Commander's role questioned in prison abuse ( Sanchez)

[maddezmom]

Commander's role questioned in prison abuse
Several decisions made by Sanchez are under scrutiny

By Stephen J. Hedges
Washington Bureau
Published May 15, 2004

WASHINGTON -- As members of Congress investigate the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, they are beginning to focus on the role of Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who is in charge of all military operations in Iraq.

Senators are contemplating whether to summon Sanchez to appear before congressional committees investigating the prisoner mistreatment. And several military investigations under way are likely to scrutinize Sanchez's role in key decisions made in the months before the abuse took place.

~snip~

It was Sanchez, for example, who ordered an Army intelligence unit to take charge of the prison in November, when U.S. forces were rounding up increasing numbers of Iraqi men for questioning about the anti-American insurgency.

~snip~

Just how much direction or aid, if any, commanders in Iraq received from Washington on interrogation methods also remains unclear. Several senators have questioned the role that Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, played in setting the overall conditions for interrogations by U.S. forces overseas.

~snip~

More: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0405150226may15,1,4870312.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

Mentions all key players...Col. Thomas Pappas and Lt. Col. Steve Jordan, Steven Stephanowicz and John Israel, and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller.

[MSgt213]

1. Oh this is going to be hard. Getting to Sanchez will be very difficult.

Not only will Bush and the republicans in the house and senate protect them. They have put numerous layers between Sanchez and what happen. That's why it should be to know ones suprise that there are no written orders or any other documentation ordering those type of abuses. Every thing is done with a wink, nod and you better get me some information and I don't care how you do it verbel orders.

[Alerter_]

2. Let's remember CACI and Titan Corporation

The Wall Street Journal ran a smug article last week expecting that the "private contractors" won't be touched because there is no applicable law (yeah right).

Pappas, Jordan, Stephanowicz, Israel, Miller, Sanchez, Rumsfeld - we have to follow this from the lowest merc corporation to Cheney himself.

[maddezmom]

3. more about Miller and Sanchez

~snip~
General Miller and another officer on his team said they urged commanders in Iraq to draft their own guidelines. A chart of approved techniques, entitled the "Interrogation Rules of Engagement," was drawn up for American forces in Iraq on Oct. 12, 2003, barely a month after General Miller's visit.

"The recommendations that the team and I made was about how you could improve the interrogation process and the development and collection of intelligence," General Miller told reporters last Saturday. "Those recommendations that were made were based on the system that provided humane detention and excellent interrogation."

Three officials familiar with the methods approved for Guantánamo said they appeared to be more restrictive than those promulgated for Iraq. At Guantánamo, methods like extended isolation and putting detainees into "stress positions" require approval from senior Pentagon officials; in Iraq, they need only that of the task force commander.
~snip~
more: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/politics/13MILL.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5062&en=e68cb31ba58ff7de&ex=1085025600&partner=GOOGLE

[maddezmom]

4. and Camp Cropper outside Baghdad...,more prison abuse/torture

~snip~
It remains unclear whether any disciplinary action was taken at the time against members of the 205th Brigade. The brigade commander, Col. Thomas M. Pappas, who took command at the end of June 2003, was later put in charge of interrogations at Abu Ghraib and was implicated by the Army's investigation of abuses as being "either directly or indirectly responsible" for the actions of those who mistreated and humiliated Iraqi prisoners there.
~snip~

In November, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top American commander in Iraq, elevated the brigade to an even more prominent role, assigning it to overall responsibility for Abu Ghraib, over the 800th Military Police Brigade, an Army Reserve unit headed Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski.
~snip~

The abuses at Camp Cropper in those early months were largely outside the scope of the most detailed investigation to date, completed by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, which focused on the conduct of the 800th Military Police Brigade. But even in that report, submitted in March, General Taguba cited the 205th Brigade for possible wrongdoing, identifying Colonel Pappas, Lt. Col. Steve L. Jordan and two civilian contractors who worked for the unit as having been "either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib."

To date, the only American soldiers charged in connection with the Abu Ghraib abuses are seven members of the 800th Brigade, all from the 372nd Military Police Company, from Cresaptown, Md. But in addition to those abuses, the Taguba report identified others, including "abuses committed by members of the 325th M.I. Battalion, 205th M.I. Brigade, and Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center," which all reported to Colonel Pappas.

~snip~
much more detailed in the article:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/15/politics/15ABUS.html?pagewanted=2




http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/15/politics/15ABUS.html