This is just sickening- there’s no other word for it- Rummy today:

“But let me just say this: I have read this — editorials, “torture” — and one after another. Washington Post the other day — I forget when it was — just a great, bold “torture.”

The implication — think of the people who read that around the world. First of all, our forces read it. And the implication is that the United States government has, in one way or another, ordered, authorized, permitted, tolerated torture. Not true. And our forces read that, and they’ve got to wonder, do we? And as General Pace said, we don’t. The President said people will be treated humanely, and that is what the orders are. That’s what the requirements are.

Now, we know that people have done some things they shouldn’t do. Anyone who looks at those photographs know that. But that’s quite a different thing. And that is not the implication that’s out there. The implication that’s out there is the United States government is engaging in torture as a matter of policy, and that’s not true. Think of the second group of people who see it. All those people in the region and in Iraq and in Afghanistan, that we need their cooperation, we need their help, the people in those countries, the people in the neighboring countries, and think how unhelpful that is for them to gain the inaccurate impression that that is what’s taking place.

Third, think of the people who, for whatever — whenever — today, tomorrow, next year — capture an American civilian or American military personnel and will use all those headlines about torture and the impact in the world that people think that’s what’s taking place, and use that as an excuse to torture our people. So this is a very serious business that this country’s engaged in.

Now, we’re in a war, and I can understand that someone who doesn’t think they’re in a war or aren’t in a war, sitting in an air-conditioned room someplace can decide they want to be critical of this or critical of that, or misstate that or misrepresent something else, or be fast and loose with the facts. But there’s an effect to that, and I think we have to be careful. I think people ought to be accountable for that, just as we’re accountable.”

He’s not angry about the torture so much as the press reporting it and following the story up to the point where he is implicated. He’s unhappy that the press is doing it’s job- exposing his corruption, his evil deeds.

If our soldiers are tortured when captured as revenge the blame doesn’t lie with the press, it lay with morons who not only allowed but encouraged this behavior- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice.

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