DevilMoon
passive stalker?
Registered: Jul 2000
Location: zanzibar
Posts: 10477 |
quote:
Q Mr. Secretary, General Myers said on Sunday that he had not seen the report. I don't believe you had seen the report even if -- I don't know if you have now. Isn't this something you would have liked to have been flagged about? This seems so different. It's had such a profound effect around the world, particularly the Arab world. Shouldn't you have known about that? And General Myers certainly knew about it because he asked "60 Minutes" to withhold the pictures, and still didn't read the report.
SEC. RUMSFELD: It's -- I guess the way to put it is that the department has been aware of it since it was first noticed, and up the chain of command we're told that there were investigations into alleged abuses as long ago as last January 16th. It takes time for reports to be finished -- correction -- to be gathered. This is a very comprehensive report. There are a number of -- I listed six investigations that are in various stages. And they move up in a process, as General Pace described. And it seems to me that the people who should be seeing it at each stage were seeing it at each stage.
Q But to plan for a response. I mean, it's been one week now since it was on "60 Minutes II." It's the first time we've heard you talk about it. In effect, the damage has already been done. There didn't seem to be a plan to even deal with this.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Are you critiquing the Department of Defense's PR handling of it? Is that what the question is?
Q I'll leave that to you.
SEC. RUMSFELD: I mean, the fact of the matter is that this is a serious problem. And it's something that the department is addressing.
quote:
Q Mr. Secretary, on Capitol Hill today there was quite a bit of anger expressed at the fact that they're just finding out about this now. I mean, Senator McCain said, quote, "It's a neglect of the responsibilities that Secretary Rumsfeld and the civilian leaders of the Pentagon to keep the Congress informed." Senator Levin said, quote, "It's been a month since that report has been available. It should have been sent to this committee immediately."
Congress says they were kept in the dark on this. And I know you've described the routine, ordinary way these things are handled, but given the extraordinary ramifications of what was going on here and the potential to undercut U.S. credibility and the whole policy of Iraq, shouldn't you have done a better job keeping Congress informed? At least they feel they should have been kept informed better.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, we informed the world on January 16th that these investigations were under way. It seems to me that that is a perfectly proper thing to do. The investigations were announced. The world knew it. It was briefed to the press and the world.
Q But you gave no idea of the scale of what –
SEC. RUMSFELD: We didn't know the scale.
quote:
Q General, a quick follow-up on that, please. Could you explain to us why the Taguba report was classified secret, no foreign distribution? Those of us who have read the report, there's clearly nothing in there that's inherently secret, such as intelligence sources and methods of troop movement. Was this kept secret because it would be embarrassing to the world, particularly the Arab world?
GEN. PACE: First of all, I do not know specifically why it was labeled secret. Potentially there are parts of the hundreds and hundreds of pages of documentation that are classified. I do not know that to be a fact, but normally we will classify a document at the highest level of anything that's in that document.
But as the secretary pointed out, immediately we told the world that we thought we had a problem. So there has been no attempt to hide this. What we've been trying to do is find out the truth of the matter so we can get on about correcting; finding out who did what, and then taking a proper action.
Q Mr. Secretary, can you say why it was classified secret? Do you know?
SEC. RUMSFELD: No, you'd have to ask the classifier.
quote:
Q Mr. Secretary, have you yet read the Taguba report?
SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah. You're -- I think you're talking about the executive summary. That's -- I've seen the executive summary, the –
Q Have you read through it, sir?
SEC. RUMSFELD: I've been through it. Whether -- have read every page -- no. There's a lot of references and documentation to laws and conventions and procedures and requirements. But I have certainly read the conclusions and the other aspects of it.
quote:
Q Just to follow up on Jamie's question, given the ramifications of not only what is in this report, the findings specifically, but the pictures, the photographs that you knew, as of a couple of weeks ago, were going to be broadcast, why did you not feel incumbent upon you at that time to ask for the findings, to take a look at the pictures beforehand, so you could perhaps be prepared to deal with some of the world reaction?
SEC. RUMSFELD: I think I did inquire about the pictures and was told that we didn't have copies.
(To staff.) Is that correct?
STAFF: We didn't have them here, that's for sure.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah, I didn't have them.
STAFF: We didn't.
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05-06-2004 07:52 AM
