Abuse green light came right from the top

[struggle4progress]

Andrew Buncombe
The Independent

WASHINGTON, April 2. — America’s leading civil liberties group has demanded an investigation into the former US military commander in Iraq after a formerly classified memo revealed that he personally sanctioned a series of coercive interrogation techniques outlawed by the Geneva Conventions.

The group claims that his directives were directly linked to the sort of abuses that took place at Abu Gharib. Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reveal that Lt Gen. Ricardo Sanchez authorised techniques such as the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners, stress positions and disorientation. In the documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Lt Gen. Sanchez admits that some of the techniques would not be tolerated by other countries.

When he appeared last year before a Congressional committee, Lt Gen. Sanchez denied authorising such techniques. He has now been accused of perjury. <snip>

“We think that the techniques authorised by Lt Gen. Sanchez were certainly responsible for putting into play the sort of abuses that we saw at Abu Gharib,” Mr Amirit Singh, an ACLU lawyer, told The Independent on Sunday. “And it does not just stop with Lt. Gen. Sanchez. It goes to (Defence Secretary Mr Donald) Rumsfeld, who wrote memos authorising these sorts of techniques at Guantanamo Bay.”
In the September 2003 memo, Lt Gen. Sanchez authorised the use of 29 techniques for interrogating prisoners being held by the US. These included stress positions, “yelling, loud music and light control” as well as the use of muzzled military dogs in order to “exploit Arab fear of dogs”. Some of the most notorious photographs to emerge from the Abu Gharib scandal showed hand-cuffed, naked Iraqi prisoners cowering from snarling dogs. <snip>

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=8&theme=&usrsess=1&id=73002

[Skittles]

1. uh oh, watch out, Bush will be handing out more medals

f***ing asshole