Hillary: Abuse Scandal Goes 'All the Way up the Chain of Command'

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that blame for the Iraqi prison abuse scandal goes beyond the military prison guards directly involved, maintaining instead that responsibility for any wrongdoing "goes all the way up the chain of command."

"The bottom line is that leadership has to be responsible and held accountable and that is not just in the prison in Baghdad," Clinton told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

"That goes all the way up the chain of command," she insisted.

Complaining that "the information forthcoming so far [about the scandal] has been totally insufficient," Sen. Clinton said that she and other Democrats are "demanding public hearings with Secretary Rumsfeld as soon as possible."

Reminded by Blitzer that interrogation practices like "putting hoods over the heads of prisoners, prisoner sleep deprivation, food deprivation, humiliation . . . have been used for as long as prisoners in wars have been interrogated," Clinton said that the U.S. needed to be careful not to treat Iraqi terrorist suspects too harshly.

"I don't care whether it's military or civilian," she told CNN. "Anyone acting on behalf of our government is supposed to abide by certain rules and regulations. Clearly, there are interrogation methods that are deemed appropriate but what we have seen on our television screens in no way can be considered appropriate or necessary or frankly even effective."

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