They honestly thought they could keep a lid on it

Your lies will catch up to you, as we all know. Rummy & Bush automatically claimed not to know about the torture in Abu Ghraib when confronted with it, which made those of us who figure that Bush can't open his mouth without falsehoods escaping decide that odds are he or Rumsfeld or both signed off on it. Sadly, it looks like we're right.
But c'mon! We all knew it had to be this way! The military makes a big deal out of hierarchy and it's unlikely that such widespread use of torture could have gone unreported. And we know that neocons are downright enamored of the "by any means necessary" philosophy, so much so that they are quick to employ the worst means at the first sign that they could conceivably be necessary. (Not that I think torture is ever necessary, but if you listen to the bile that is pouring out the right wing punditry right now, it's easy to figure that they think, or at least hope, that torture is a useful tool.)
What makes me furious is how Bush allows this to happen, no doubt fed by our national inability to perceive that dark-skinned foreigners might actually be human beings, and then turns around and plays the martyr, defending Iraqis against racist liberals. Well, that's a story that will be changed soon. I wonder what the next justification will be for the war. They might be out of lies to justify themselves. But they can't come clean either, as coming clean seems to be against the BushCo nature.
Of course, they're sticking to their lie. And they will stick to it no matter how many whistle-blowers step forward. After all, it's a strategy that worked so well for Nixon....

Via August Pollak.