INTELLIGENCE OFFICER SAYS BUSH ADMINISTRATION PUT ON THE PRESSURE

An Army intelligence officer claims the abuses at Abu Ghraib took place after interrogators came under pressure from Bush administration officials.

In a sworn statement to Army investigators obtained by USA Today, Army Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, the top military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib when abuses occurred, said he was under intense pressure from the White House, Pentagon and CIA last fall to get better information from detainees.

He also said he had worked out a procedure with CIA interrogators to hide five or six inmates from Red Cross inspectors in October, the newspaper reported in Friday editions.

Jordan's statement said he was reminded of the need to improve intelligence "many, many, many times" and the pressure included a visit to the prison by an aide to White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, the paper reported.

More here.

I don't know how any objective person could review recent news disclosures and not conclude that it is the attitude, the modus operandi, and the ideology of BushCo that has driven these terrible events. It does seem bizarre that the military wouldn't forward a shoot-down directive to its fighter pilots from Cheney on Sept. 11, but quickly picked up on Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice's terrorist interrogation philosophies:

But the commission's investigators found that while the shoot-down order had been relayed to the Pentagon, it had not been shared by Norad commanders with fighter pilots then in the skies over New York and Washington.

Their report found that one commander did not pass along the order ''because he was unaware of its ramifications," while two other officers said "they were unsure how pilots would, or should, proceed with this guidance."

I can just see BushCo frothing at the mouth about THAT failure to obey, and I'll bet they gave Gen. Myers an earful. Afterwards, no doubt the chain of command made sure that the will of the administration would be executed in every succeeding aspect of the "war on terra."