Just minutes ago at a Pentagon press conference with General Pace, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked if the abuse of detainees was a systemic problem:
QUESTION: …I wonder if you would just respond to the suggestion that there is a systemic problem rather than the kinds of individual abuses we’ve heard of before?
RUMSFELD: I don’t believe there’s been a single one of the investigations that have been conducted, which has got to be six, seven, eight or nine…
PACE: Ten major reviews and 300 individual investigations of one kind or another.
RUMSFELD: And have you seen one that characterized it as systematic or systemic?
PACE: No, sir.
RUMSFELD: I haven’t either.
Oh really? Gen. John Abizaid — who overseas all U.S. forces in the region — had a different take when he testified under oath before the Senate Armed Services Committee last May:
From evidence already gathered, we believe that systemic problems existed at the prison that may have contributed to events there.
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