It goes to the top

The Utah Sheriff's Association executive director Lane McCotter helped build a "jail, prison, and corrections training system in Iraq." Why is this interesting? Because, as a reader of Left I on the News pointed out, this association published a newsletter that shows Mr. McCotter touring Abu Ghraib with U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Behind them, although not specified in the cut line, looks to be General Karpinski. It proves nothing, of course, but it looks to me like Wolfowitz was pretty hands-on in setting up the U.S. torture chambers. See the photo on page six here.

It goes to the top, as Phil has been pointing out. The latest post at Wealth Bondage points to ex-soldier Vitia:

I'll suggest that the events shown in these photographs are driven by a policy dictated from that same highest level: those who oppose American interests in any way -- from car theft to car bombings -- are terrorists and enemy combatants, and therefore deserve whatever they get, up to and including humiliation, torture, and murder. In other words, the Bush administration set the agenda, the CIA fell in line and dictated policy to Military Intelligence, who ran the prison and made sure that the MPs followed their line. These part-time soldiers, as despicable as they may be, hardly acted alone, but rather did what they did in an environment of comfort and encouragement, as we've seen from other pictures of the prison.