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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Summary of Pentagon Discussions About Treatment of Prisoners |
| 2004-06-24 |
| From The Washington Post .... Rumsfeld played a direct role in setting policies for detainee treatment in Afghanistan and Guantanamo .... He signed seven orders from January 2002 to January 2003 establishing the interrogation center, placing the Army in charge, allowing access by the Red Cross and foreign intelligence officials, and even deciding how detainee mail would be handled. Unlike the CIA, which vetted and won approval from the Justice Department and National Security Council for its aggressive interrogation tactics after Sept. 11, 2001, the Pentagon has worked largely on its own in promulgating new questioning methods. The White House and Justice Department were "completely uninvolved with" reviewing the interrogation rules in Afghanistan and Iraq, said a senior administration official involved in the process. The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Lawrence T. DiRita, portrayed Rumsfeld as largely responding to requests from commanders and interrogators in the field rather than pushing a certain interrogation policy. "These things tended to come up through legal channels," he said in an interview. Part of the Pentagon leadership’s drive for more leeway in interrogations can be traced to a historic change during Rumsfeld’s tenure: the military’s dramatically enhanced role in collecting and analyzing intelligence that can be used to thwart terrorist networks worldwide. To accomplish this, Rumsfeld has begun an unprecedented drive to build a Pentagon-based human intelligence apparatus that could one day rival the CIA’s clandestine case officer program. This intelligence-gathering mission trumps most other priorities, including the desire to bring alleged wrongdoers to trial for their role in terrorist plots. .... The debate over tactics at Guantanamo appears to have begun in December 2002 when two Navy interrogators heard young military intelligence personnel talking about using techniques that they described to their superiors as "repulsive and potentially illegal." Navy general counsel Alberto J. Mora brought the issue to the attention of [Pentagon general counsel William] Haynes. Mora’s appeals were ignored, however, until he threatened to put his concerns in writing for Haynes, several senior Pentagon officials said. Mora’s questions led to the discovery that among the list of "counter-resistance strategies" at Guantanamo were such tactics as using scenarios "designed to convince the detainee that death or severely painful consequences are imminent for him and/or his family," according to an October 2002 memo, and wrapping detainees in wet towels or dripping water on them to make them believe they would suffocate. Lt. Col. Diane E. Beaver, the legal counsel at Guantanamo then, ruled that those and other techniques -- including 20-hour interrogations, light and sound assaults, stress positions, exposure to cold weather and water -- were legal. She said they could be used with proper oversight and training of interrogators, as long as "there is an important governmental objective, and it is not done for the purpose of causing harm or with the intent to cause prolonged mental suffering." Interrogators at the detention facilities were particularly interested in using the techniques against two prisoners -- one of them Mohamed al Qahtani, a Saudi detainee who some officials believed may have been the planned 20th hijacker on Sept. 11. Both detainees were considered to have important information about potential future terrorist operations, defense officials have said. Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey, the commander of Guantanamo, agreed, and sent the list of tactics to Gen. James T. Hill, head of the U.S. Southern Command, for approval. Hill was not as convinced, and wondered in a memo about the legality of some of the techniques. He asked Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for guidance. In December, Rumsfeld approved the use of dogs and stripping, but threw out other controversial items. Rumsfeld also set up a working group of military lawyers and others to deliberate over the range of techniques that might be useful and appropriate. The group came up with 35 techniques. Among the most severe were 20-hour interrogations, face slapping, stripping detainees to create "a feeling of helplessness and dependence," and using dogs to increase anxiety. ... The president’s directive in February 2002 that ordered U.S. forces to treat al Qaeda and Taliban detainees humanely and consistent with the Geneva Conventions does contain a loophole phrase: "to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity." The working group’s report discussed when the "military necessity" exception might be invoked, citing two factors. One was when government officials felt certain that a particular detainee had information needed to prevent an attack. The other factor was a likelihood that a terrorist attack was about to occur and the attack’s potential scale. But the report also noted that "military courts have treated the necessity defense with disfavor and in fact, some have refused to accept necessity as a permissible defense." The rejections have come from judges who objected to the notion of weighing one evil against another, or who feared that acceptance of the necessity argument would open the door to "private moral codes" substituting for the rule of law, the report said. Other cautionary flags were raised as well. The report warned that use of exceptional techniques could have "adverse effects" on the "culture and self-image" of the armed forces, recalling the damage done in the past by "perceived law of war violations." It argued that use of such tactics in some cases but not others could create uncertainty among interrogators about the appropriate limits for interrogators. It also noted that, if the tactics became public, the disclosure could undermine confidence in the war on terrorism and in the military tribunal process that was developed for putting detainees on trial. Rumsfeld eventually pared the list of 35 methods to 24. .... |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #4 Here's a solution for you. Don't take any fuckin' prisoners. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2004-06-24 8:18:37 PM |
| #3 Let's see: 1. A less comfortable setting. Wow. That's horrible. Can't imagine how much moral anguish interrogators have to go through to implement that one. 2. Cold food. The inhumanity of this one is unbelievable. 3. Uncomfortable temperature/unpleasant smells. It'll be just like they're married or have a roommate! 4. Reversing day and night schedules. I had no idea working the night shift was a violation of human rights. 5. Making them think they're being interrogated by a third country. Oh! The horror! You mean we lied to terrorists! Bob, thanks for the early morning chuckle. |
| Posted by: badanov 2004-06-24 10:27:55 AM |
#2 Ah. Here we go. That sentence wasn't part of the paragraph Mike puts it in, and that paragraph is:Rumsfeld eventually pared the list of 35 methods to 24. Most were part of standard military doctrine. Seven, however, went beyond that, including: removing a detainee from the standard interrogation setting and putting him in a less comfortable room; replacing hot rations with cold food or military Meals Ready to Eat; adjusting the temperature to uncomfortable levels or introducing an unpleasant smell; reversing sleep cycles from night to day; deceiving detainees into thinking they were being questioned by people from a country other than the United States. Let's see: 1. A less comfortable setting. Wow. That's horrible. Can't imagine how much moral anguish interrogators have to go through to implement that one. 2. Cold food. The inhumanity of this one is unbelievable. 3. Uncomfortable temperature/unpleasant smells. It'll be just like they're married or have a roommate! 4. Reversing day and night schedules. I had no idea working the night shift was a violation of human rights. 5. Making them think they're being interrogated by a third country. Oh! The horror! You mean we lied to terrorists! Oh, and Mikey, think about this: Rumsfeld also set up a working group of military lawyers and others to deliberate over the range of techniques that might be useful and appropriate. The group came up with 35 techniques. Among the most severe were 20-hour interrogations, face slapping, stripping detainees to create "a feeling of helplessness and dependence," and using dogs to increase anxiety. Everything listed there was rejected by Rumsfeld. Yet you constantly put forward stories -- some of them carefully edited, like this one -- trying to blame the entire chain of command for Abu Ghraib. This story completely destroys your theory -- will you have the honesty to admit it? |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-06-24 10:05:24 AM |
| #1 I get the feeling there's a hell of a lot of creative editing in Mike's summary. For example, that last sentence... |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-06-24 9:55:15 AM |