Monday, May 17, 2004

Best denial since Ari
The statement from DoD spokesperson Lawrence Di Rita casting doubt on Sy Hersh's latest revelations really deserves a prize. This is the best bit of bureaucratic non-denying denial that I've seen since Ari Fleisher retired. After nice tough sounding lines like "outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture" he gets to the prize winner:
No responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any program that could conceivably have been intended to result in such abuses as witnessed in the recent photos and videos.

Wow. No one "approved any program... intended to result in... abuses." Really!? That wasn't the whole intent of the program. And I thought it went something like this:

Rumsfeld: Paul we need a program that violates international treaties and all standards of civilized human behavior. Something that will bring shame and humiliation to the US armed forces and the people of the US as a whole. It needs to be outrageous and disgusting, yet capable of corrupting even the best intentioned soldiers. Can you take care of this for me?

Cambone: You can count on me boss. I'll even make sure it produces unpleasant visuals that can dominate the news cycle for weeks.

Rumsfeld: Yeah. That's kind of thinking that will take you places in this administration.

Di Rita assures us that's not how we got into this mess.

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