Former State Department Official Says Cheney Provoked Prison Torture

[NNN0LHI]

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBCMAN5NFE.html

Former State Department Official Says Sentiment From Cheney's Office Helped Bring Prison Abuses

WASHINGTON (AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney's office triggered abuse of Iraqi prisoners with word that filtered down to soldiers in the field that interrogations were not providing needed intelligence, a former senior State Department official has alleged.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff in the first Bush administration, said Thursday, "It was clear to me there that there was a visible audit trail from the vice president's office through the secretary of defense down to the commanders in the field."

While the view of Cheney's office was put in carefully couched terms, to a soldier in the field it meant sometimes using ways that "were not in accordance with the spirit of the Geneva Conventions and the law of war," Wilkerson, a former colonel, said on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition."

"If you are a military man you know that you just don't do these sorts of things because once you give just the slightest bit of leeway there are those in the armed forces who will take advantage of that," Wilkerson said.

[AlCzervik]

1. you know they'll just say he's got an axe to grind.

:mad:

[rosesaylavee]

2. Encouraging that AP is reporting this...

rather than ignoring it as they would have just a month ago.

[AndyTiedye]

3. Send Them to the Hague!

This is what justice for war criminals looks like: