*Much of the information in the report of the 9/11 Commission was provided through more than 30 sessions of torture of detainees.

immediately follows two paragraphs that cite sources

*Two U.S. intelligence officers confirm that Vice President Cheney’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner, a former intelligence official for Saddam Hussein, who was suspected to have knowledge of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection.

*The former chief of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, in charge of interrogations, tells The Daily Beast that he considered the request reprehensible.

Granted, Windrem uses the passive voice and does not attribute that third paragraph about torture for the 9/11 Commission directly to any of the three sources, but he certainly strongly implies that the information comes from them.

How can you have 400 soldiers running around amok without at least some people up the chain of command not knowing?

You can’t. That’s why the commanders are in deep serious shit here. As Mary lays out above, if you’ve got 400 soldiers who are out of hand, it’s because their commanders let ‘em off leash.

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2006/01/12/636/30120

And he did go to “GITMOize” Iraq.

And Papas getting an immunity deal with some background murmers that he had the CIA locked in on going down with him bc of the Jamal killing.

Odierno’s crew was tied to a lot of things, including the incident where soldiers took two guys, tied their hands and had them jump off a bridge, reportedly to the death of one and the evidence that their commanding officer told them to go kill some guys in retaliation for an American soldier who had been killed. Officer and underlings walked There’s also the spec that CIA was very tied in with the death of the Iraqi general who was suffocated in the sleeping bag torture with stories that CIA was getting access to him as well and using some old Hussein insurgents, maybe MEK, to “interrogate” him (this is a guy who turned himself in) and the death might have been partly related to injuries from those sessions that the soldier who was suffocating him may not have known about.

So lots of tangled threads.

pretty much in agreement on that

I agree that the pics would complicate SOFA negotiations, but I still think the principle worry is what effect those pics would have here.

Protecting the likes of Odierno and McChrystal is only necessary because Obama has retained the command personnel (from Gates on down) that he inherited from Bush. How Obama expects to end the war and detainee abuse with that approach boggles the imagination. One wonders whether Obama really has turned to the dark side in all things military and intelligence related, or is so unfamiliar with personnel that he requires the time to figure out who to put in place instead.

I fail to see what Obama has to gain by protecting these people, when it is so clear that he has a lot to lose in terms of popular support in the long run if he appears to be aiding and abetting torturers. Torture isn’t going to go away. Obama needs to step up and bat for the right team. His lack of courage here is deeply worrying.

I also think it’s clear that the tactics in Afghanistan are going to be leading to more deaths – Obama doesn’t want anyone to claim those are because of his release of the photos (let them go after the judge instead – he’s happy with that – did I mention SOB somewhere?)

Then you have Odierno and his possible ties with the photos. Not all that appetizing to be revisiting the role or roles of your top dog in Iraq and his 4th infantry command, especially if anything highlights any of the issues like hostage taking for which there has never been investigation or punishment.

Then you have the fact that Obama and the Pentagon lie by implication when they say that there was only a small handful of people involved in detainee abuse – there has NEVER BEEN ANY investigation of MI (read Fear Up Harsh and all the things he tried to do and report and writes about in the book, all with no investigation or response and that wasn’t a part of the Rumsfeld program). If pics show anyone who is MI and not MP, how do you keep the lie of investigations and punishments alive?

Then you have the fact that if you are out there with the pictures released, constantly trying to sell the storyline that 400 soldiers were disciplined in connection with those photos, invariably someone is going to ask, things like a) why were we told in the AG trials it was just a small handful of soldiers there when, on just the things people were stupid enough to photograph, there over 400 soldiers involved; b) how come over 400 soldiers were ok to punish but you won’t even open an investigation of Rumsfeld or the CIA; or b) where were the officers?

And that’s a quickie shortlist.

OTOH, no matter how long you make the list, though, it doesn’t excuse what he’s doing. It just shows that he hasn’t come to grips with all the layers in any real or substantial way that will give him a gameplan.