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March 13, 2005
It was not us, really. We say so.
So, Pentagon exonerates Pentagon:
The Pentagon said its policies and top officials did not cause the mistreatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, but in a report released on Thursday cited a series of missed opportunities to correct lapses that led to the abuses.The latest and most wide-ranging abuse report, by Navy inspector general Vice Adm. Albert Church, largely tracks the Pentagon's previous contention that its leaders were not directly responsible for sexual and physical mistreatment of prisoners.
Plus, not only is it not our fault, it's their fault:
The report said U.S. servicemembers "may have at times permitted the enemy's treacherous tactics and disregard for the laws of war ... to erode their own standards of conduct."
Meanwhile, even more evidence is emerging to the systematic nature of the torture:
Unreleased U.S. Army reports detailing the deaths of two Afghan men who were beaten to death by American soldiers show that military prison abuses began in Afghanistan in 2002, and were part of a systematic pattern of mistreatment, a human rights representative said Saturday. More than two dozen American soldiers face possible criminal prosecution — and one already is charged with manslaughter — in the deaths at the main U.S. detention facility in Bagram, just north of the Afghan capital of Kabul.As documented by the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, the men died a year before the photographed horrors at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to John Sifton, the Afghanistan researcher for the New York-based Human Rights Watch.
Cover up? What cover up? The Pentagon says it is not a cover up, and that's that.
Posted by zeynep at March 13, 2005 04:24 AM
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Comments
Will the U.S. army invade and liberate Guantanamo any time soon?
Maybe we should tell them that they have WMDs.
Posted by: Mikhail Capone at March 14, 2005 11:19 PM