Keywords

Waco

Politics

Who is Army Chief of Staff Peter J. Schoomaker? He is one of the Rumsfeld underlings” who gave testimony before congress about Abu Ghraib. David Neiwert gives us the scoop:

Schoomaker’s name may be familiar. Regular readers will recall it coming up in the context of a discussion of how the misadventure in Iraq stands as stark testament to the Bush administration’s massive failure to address terrorism seriously or competently. Schoomaker, you see, was one of the military advisers who played a key role in the way the 1993 Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas, turned into a nightmarish disaster that wound up inspiring a fatal wave of domestic terrorism.

What’s noteworthy in the current context is that Schoomaker appears to have later given false testimony to Congress, during the Danforth Committee hearings about Waco, regarding both his presence at the FBI command and control site at Waco, as well as his input regarding the final gassing plan — that is, the disastrous one implemented, which was not the one approved by the FBI and Attorney General Janet Reno.

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