Saturday, June 12, 2004

General Sanchez' removal - update

After being removed from his duties, the lying sack of dung (under oath, remember) is not being backed up any longer, apparently. I doubt they really had much choice after Capt. Donald Reese reported that Sanchez was even present during some of the "abuse".

The report of Sanchez stepping aside, because of some ruling that the investigating officer, General Fay, could not query his superior, made mention of the fact that the investigation had been extended when "a key key person who'd pled the military equivalent of the Fifth has changed his attitude" was causing some speculation in the blogosphere about who that key person might be. I'm going to speculate that it was Reese, as at one point after he had told his lawyer about Sanchez' presence during some of the "abuse", he invoked the military version of the Fifth during a hearing. And that information about Sanchez would be enough to elicit this latest move to make him the fall guy.

So, it looks like they've decided to let some of the top military dogs take the fall, and hope to keep the civilians at the very top out of the line of fire. Taking the fall, however, does not yet involve prosecution.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior U.S. military officer in Iraq, borrowed heavily from a list of high-pressure interrogation tactics used at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and approved letting senior officials at a Baghdad jail use military dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns, sensory deprivation, and diets of bread and water on detainees whenever they wished, according to newly obtained documents.

...The U.S. policy, details of which have not been previously disclosed, was approved in early September, shortly after an Army general sent from Washington completed his inspection of the Abu Ghraib jail and then returned to brief Pentagon officials on his ideas for using military police there to help implement the new high-pressure methods.

The documents obtained by The Washington Post spell out in greater detail than previously known the interrogation tactics Sanchez authorized, and make clear for the first time that, before last October, they could be imposed without first seeking the approval of anyone outside the prison. That gave officers at Abu Ghraib wide latitude in handling detainees.
  WaPo article

It appears that the option of choice is now to hope they can blame this all on Sanchez: "The documents...make clear for the first time that, before last October, they could be imposed without first seeking the approval of anyone outside the prison." And I'll lay odds that Sanchez has agreed to take the fall in some deal - say perhaps protection from court martial. I suspect there's been a great deal of bargaining going on in all of this. What did the "key person" (likely Reese) get - or maybe avoid - in return for reversing his position on taking the Fifth? What does Sanchez get or avoid by taking the fall?

I have lost track of how many times this administration has been busted lying. It seems like just about everything they say. That people still believe anything coming from them is an indication of a serious national psychotic dysfunction.

One of the documents, an Oct. 9 memorandum on "Interrogation Rules of Engagement," which each military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib was asked to sign, sets out in detail the wide range of pressure tactics approved in September and available before the rules were changed on Oct. 12. They included methods that were close to some of the behavior criticized this March by the Army's own investigator, who said he found evidence of "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuse" at the prison.

The document states that the list of tactics in the memorandum is derived from a Sept. 10, 2003, "Interrogation and Counter-Resistance Policy" approved by Combined Joint Task Force-7, which Sanchez directs. While the document states that "at no time will detainees be treated inhumanely nor maliciously humiliated," it permits the use of yelling, loud music, a reduction of heat in winter and air conditioning in summer, and "stress positions" for as long as 45 minutes every four hours -- all without first gaining the permission of anyone more senior than the "interrogation officer in charge" at Abu Ghraib.


Because temperature extremes and stress positions are not inhumane, apparently. And "spanking" your children is just good parental discipline, too. Even otherwise decent, reasonable people believe that. So this is how today we have come to the place where a "working group" of top notch lawyers can sit around a table and discuss to just what degree a person can be subjected to pain without it being defined as torture.

Adding insult to injury, Army medical doctors treated torture victims and turned them back over to their torturers. Do Army doctors get their medical licenses without having to sign the Hippocratic oath? That is not a rhetorical question. My assumptions that all doctors took some sort of oath regarding the ethical treatment of patients was wrong. I don't know what the Army medical standards require. I do know, however, that at least in some cases, the Army is very keen on protecting its own, as my ex was in the medical corp at the Presidio Army Hospital (San Francisco) and personally involved in more than one case that should have had people screaming from the rooftops, but which superior officers condoned and covered up. In most cases involving military personnel, it's my understanding that they cannot sue the Army for medical malpractice. At least that's the way it was 20 years ago, it could be different now. At any rate, as we are seeing in these Abu Ghraib proceedings, cutting through rank is still an impossibility without facing serious consequences.

And, one more thing - reports never even mention any longer that even by official estimates, the greater majority of people imprisoned at Abu Ghraib were there "by mistake". (Of course, it can be argued that they were all there "by mistake" as the invasion of Iraq was neither a legitimate pre-emptive war nor a legitimate response to terrorist attacks on 9/11.)

...but do what you want....you will anyway.