c-span re-play: Abizaid before senate committee

[trof]

His expression vaccilates between anger, frustration and oh shit.

[maddezmom]

1. Reed just asked Sanchez for a memo....

HAHAHAHA...someone wanted Reed and the world to know about it!!!
Sanchez said he'd see if he was allowed to turn it over...wonder if Reed had it all along.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43708-2004May20.html

Shortly before the physical abuses of Iraqis were photographed in Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad last year, the top U.S. military official in Iraq signed a classified memorandum explicitly calling for interrogators to assume control over the "lighting, heating . . . food, clothing, and shelter" of those being questioned there.

The Oct. 12, 2003, memorandum signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez called for intelligence officials at the prison to work more closely with the military police guarding the detainees to "manipulate an internee's emotions and weaknesses."

This memo and the deliberations that preceded it were completely shrouded from public view at the time, but now lie at the heart of the scandal that erupted last month over the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Under congressional prodding, the administration has provided a fuller chronology of the events leading up to its approval.

<snip>

The backdrop for the policy was an event that occurred on May 1, 2003. President Bush landed that day on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier off San Diego and declared that major combat operations were over. His declaration had direct but unpublicized consequences for those detained in Iraq, military officials say: It meant they were no longer to be treated as prisoners of war, but instead as civilians held by an occupying power.

<snip>

In a memo signed on Aug. 18, 2003, the Pentagon's Joint Staff -- acting on a request from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his top intelligence aide, Stephen A. Cambone -- ordered Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller to conduct an inspection there. Miller, who oversaw the interrogation efforts at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, finished his tour on Sept. 9 and left behind his own list of interrogation techniques.

...more...

[maddezmom]

2. Col Warren just mentioned a Capt Wood in relation to the "slide"

about the interrogation practices...

WASHINGTON, May 20 — The interrogation center at Abu Ghraib prison was run by a military intelligence unit that had served in Afghanistan and that had taken to Iraq the aggressive rules and procedures it had developed for the Afghan conflict, according to documents and testimony.

Some members of the unit, part of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Fort Bragg, N.C., have already been quietly punished in connection with the abuse of an Iraqi woman at the prison, according to documents recently released by the Army.

In August 2003, the officer in charge of the unit, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, an experienced Army interrogator, posted her own list of "interrogation rules of engagement," which were inconsistent with those later issued for Iraq by the top American commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, according to Congressional officials.

~snip~

Among the questions that investigators are examining is how the rules that Captain Wood posted at Abu Ghraib differed from the directives issued by General Sanchez, including unsigned memorandums on Sept. 10 and Sept. 28, and signed directives on Sept. 14 and Oct. 12, each of which spelled out different rules.

Those directives are still classified, but their contents were described by Colonel Warren on Wednesday and Thursday by several Senate aides who were briefed by senior Army officials.

~snip~

more: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/politics/21ABUS.html?pagewanted=2&ei...

[dmr]

3. Thanks for the heads up, trof

I just tuned in. I missed it this week because of the NY 911 hearings.