neoconservadroid

In a coda to his worth-reading series, High Plains Grifter: The Life and Crimes of George W. Bush, Jeffrey St. Clair writes:

As Seymour Hersh discloses in Chain of Command, the decision to invade Iraq, high on the agenda of the neo-cons in Cheney's office and the Pentagon since the election, had been given the greenlight almost immediately after the planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. At 2.40 in the afternoon on September 11, Rumsfeld convened a meeting of his top staffers. According to notes taken by an aide, Rumsfeld declared that wanted to "hit" Iraq, even though he well knew that Iraq was not behind the attack. "Go massive," ordered Rumsfeld. "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

For Rumsfeld and his gang, 9/11 was an opportunity more than a hardship. It augured a war without end, a war without rules, a war without fiscal constraints, a war where anything was permitted and few questions asked. Almost immediately the Secretary of Defense conjured up his own personal hit squad, Joint Task Force-121, which he endearingly refers to as his "manhunters." Though we wouldn't hear about it for months, this operation launched the kidnappings, wholesale round-ups, assassinations, and incidents of torture that are only now coming partially to light.

Of course, it can't all be pinned on Rumsfeld and his band of bureaucratic thugs. It goes right to the top. On February 7, 2002, Bush signed an executive order exempting captured members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban from the protections of the Geneva Conventions. With that stroke of the pen, Bush affixed his imprimatur to the prosecution of his wars unbound by the constraints of international law. That secret imperial decree set into motion the downward spiral of sadism-as-government-policy which led directly to the torture chambers of Camp Cropper and Abu Ghraib and obliterated the last molecule of moral authority from Bush's global war. Of course, such concerns are mere trifles to these cruise missile crusaders.