the Director of the CIA knew about this. These kinds of things are not just thrown together by even the Theater Commander. It's likely that the Secretary of Defense knew about it as well. And if Rummy knew...

Tick tick tick tick tick...