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October 15, 2004
Responsible for Abu Ghraib? Here, Have Another Star!
A while back, I complained all that the higher-ups who ordered, allowed and set up and environment where torture was routine practice were going get was a slap-in-the-wrist early retirement -- with full benefits, and not even a hint of accountability.
And the most eggregious example in the uniformed military was Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez because cables and other materials had been unearthed which showed that he had directly authorized and ordered the use of some of the torture methods and helped run the place in a manner that allowed and encouraged the whole gamut of despicable practices.
Pentagon did not make these cables public, but some appropriately disgusted government employee turned them over to the Washington Post. Let me recap the key part (I wrote more about it here):
The cable signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez listed several dozen strategies for extracting information, drawn partly from what officials now say was an outdated and improperly permissive Army field manual. But it added one not previously approved for use in Iraq, under the heading of Presence of Military Working Dogs: "Exploit Arab fear of dogs while maintaining security during interrogations."
And:
Unnamed officials at the Florida headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, which has overall military responsibility for Iraq, objected to some of the 32 interrogation tactics approved by Sanchez in September, including the more severe methods that he had said could be used at any time in Abu Ghraib with the consent of the interrogation officer in charge....
The high-pressure options that remained included taking someone to a less hospitable location for interrogation; manipulating his or her diet; imposing isolation for more than 30 days; using military dogs to provoke fear; and requiring someone to maintain a "stress position" for as long as 45 minutes. These were not dropped by Sanchez until a scandal erupted in May over photographs depicting abuse at the prison.
It turns out that not only Sanchez not even getting a slap on the wrist, Rumsfeld et al. are determined to put a fourth star on him to reward him:
Senior Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have privately told colleagues they are determined to pin a fourth star on Sanchez, two senior defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said this week.Rumsfeld and others recognize that Sanchez remains politically "radioactive," in the words of a third senior defense official, and would wait until after the Nov. 2 presidential election and investigations of the Abu Ghraib scandal have faded before putting his name forward.
Yeah, really, why do they hate us?
Posted by zeynep at October 15, 2004 09:37 PM
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» Great Advice From Colin Powell from A Tiny Revolution
You may remember how, after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Colin Powell told the world, "Watch America. Watch how we deal with this." Hey, that's a great idea. Let's watch: The Pentagon plans to promote Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez,... [Read More]
Tracked on October 16, 2004 09:03 AM
Comments
How does it go? Absolute power corrupts absolutely? Do we need a more vivid example than this one of rewarding a war criminal with a promotion into a hierarchical status with even more privilege and advantage? A 4-star general? What's the difference between this and the grand cyclops of the KKK or some such nonsense. If racism and murder are the outcome then there is no difference. The cronism within the Bush-43 regime is totally beyond the scale it seems to be of anything that has come before it. It is hard to imagine that Kerry could be as bad as this, or that anyone else could be as bad as this.
Sincerely,
Old & In The Way
Posted by: Phil Cicchi at October 16, 2004 02:13 AM