elementropy

Thursday, May 27, 2004

Feith Is Just Believing In Something You Know Couldnt Be True

From the New York Review:

'The Defense Department official responsible for occupation planning was the undersecretary for policy, Douglas Feith, a protégé of Richard Perle. Woodward says that Feith "appeared to equate policy with paper" and was not popular with the military. About Feith, General Tommy Franks was reported to have told colleagues, "I have to deal with the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth almost every day."'

Then read the whole of this speculative post by Josh Marshall, of which this is an excerpt:

[quoting the New York Times]"The memorandum criticizing the practice of keeping prisoners off the roster was signed by Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, and a James Bond, who is identified as "SOS, Agent in Charge." Military and intelligence officials said that they did not know of a Mr. Bond who had been assigned to Abu Ghraib, and that it was possible that the name was an alias.

An intelligence official said Monday that he could not confirm the authenticity of the document, and that neither "SOS" or "Agent in Charge" was terminology that the C.I.A. or any other American intelligence agency would use. A military official said he believed that the document was authentic and was issued on or about Jan. 12, two days before abuses at Abu Ghraib involving military police were brought to the attention of Army investigators."

[Marshall]'Isn't that Feith's nom de guerre when he's in the field? I need to make some calls on that.'