Sunday Reading

Sy Hersh's latest New Yorker piece about Abu Ghraib. We learn from Hersh that responsibility for the prisoner abuses goes straight to the top here, the result of a decision to apply an extra-legal interrogation program (Special Access Program) to the Iraqi prison system.

Rumsfeld and Cambone went a step further, however: they expanded the scope of the sap, bringing its unconventional methods to Abu Ghraib. The commandos were to operate in Iraq as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be treated roughly, and exposed to sexual humiliation.

"They weren't getting anything substantive from the detainees in Iraq," the former intelligence official told me. "No names. Nothing that they could hang their hat on. Cambone says, I've got to crack this thing and I'm tired of working through the normal chain of command. I've got this apparatus set up-the black special-access program-and I'm going in hot. So he pulls the switch, and the electricity begins flowing last summer. And it's working. We're getting a picture of the insurgency in Iraq and the intelligence is flowing into the white world. We're getting good stuff. But we've got more targets-prisoners in Iraqi jails-than people who can handle them."

Cambone then made another crucial decision, the former intelligence official told me: not only would he bring the sap's rules into the prisons; he would bring some of the Army military-intelligence officers working inside the Iraqi prisons under the sap's auspices. "So here are fundamentally good soldiers-military-intelligence guys-being told that no rules apply," the former official, who has extensive knowledge of the special-access programs, added. "And, as far as they're concerned, this is a covert operation, and it's to be kept within Defense Department channels."

Meanwhile let's check Matt's Blame Game to see just how far any of this has sunk in. Hmmmm that's not so encouraging. Also I should mention that last night, one of my dinner companions said to me, "Why are those people attacking us? I don't understand why they hate us." The sad point is that most of America remains soundly asleep and I remain certain that Bush will win this fall.