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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Pentagon Investigations Criticize Interrogation Policies |
| 2004-12-04 |
| From The New York Times A Pentagon investigation of interrogation techniques at military detention centers in Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq concludes that senior defense officials exercised little or no oversight of interrogation policies outside of Guantänamo Bay, leaving field commanders to develop some practices that were unauthorized, according to a draft summary of the classified report. The inquiry by Vice Adm. Albert T. Church, the naval inspector general, found that by January 2003, military interrogators in Afghanistan were using techniques similar to those that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had approved for use only at Guantänamo Bay. They included stress positions, and sleep and light deprivation. But when the command in Afghanistan submitted in January its list of techniques to the military's Joint Staff and Central Command, as requested, and never heard any complaints, it "interpreted this silence to mean that the techniques were unobjectionable to higher headquarters and therefore could be considered approved policy," the summary said. Nor did Pentagon or Central Command officials offer the high command in Baghdad much help in developing its interrogation procedures, the summary said, noting that by September 2003, the headquarters "was left to struggle with these issues on its own in the midst of fighting an insurgency." The investigation, ordered in May by Mr. Rumsfeld, also reaffirms two important findings of previous military inquiries into detainee abuse: that at least 20 substantiated cases of abuse occurred during interrogations, contrary to the Pentagon's original claims; and that the Central Intelligence Agency kept some 30 "ghost detainees" at Abu Ghraib prison and at other detention centers in Iraq off official rosters. Other investigations have found this practice was to hide the prisoners from Red Cross inspectors. The Church report, however, does not blame the detainee abuses in Iraq and elsewhere on the flawed interrogation policies, blaming mainly a breakdown in "good order and discipline." It found no evidence that senior Pentagon or White House officials pressured interrogators to use abusive tactics to wring information from recalcitrant detainees to help fight the insurgency. ..... A December 2003 report on intelligence-gathering operations in Iraq criticized the treatment of high-value prisoners like Tariq Aziz, a former top aide to Saddam Hussein, who were held at Camp Cropper, a secret detention and interrogation center on the outskirts of Baghdad International Airport. Its author, Stuart A. Herrington, a retired Army colonel who visited Iraqi in 2003 at the request of the military's top intelligence officer in Iraq, called the prisoners' accommodations "primitive." He said this treatment was not only counterproductive to gaining information from high-ranking prisoners, but might also violate the Geneva Conventions' protections for treating prisoners with regard to rank and stature. The report also disclosed that C.I.A. officers in Iraq were ordered to stay away from a separate military interrogation center operated by a secret unit of Special Operation Forces, Task Force 121, because agency officials feared the military might be abusing prisoners. The concerns about abuse were passed up the chain of command, but in February, an investigator, Lt. Col. Natalie Lee, found no evidence that the unit had abused detainees. ..... The Church report, which based its conclusions on more than 800 interviews with personnel who served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba, contrasted the rigorous review of interrogation techniques at Guantänamo Bay with a much more haphazard process in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Church report concluded that despite their similarities, "these techniques did not migrate from Guantänamo Bay to Afghanistan," as another inquiry by an independent panel headed by former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger suggested in August, the summary said. Instead, it said, the techniques were developed independently by interrogators in both places who took a broad reading of the Army's field manual for interrogations. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #2 We must go back in history to the only "good war" according to leftists. The Red vs. the Whites? |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-12-04 5:22:41 PM |
| #1 military interrogators in Afghanistan were using techniques similar to those that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had approved for use only at Guantánamo Bay. They included stress positions, and sleep and light deprivation. Can we all agree this is unacceptable? We must go back in history to the only "good war" according to leftists. So none of this "stress positions, and sleep and light deprivation". Back to the acceptable field interrogations done by knife and pistol, followed by summary field executions. Oh, and shoot any |
| Posted by: ed 2004-12-04 12:29:14 PM |