We seem to have different interpretations on the RFE interviews.

1. With regards to closing down Gitmo, what the General said was: "With respect to Guantanamo, I think that the closure in a responsible manner, obviously one that is certainly being worked out now by the Department of Justice .......sends an important message to the world, as does the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees. " To me, that means he agrees the detainee problem should not be a Department of Defense (DOD) problem, but should be a Department of Justice (USDOJ) problem, and that DOD should not be maintaining any long-term detainee facility. He is all for the Attorney General inheriting the detainee problem and getting it off the DOD plate.

2. With regards to interrogation techniques, what the General said was: "I have long been on record as having testified and also in helping write doctrine for interrogation techniques that are completely in line with the Geneva Convention. And as a division commander in Iraq in the early days, we put out guidance very early on to make sure that our soldiers, in fact, knew that we needed to stay within those guidelines." He never said anything about which interrogation techniques he considered as violating the Geneva Convention, only that the Geneva Convention sets the boundaries for what can and cannot be employed in interrogation. His choice of words was very careful, in that he did not specifically say that water-boarding violated the Geneva Convention, and did not rule out its future use.

The General is a very precise person. One must read the interview without adding any inference or desired language to his answers.

Also, RFE questions would have been submitted prior to the interview, and the General's answers were definitely scripted and vetted prior to broadcast and publication. That is normally what happens when a key administration official finds him/herself in a position for a structured interview or committee testimony. While he may be his own man, he is still a member of the administration (as a DOD officer) and any appearance before any forum - and what his comments may be - are subject to prior approval of his superior (in this case, the Secretary of Defense). Should his vetted answers be contrary to the position of the Secretary of Defense (or higher), the interview would have been canceled. That is how it works.