No sooner than I had posted my take on the latest news about Abu Gharaib and the ongoing scandal of how this administration decided to play fast and loose with the Constitution, international treaties and international law, when the Washington post came out with this article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45319-2004Aug29.html
I have it excerpted at the "Buddhist dialogue group:"
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/buddhist_dialogue_group/message/23689 If you want to read more later.
The below report shows just how much the latest report represents an
intermediate step in the unravelling of the Top Governments role in
the Abu Gharaib scandal. A clear chain of command link can be
identified between Dick Cheney, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, General
Sanchez and Pappas. This is not a mere case of the top officials
writing a "policy that was not clear" but of them writing a policy
that was sufficiently vague enough so that they could later deny that
they advanced it -- which is a different animal all together.
Again, my readings on the behavior of dictatorships in other
countries shows that the same pattern usually occurs. The top brass
writes rules that are vague enough so that they can later deny ever
writing them.
Fortunately, so far, we are lacking the next step. When the Brass
starts labelling those who try to expose their behavior as enemies
and arresting, disapearing, discrediting or killing them as well as
their previous declared enemies:
Documents Helped Sow Abuse, Army Report Finds
Top Officials Did Not Make Interrogation Policies Clear
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 30, 2004; Page A01
"Early last September, attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq were spiking
and an Army general dispatched from a military prison at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, concluded in a classified study that the detention of
Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad 'does not yet set
conditions for successful interrogations.'"
"Under pressure to extract more information from the prisoners --
to "go beyond" what Army interrogation rules allowed, as an Army
general later put it -- the senior U.S. military commander in Iraq
sent a secret cable to his boss at U.S. Central Command on Sept. 14,
outlining more aggressive interrogation methods he planned to
authorize immediately."
"The cable signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez listed several dozen
strategies for extracting information, drawn partly from what
officials now say was an outdated and improperly permissive Army
field manual. But it added one not previously approved for use in
Iraq, under the heading of Presence of Military Working
Dogs: "Exploit Arab fear of dogs while maintaining security during
interrogations."
"Sanchez's order calling on police dog handlers to help intimidate
detainees into talking -- a practice later seen in searing
photographs -- was one of a handful of documents written by senior
officials that Army officials now say helped sow the seeds of prison
abuse in Iraq. They did so, according to an Army report released
Wednesday, by lending credence to the idea that aggressive
interrogation methods were sanctioned by officers going up the chain
of command"
"But the issue of using dogs is also an example of how the U.S.
military's ad hoc and informal decision-making in Iraq created
confusion and allowed these harsh methods to infiltrate from
Afghanistan to Guantanamo and finally to Iraq, despite Bush
administration contentions that detainees in each theater of conflict
were subject to different rules and that Iraqis would receive the
most protections."
"The text of the Sanchez cable was not included in public copies of
the Army's report, but was obtained by The Washington Post from a
government official upset by what Sanchez approved."
"The authors of the Army report did not accuse Sanchez of directly
instigating abuse, and they did not cite the contents of his memo in
the unclassified version. But Army Gen. Paul J. Kern -- who oversaw
the drafting of the report -- said in an interview last week that
Sanchez "wrote a policy which was not clear," and that by doing so,
he allowed junior officers to conclude mistakenly that they were
following an official policy as they stepped over a legal line."
"This interpretation of the role senior officials played -- that they
committed sins of omission, rather than commission, by writing
ambiguous instructions and then failing to police the errant ways of
subordinates -- is likely to be challenged in court, according to
lawyers for some of the soldiers on trial in connection with the
prison abuse."
"No one above the military grade of the top intelligence commander at
Abu Ghraib was legally "culpable" for the abuse, the Army report
concluded. But a separate report on the abuse released Wednesday by a
panel appointed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld referred to
Sanchez's memo on Sept. 14 as one of several documents that led "some
soldiers or contractors who committed abuse" to believe 'the
techniques were condoned.'"
"Other such documents cited by officials who participated in the two
probes include a December 2002 memo signed by Rumsfeld that
authorized harsh interrogation methods for prisoners at Guantanamo,
and a controversial Feb. 7, 2002, memo signed by President Bush that
declared that fighters detained in Afghanistan were not entitled as a
matter of law to the protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions."
"The Rumsfeld memo included authorization for the use of dogs; the
Bush memo was cited by legal advisers to Sanchez as the basis for
their determination that some Iraqi detainees were not entitled to
the full legal protections provided by the Geneva Conventions,
according to the independent panel. This "confusion" between
interrogation rules devised for use at Guantanamo and Afghanistan and
the protections mandated by international law in Iraq contributed to
some of the abuse, according to the Army report's executive summary."
"Kern said: "We found not culpability" among senior officers such as
Sanchez, but "clear responsibility" for not deterring junior officers
and enlisted men from inappropriate behavior. "They didn't clarify
for those young interrogators what their responsibilities were."
"Several abuses in particular are highlighted by the two reports
released last week: the use of dogs to frighten detainees, the
repeated stripping of detainees, and the use of extended isolation
and sensory deprivation. Each clearly violated Army rules and
violated Geneva Conventions that protect civilians under military
occupation from threats of violence, isolation from visits by the Red
Cross, and humiliating and degrading treatment, the Army report said."
The issue of using military dogs illustrates how a blizzard of memos
from senior officials sowed an impression of tolerance, if not
approval, for aggressive interrogations. It has been a particular
embarrassment to the Pentagon since photos of dogs snarling and
barking in front of cowering Iraqis -- and in one case preparing to
bite a detainee -- were made public in June, about six months after
soldiers there recorded the images.
It also illustrates how, as the independent panel's report concluded,
the migration of lists and interrogators from one theater to another
resulted in "policies approved for use on al Qaeda and Taliban
detainees, who were not afforded the protection of the Geneva
Conventions, [being] applied to detainees who did fall under the
Geneva Conventions."
Army investigators probing the abuse in Iraq traced the initial idea
of using dogs -- a technique that does not appear in the service's
standard field guide -- to interrogation practices followed by U.S.
intelligence officials and Special Forces teams deployed in
Afghanistan. Kern said the officials there concluded that Afghans
feared dogs because of religious beliefs that those bitten are
unhealthy or condemned, and became convinced that this fear could be
exploited to compel intelligence disclosures.
The technique migrated first from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, via
Washington. In late 2002, aides to Rumsfeld -- responding to a
request by officials at Guantanamo for approval of more aggressive
interrogation methods -- canvassed officers in Afghanistan and
elsewhere. On Dec. 2, Rumsfeld approved techniques for use only at
that site, which included "the use of dogs to induce stress and the
removal of clothing as Counter-Resistance techniques," according to
the Army report.
Rumsfeld rescinded his memo the following month, after a private
protest by Navy general counsel Alberto J. Mora over its sanctioning
of practices in violation of international law and military
regulations. The independent panel's report faulted Rumsfeld for not
obtaining "a wider range of legal opinions and a more robust debate"
before he approved the rules. It also said his promulgation of these
guidelines -- even temporarily -- contributed "to a belief that
stronger interrogation methods were needed and appropriate."
By April, after a Pentagon review, Rumsfeld approved a new list of
interrogation techniques that omitted the use of dogs. But U.S.
Special Operations forces in Afghanistan, meanwhile, continued to use
many of the practices on Rumsfeld's Dec. 2 list, including "isolating
people for long periods of time, using stress positions, exploiting
fear of dogs, and implementing sleep and light deprivation," the Army
report concluded.
U.S. military commanders there urged the removal of clothing on
grounds that "no specific written legal prohibition existed." The
Pentagon has not released details of abusive Special Forces
activities in Afghanistan. But the independent panel said an
unreleased Defense Department report has found "a range of abuses and
causes similar in scope and magnitude" to those involving
interrogators at Abu Ghraib.
In Afghanistan, these tactics were also employed by members of the
Army's 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, a unit transferred to
Iraq in the summer of 2003. After Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the
top official at the Guantanamo prison, visited Abu Ghraib from Aug.
31 to Sept. 9 and called for more rigorous interrogations there, some
of these tactics -- including the use of dogs -- were incorporated in
a memo drafted by Sanchez's legal office on Sept. 10 and sent to
prison interrogators.
Sanchez's legal advisers subsequently drew on both this guidance and
the legal justifications in Bush's 2002 directive while drafting the
Sept. 14 cable from Sanchez to Lt. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the head of
U.S. Central Command, the independent panel's report said.
"Enclosed is the policy modeled on the one implemented for
interrogation conducted at Gitmo," Sanchez said in his cable,
referring to Guantanamo Bay. It authorized not only exploiting
prisoners' "fear" of dogs but also the use of isolation; "sleep
management"; "yelling, loud music, and light control . . . to create
fear, disorient detainees and capture shock"; deception, including
fake documents and reports; and "stress positions," such as forced
kneeling for as many as four hours at a time.
The cable placed no restrictions on the use of dogs on "detainees"
and "security internees," but said any use involving enemy prisoners
of war would require Sanchez's direct approval. In fact, as Maj. Gen.
George R. Fay, an intelligence official who co-wrote the Army report,
said in an interview last week, the use of this narrow qualifying
phrase in Sanchez's memo reflected bad "staff work" by the lawyers
who drafted it for Sanchez's approval, because U.S. military
forces "did not have very many enemy prisoners of war at that point."
Within one month, Sanchez's cable was rescinded on instructions from
senior officials at U.S. Central Command and replaced with a more
cautious memo that allowed the use of muzzled dogs during
interrogations only when Sanchez gave his direct approval --
something he told investigators he was never asked to do.
His new memo was based in part on an outdated 1987 version of the
Army Field Manual for interrogations, which was more permissive than
the 1992 version then in effect because it allowed complete control
of light, heat, food, clothing and shelter as interrogation
techniques, the Army report concluded. Investigators attributed this
error by Sanchez's office to the Army's failure to update a key Web
site with the 1992 report.
But whatever Sanchez's intent or policy, the practice of "abusing
detainees with dogs started almost immediately" after the Army,
acting at Miller's urging, brought several dog teams to Abu Ghraib in
November 2003.
The fact that at least three "confusing and inconsistent"
interrogation directives were approved within a month-long
period "contributed to the belief" that illegal interrogation
techniques were condoned, the Army report stated. An absence of
leadership and oversight also left room for what the Army report
described as "word of mouth" techniques to be passed around and
followed by interrogators deployed to Iraq.
The Army report quoted Sanchez as saying he "never approved use of
dogs." Fay also said in the report that "no documentation was found"
showing approval by the Combined Joint Task Force 7, headed by
Sanchez, "to use dogs in interrogations."
Asked to explain the apparent conflict between language in the report
and the text of Sanchez's cable, Kern said that what Sanchez meant is
that he never specifically approved an interrogation plan submitted
to him for review that involved the use of dogs, while Fay said that
Sanchez believes he only endorsed the general presence of muzzled
dogs at the time interrogations were being conducted, rather than
inside prison interrogation booths -- a practice that was clearly
misunderstood.
"Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the senior intelligence official at Abu
Ghraib, told Army investigators that Miller, in addition to Sanchez,
had authorized the use of dogs to "set the stage" for productive
interrogations. But the authors of the report accepted Miller's
contrary contention that he only recommended using dogs for detainee
custody and control at Abu Ghraib. Miller is the head of U.S.
military detainee operations in Iraq."