Pols: Show all abuse pix, videos :: Namibia Internet Gateway cc ::

Articles: Pols: Show all abuse pix, videos

Posted by admin on Monday, May 10, 2004 - 02:30 AM

WASHINGTON - As Congress gears up for another public hearing tomorrow on the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are demanding that the Pentagon immediately make public all photos and videotapes depicting the illegal acts.
``For God sakes, let's talk about it, because men and women's lives are at stake given how we handle this,'' Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on ``Meet the Press.'' ``I want to get it all out on the table.'' Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said failure to immediately disclose the picture would send the ``wrong signal'' both at home and to the Arab world. ``One thing I know about scandals: They go on and on and on until the American people feel they have a full and complete picture of what happened,'' McCain said on ``Fox News Sunday.'' ``And to hold back these pictures, or to hold back the videos . . . is foolish.'' McCain also called for top military officials to be more forthcoming about how far up the chain of command responsibility goes. Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said his panel will hold another hearing tomorrow that will reveal ```a considerable portion of additional evidence.'' Warner said Pentagon officials told him they will provide all the photos to Congress, but on a classified basis. Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) questioned whether Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should keep his job in the wake of the scandal. ``Over the next couple of weeks, the president's going to have to make some hard choices,'' he said on CBS's ``Face The Nation.'' Hagel also said he's ``not sure'' if the United States can still win the war in Iraq, given the chaos there now. Both Bay State senators have also called for Rumsfeld to step down. Bush rebuked him privately last week but vowed to keep him on. And late Saturday Vice President Dick Cheney released a statement calling him ``the best secretary of defense the United States has ever had.'' ``People ought to get off his case and let him do his job,'' Cheney said. But Graham criticized his fellow Republican for the statement. ``As to the White House, please don't say things like you should get off his back,'' Graham said. ``Nobody is on his back. We have an independent duty to look at this.'' Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) said the scandal was just one part of larger problems with U.S. policy in Iraq. ``This is an issue of presidential leadership and national policy,'' Bayh told Fox News. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said U.S. guards were told to ``soften up'' the inmates in a systematic effort to extract information from them.'' He added that the blame may reach all the way to President Bush [related, bio] for failing to clearly state whether the Geneva Conventions applied to prisoners. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark [related, bio], who made a failed bid for the Democratic presidential nomination earlier this year, also said the scandal goes ``right to the top,'' and asked how hard Bush was pushing for intelligence. Clark estimated there's a ``two to one chance of a catastrophic early end to this mission.'' ``That means the Iraqi people will simply say, `We want the Americans out of here.' You'll see a large outpouring of public animosity in Baghdad and elsewhere, a million Iraqis demonstrating in the streets of Baghdad against us.''

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