Iraq prison abuse pt. 7 -- the post-G8/Reagan funeral crash

Christ. Total Stanford Prison Experiment stuff. People will abuse unchecked power over others.

In some ways they have to be as talented as people translating poetry into other languages. I mean, how do you figure out how to punctuate the shit that comes out of his mouth even if you can figure out exactly what all of the words are? Most transcriptions just look like they mightily abuse the em dash.

I do not think it is asking too much to require eloquence from that the person who is the President of my country. I don't even mean "large vocabulary"; I mean "able to speak without switching tenses mid-sentence" and "able to complete a thought".

xpost

Most U.S. voters now say it was not worth going to war in Iraq, but an overwhelming majority reject the idea of setting a deadline to withdraw all U.S. forces from the country, according to a Times poll.

Though the survey found voters increasingly worried that America was becoming ensnarled in Iraq and pessimistic that a democratic government would take root, less than one in five said America should withdraw all its forces within weeks. And less than one in four endorsed the idea advanced by some Democratic-leaning foreign policy experts and liberal groups to establish a specific date for withdrawal.

"I never thought we should go to war in Iraq," said Anne Wardwell, a retired museum curator in Cleveland who responded to the poll. "But I think we have to see it through, because if we don't it is going to be a disaster in the region."

The survey also showed widespread concern that the war had damaged America's image in the world, a strong desire to see NATO take the lead in managing the conflict, and deep division over whether President Bush could rally more international support for the rebuilding effort.

The NATO results are interesting because that ain't gonna fly and the president has admitted as much. Meanwhile, it seems the mood read here can be summed up as "We're not wanting to see it through because we did the right thing, we just don't want to fuck up even MORE." Which doesn't strike me as a mandate.

The commander of American forces in the Middle East asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this week to replace the general investigating suspected abuses by military intelligence soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison with a more senior officer, a step that would allow the inquiry to reach into the military's highest ranks in Iraq, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.

The request by the commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, comes amid increasing criticism from lawmakers and some military officers that the half dozen investigations into detainee abuse at the prison may end up scapegoating a handful of enlisted soldiers and leaving many senior officers unaccountable.

General Abizaid's request, which defense officials said Mr. Rumsfeld would most likely approve, was set in motion in the last week when the current investigating officer, Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, told his superiors that he could not complete his inquiry without interviewing more senior-ranking officers, including Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the ground commander in Iraq.

But Army regulations prevent General Fay, a two-star general, from interviewing higher-ranking officers. So General Sanchez took the unusual step of asking to be removed as the reviewing authority for General Fay's report, and requesting that higher-ranking officers be appointed to conduct and review the investigation.

---

The sudden turn of events in the investigation came as new details emerged about why General Fay in the last week or so requested and received a 30-day extension to complete his report.

Within the last several days, an important figure in the inquiry who had previously refused to cooperate with Army investigators suddenly reversed his position and agreed to work much more closely with investigators, a senior Senate aide and a senior Pentagon official said.

That important development prompted General Fay to send some of his 29-person team back into the field to conduct more interviews, the officials said. "A key witness, a key person who'd pled the military equivalent of the Fifth has changed his attitude, and Fay is reopening the investigation," the Senate official said.

Hmm...

The use of private contractors as interrogators at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq violates an Army policy that requires such jobs to be filled by government employees because of the "risk to national security," among other concerns, the Army acknowledged Friday.

An Army policy directive published in 2000 and still in effect today, the military said, classifies any job that involves "the gathering and analysis" of tactical intelligence as "an inherently governmental function barred from private sector performance."

Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, an Army public affairs officer, acknowledged after consulting with senior Army officials that the service was in violation of that rule, but added that military commanders in Iraq, "retain the right to make exceptions." Another senior Army officer, in Baghdad, explained that using contract interrogators was a solution to shortages of suitable Army personnel.

The rule does not authorize exceptions for jobs involving the collection or analysis of tactical intelligence, which is perishable information the military can use for planning operations. A related White House policy directive insists that agencies "perform inherently governmental activities with government personnel."

"Who in the world says they have authority to change the rules like that?" asked Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, who is the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, referring to the policy directive. "I want to find out how and why these contractors got there."

dude the contractor situation is like WO

Well, that much is honest, for once.

http://www.bloggerheads.com/images/iraq_torture_surprise.jpg

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.

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.

As a result, Sanchez decided on Oct. 12 to remove several items on the list and to require that prison officials obtain his direct approval for the remaining high-pressure methods. Among the tactics apparently dropped were those that would take away prisoners' religious items; control their exposure to light; inflict "pride and ego down," which means attacking detainees' sense of pride or worth; and allow interrogators to pretend falsely to be from a country that deals severely with detainees, according to the documents.

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.

That last sentence really says it all.

A 27-year-old Marine sergeant faces a court-martial in the abuse of an Iraqi prisoner who was given electric shocks at a makeshift detention facility, Marine officials said.

Sgt. Matthew K. Travis, of Paducah, Ky., is the highest-ranking of four Marines who have been charged in the April 13 incident. Two privates pleaded guilty last month to abusing the prisoner and were given prison sentences and bad-conduct discharges. A third private faces a court-martial in late July.

At a military hearing Tuesday in western Iraq, Travis was scheduled to face a general court-martial from July 24 to 28. He was charged in May with conspiracy to commit cruelty and maltreatment, conspiracy to commit assault, dereliction of duty, attempted cruelty and maltreatment, making a false official statement, assault consummated by a battery, attempted assault consummated by a battery and disobeying a lawful order.

In several e-mails responding to questions from The Washington Post, Travis said he was not present at the time of the incident, which occurred inside a temporary holding facility in Mahmudiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. "I'm looking at 17 years for something I didn't do," he wrote.

The Marines have disclosed little about the abuse incident. Maj. Douglas M. Powell, a senior Marine Corps spokesman at the Pentagon, said he was unable to provide any information about the cases and referred questions to Marine officers in Iraq who can be reached only by e-mail.

Since U.S. forces drove to Baghdad and overthrew President Saddam Hussein in April 2003, the 138,000 American soldiers stationed here have lost their status as liberators in the eyes of most Iraqis. Polling by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority has chronicled a steady souring of opinion, with the most recent surveys showing about 80 percent of Iraqis with an unfavorable opinion of U.S. troops.

They have been encouraged in their views by Muslim preachers, who, judging by their sermons, have concluded that the U.S. occupation should end immediately if peace is to be restored to Iraq. To buttress their arguments, they repeatedly have cited the abuse of Iraqi captives at Abu Ghraib prison, which has helped crystallize opinion against the presence of U.S. soldiers.

"It was discovered that the freedom in this land is not ours. It is the freedom of the occupying soldiers in doing what they like, such as arresting, carrying out raids, killing at random or stealing money," Sheik Mohammed Bashir declared in his sermon Friday at Um al-Oura, a Sunni Muslim mosque in the middle-class Ghazaliya neighborhood.

"No one can ask them what they are doing, because they are protected by their freedom," he continued. "No one can punish them, whether in our country or their country. The worst thing is what was discovered in the course of time: abusing women, children, men, and the old men and women whom they arrested randomly and without any guilt. They expressed the freedom of rape, the freedom of nudity and the freedom of humiliation."

Sheik Bagir Saad at the Hikma Mosque in Sadr City, a stronghold of Shiite Muslim militiamen who have confronted the occupation militarily, denounced U.S. and U.N. plans that he said call for increased involvement by the international body and an increased emphasis on military forces from a variety of countries.

"The new U.N. resolution calls for multinational forces, but we want to inform all the countries that we don't want their armies, whether Arab, Islamic or foreign armies, because we will look at any army coming to Iraq as an occupation, and they should not send their children into this trap," he said.

Yes, this story seems to me to be highly suggestive. And encouraging. It can only be hoped that the military brass are setting up Rumsfeld.

I was also very, very pleased to see Bill Moyers last night skip right past the Reagan funeral in 30 seconds, and then play extensive clips of Ashcroft stonewalling Hatch's committee in the most bumbling and ass-hatted performance I've seen since Bush's last press conference (which is really saying something). Ashcroft was actually shaking visibly in one shot.

Let's hope it all leads somewhere even better - like contempt of Congress for JA the AG and weeks of further leaks, smoking guns and blaring headlines, while BushCo cringes in the White House, immobilized from fear.

Alcohol Cited as Problem at Prison:

Weeks before U.S. military investigators began uncovering evidence of mistreatment of detainees, commanders at the Abu Ghraib prison launched a crackdown on alcohol abuse and told intelligence troops that guards were suspected of soliciting sex from Iraqi prostitutes, according to soldiers and officers who worked at the compound.

Commanders at the prison outside Baghdad launched a series of measures to stem the illegal behavior, the soldiers said, including inspecting troops' living quarters for stashes of liquor and banishing Iraqi vendors who were suspected of helping to procure alcohol and make arrangements for soldiers to visit prostitutes.

The steps were part of an attempt by senior officers at Abu Ghraib to impose order on a facility that had spun out of control. Officers who worked at the prison said the measures were imposed in late December and early January, after the reported abuses of detainees but shortly before military investigators received a computer disc containing photos of prisoner abuse that became public in April.

Some officers believe that alcohol may have been a factor in the behavior of guards who have been charged with beating prisoners, stripping them naked, forcing them to masturbate and stacking them in pyramid-shaped piles on the prison floor. At least one prisoner has told investigators that he frequently smelled alcohol on the guards' breath in the cellblock where most of the abuses occurred.

A study of religion and voting patterns notes the impact of the war in general as well as specifics like the prison scandals in various impressions among voters.

Oh, and according to the AP, allegedly whoever kidnapped the one US guy in Riyadh 'threatened to treat the abducted American as U.S. troops treated Iraqi prisoners'. Oh fun.

"Suppose the executive says, 'Mild torture we think will help get this information.' ... Some systems do that to get information," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked at the April hearing.

"Well, our executive doesn't," insisted the government's lawyer, Paul Clement. He also assured justices that the United States would stand by its international commitments that prohibit torture.

Yet more than a year earlier, Justice Department and Pentagon lawyers had crafted detailed arguments for getting around world anti-torture treaties, and stated that President George W. Bush legally could authorize torture against some detainees.

A U.S. president at war is no longer bound by those torture conventions, or even by federal law, the legal memos contend, but can approve any technique necessary to prevent attacks and save American lives.

The Pentagon's memo, obtained last week by Newsday, also sets out detailed standards for how far interrogators can go, asserting they can apply physical pain or mental suffering as long as it is not severe or lasting - and offers a dictionary definition of "severe."

Pentagon officials have sought to minimize the importance of the March 2003 working group memo, equating it to a legal exercise to explore the limits of the anti-torture laws.

These officials said it had no bearing on a revised set of 24 interrogation techniques approved the following month for the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay prison, which are less severe than what the memo contemplated and are not torture in the Pentagon's view.

Seven of the 24 techniques fall outside standard Army practice, and four of the seven require Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's approval. Some of the extraordinary techniques were used on a man believed to be the planned 20th hijacker on Sept. 11, Mohamed al-Qahtani.

The seven include isolating a prisoner, manipulating his diet while still giving enough food to survive and questioning him for up to 20 hours at a time for up to three days, officials said.

Still, the memos have outraged international law experts, human rights advocates, military lawyers and some in Congress. They say the arguments seek to cast aside more than 50 years of U.S. compliance with treaties and place Bush above the law, setting a precedent that puts U.S. soldiers who fall into enemy hands at grave risk.

"Every single underpinning of law that restrains the conduct of the government in dealing with detainees, they are destroying. And what are they leaving in its place? Chaos," said Scott Horton, a New York City bar association expert on international law who got a secret visit last year from military lawyers worried about harsher interrogations.

He said flatly, "They're looking for a way to justify torture."

At the very least, the memos show lawyers for the Bush administration have labored since the Sept. 11 terror attacks to stake out the president's right to virtually unchecked powers over terror suspects.

RUMSFELD APPROVED: How much higher will the abuse scandal go? Surely Rumsfeld was aware of the new relaxed interrogation methods. He approved of using dogs at Guantanamo:

In January 2002, for example, Rumsfeld approved the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners there; although officials have said dogs were never used at Guantanamo, they were used at Abu Ghraib.
Then, in April 2003, Rumsfeld approved the use in Guantanamo of at least five other high-pressure techniques also listed on the Oct. 9 Abu Ghraib memo, none of which was among the Army's standard interrogation methods. This overlap existed even though detainees in Iraq were covered, according to the administration's policy, by Geneva Convention protections that did not apply to the detainees in Cuba.

But didn't Rumsfeld deny under oath that he had any knowledge of such techniques in Iraq?

The Office of Legal Counsel is the federal government's ultimate legal adviser. The most significant and sensitive topics that the federal government considers are often given to the OLC for review. In this case, the memorandum was signed by Jay S. Bybee, the head of the office at the time. Bybee's signature gives the document additional authority, making it akin to a binding legal opinion on government policy on interrogations. Bybee has since become a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Another memorandum, dated March 6, 2003, from a Defense Department working group convened by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to come up with new interrogation guidelines for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, incorporated much, but not all, of the legal thinking from the OLC memo. The Wall Street Journal first published the March memo.

Beginning in November, a small unit of interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison began reporting allegations of prisoner abuse, including the beatings of five blindfolded Iraqi generals, in internal documents sent to senior officers, according to interviews with military personnel who worked in the prison.

The disclosure of the documents raises new questions about whether senior officers in Iraq were alerted about serious abuses at the prison before January. Top military officials have said they only learned about abuses then, after a soldier came forward with photographs of the abuse.

"We were reporting it long before this mess came out," said one of several military intelligence soldiers interviewed in Germany and the United States who asked not to be identified for fear they would jeopardize their careers.

The Red Cross has said it alerted American military commanders in Iraq to abuses at Abu Ghraib in November. But the disclosures that the military's own interrogators had alerted superiors to abuse back then in internal documents has not been previously reported.

The handling of al-Libi touched off a long-running battle over interrogation tactics inside the administration. It is a struggle that continued right up until the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April—and it extended into the White House, with Condoleezza Rice's National Security Council pitted against lawyers for the White House counsel and the vice president. Indeed, one reason the prison abuse scandal won't go away—two months after gruesome photos were published worldwide—is that a long paper trail of memos and directives from inside the administration has emerged, often leaked by those who disagreed with rougher means of questioning.

Last week the White House dismissed news accounts of one such memo, an explosive August 2002 brief from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel disclosed by The Washington Post. The memo, drafted by former OLC lawyer John Yoo, has been widely criticized for seeming to flout conventions against torture. It defends most interrogation methods short of severe, intentionally inflicted pain and permanent damage. White House officials told reporters that such abstract legal reasoning was insignificant and did not reflect the president's orders. But NEWSWEEK has learned that Yoo's August 2002 memo was prompted by CIA questions about what to do with a top Qaeda captive, Abu Zubaydah, who had turned uncooperative. And it was drafted after White House meetings convened by George W. Bush's chief counsel, Alberto Gonzales, along with Defense Department general counsel William Haynes and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's counsel, who discussed specific interrogation techniques, says a source familiar with the discussions. Among the methods they found acceptable: "water-boarding," or dripping water into a wet cloth over a suspect's face, which can feel like drowning; and threatening to bring in more-brutal interrogators from other nations.

The Justice Department formally decided last year that torture could be justified in Guantanamo. Now we can have a debate. John Ashcroft and Don Rumsfeld need to explain why this was decided, what torture techniques are now approved, and when and how and where they have been used. I've been inundated with emails all enthusiastically supporting such torture. I beg to differ, but I certainly think it's worth debating. What is not acceptable is for the government to decide for itself what is now legal or illegal, to keep it secret, to use abuse and torture in the name of the American people, and then, when horrors are revealed, place the blame on a few underlings. For his part, the president issued a Clintonian answer to the torture question last week:

Q Returning to the question of torture, if you knew a person was in U.S. custody and had specific information about an imminent terrorist attack that could kill hundreds or even thousands of Americans, would you authorize the use of any means necessary to get that information and to save those lives?

THE PRESIDENT: Jonathan, what I've authorized is that we stay within U.S. law.

But what if his own Justice Department wrote a memo arguing that, because of the war on terror, torture now is within the law, since the commander-in-chief can determine that law in wartime? That's very close to Nixon's statement that if the president does something, that makes it lawful. Look, I don't think we should treat these prisoners as if they had a parking offense. Some are truly depraved individuals. I appreciate the difficult task any president would have fighting an unnamed enemy capable of terrible atrocities. But neither do I believe it is acceptable to do what we have apparently been doing - while keeping it out of the public domain.

New evidence that the physical abuse of detainees in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay was authorised at the top of the Bush administration will emerge in Washington this week, adding further to pressure on the White House.

The Telegraph understands that four confidential Red Cross documents implicating senior Pentagon civilians in the Abu Ghraib scandal have been passed to an American television network, which is preparing to make them public shortly.

According to lawyers familiar with the Red Cross reports, they will contradict previous testimony by senior Pentagon officials who have claimed that the abuse in the Abu Ghraib prison was an isolated incident.

"There are some extremely damaging documents around, which link senior figures to the abuses," said Scott Horton, the former chairman of the New York Bar Association, who has been advising Pentagon lawyers unhappy at the administration's approach. "The biggest bombs in this case have yet to be dropped."

The best evidence of the incongruity of Abu Ghraib with American standards is the universal revulsion felt by the American people when those photographs were published. But right now there are only seven soldiers being prosecuted, and the sense of it is that that does not go deeply enough. If what happened was odious, but what happened did so under the auspices of a well-organized military, then you scratch up against the lessons of Nuremberg, which held superiors responsible for misconduct by subordinates. And people are wanting to know what are the relevant jurisdictions, and what tribunals do we have in mind to convoke in order to satisfy ourselves — and the world — that America wants more the merely to punish the people who did it. We need to punish also the people who let it happen.

Andrew Sullivan adds:

We have to know who really sanctioned this. And we have to stop it. Just because some anti-war opportunists are getting on this bandwagon does not absolve pro-war advocates from holding this administration responsible.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=544&u=/ap/20040615/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cheney_terrorism_3&printer=1

Seymour Hersh spoke... at the University of Chicago.... I took some scattered notes. The remaks will be disjoined--as will be the notes--but chilling. He asserted several things that he says he didn't have nailed down enough to write, but that he was confident of....

He then turned to the 40th president, referring obliquely to 138 names, then began to list them, saying those with long memories will catch on: they were the Reagan administration figures accused, indicted, or convicted of wrongdoing....

He talked about Carl Levin (though he didn't use his name) telling him about high officials lying to him in closed hearings, and how frustrating it was to be lied to, in classified settings, when the liars know the senators know they are lying. Levin said he'd never seen such brazenness in Washington....

He waits after the My Lai story broke mid November 1969, one week, two weeks--then, by Thanksgiving 1969, other correspondents finally write about the atrocities THEY had seen in Vietnam: an outpouring that made him feel strange that it took little old him, the police reporter who had flunked out of law school, 11 years after winning his B.A. in English, to unleash this outpouring of truth....

From My Lai, the transition to the current scandals was seemless. He connected the dots, and spoke of the CIA secret prisons we haven't heard about yet: "We're basically in the disappearing business." He made the first of several criticisms of our humble profession: "there's no learning curve in America. There's no learning curve in the press corps."...

Unsurprisingly, he flagged the extraordinary importance of the WSJ memo revealing the government's plans to torture, including its assertion that it's not against the law if the president approves it, and mocked the New York Times headline "9 Militias Are Said to Approve a Deal to Disband," suggesting in its stead, "Bush Administration Offers Hoax in Hopes of Convincing U.S. There's Some Peace." His assessment of the postwar settlement: "It's going to come down to who has the biggest militia will win."...

Then a story from one of his intelligence sources, whom Hersh says didn't find it an unflattering story: some time in 1986 or 1987, Reagan was given a long chart presentation of what actually happened with Iran/Contra and began sleeping five minutes in to it, then snoring on Nancy's shoulder. After twenty minutes it was over, the helicopter was fired up for the Friday trip to Camp David, Nancy aroused him, he awoke with a start, glanced at the charts, and asked, "What's that."  Sy said something like "That's MY Ronald Reagan."...

"NATO's falling apart in Afghanistan now."

And this was one of the most stunning parts. He had just returned from Europe, and he said high officials, even foreign ministers, who used to only talk to him off the record or give him backchannel messages, were speaking on the record that the next time the U.S. comes to them with intelligence, they'll simply have no reason to believe it.... He lamented of his journalistic colleagues, "I don't know whey they don't just tell it like it is."...

He said the people most horrified by the way the war was planned were the military commanders responsible for protecting their troops.... He talked about the horror of the 1000 civilian deaths in Fallujah (but was careful to note the Marines were doing their job, placing the blame with their superiors)....

He talked about how hard it is to get the truth out in Republican Washington: "If you agree with the neocons you're a genius. If you disagree you're a traitor." Bush, he said, was closing ranks, purging anyone who wasn't 100% with him. Said Tenet has a child in bad health, has heart problems, and seemed to find him generally a decent guy under unimaginable pressure, and that people told him that Tenet feared a heart attack if he had to take one more grilling from Cheney. "When these guys memoirs come out, it will shock all of us."...

He said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, "You haven't begun to see evil..." then trailed off. He said, "horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run."

He looked frightened.

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20040614/capt.dob10206141705.cheney_terrorism_dob102.jpg

I'm appalled by all of this, I am. But the intentions were clear and clearly stated, and so it seems kind of difficult to be surprised. It's a lot like the WMD thing, where the reasonable response when, like, the media and mainstream opinion finally got around to realizing the obvious was, 'Uh-huh. And what country were you living in for the past couple years?' When people like Buckley start on about American standards, I mean, he's been cheerleading for these motherfuckers for a long time, knowing full well what they stood for. I read his stupid magazine, I know what they've been saying, and they've rah-rah-ed every broken treaty and every fuck-you to the rule of law. It's a little fucking late for them to get off the bandwagon.

The basic issue is accountability, and this administration has made it clear that it will brook nothing of the sort. They'll shit on some grunts, court-martial a few Spc.'s, and that's the end of it. Nobody in this administration is ever going to be held accountable for word or deed (unless the words and deeds run afoul of the Message of the Day, of course), nobody's ever going to admit or accept responsibility for anything, at least not in any way that actually matters, and so the only possible recourse is to throw the entire lot of them out on their asses.

Well yes, but look at Stuart, who for all his biases was clearly more of an intelligent sort than most -- he chose to resist that right on up to his last outraged post defending Miller, who now increasingly appears compromised.

Q Why do you say you've made it clear on Geneva Conventions when it's -- obviously, they've been violated ever since we went into Iraq?
MR. McCLELLAN: Are you talking about the abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib?

Q And Guantanamo and everywhere else.

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't know what specifically you're referring to, everywhere else.

Q I'm saying that you people have never said definitively that you are obeying the Geneva Conventions.

MR. McCLELLAN: Helen, no, we made it very clear when it comes to Iraq that the Geneva Convention did apply.

Q Consistent with, you say, but --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, not in Iraq. In Iraq we made it very clear the Geneva Convention applies.

Q Can I ask about Vice President Cheney, because yesterday he repeated what is a very controversial claim. He said that Saddam Hussein had long-established ties with al Qaeda. Does the President believe that Saddam Hussein had long-established ties with al Qaeda?

MR. McCLELLAN: We certainly talked about the ties with terrorism between the -- between the regime that was removed from power, and we talked about those ties prior to the decision to remove that regime from power. So that was well-documented. Secretary Powell went before the United Nations and talked about some of those ties to terrorism, as well. And Zarqawi is certainly a senior al Qaeda associate who was in Iraq prior to the decision to go in and remove the regime from power.

Q There's also al Qaeda in the United States. That does not mean the United States is cooperating with those members of al Qaeda. Just by the presence of someone does not mean there's a cooperation.

MR. McCLELLAN: But, remember, we're talking about an oppressive regime that was in power in Iraq that exercised control over that country. And go back and look at what we documented, Norah. We documented all this, and I think that's what the Vice President was referring to.

Q So today you're saying the President does agree there were long --

MR. McCLELLAN: We stand by what we've said previously, in terms of the regime's ties to terrorism, yes. And I think that's what the Vice President was referring to.

Q The President said there were no ties in the run up to the war.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, Helen, that's a mischaracterization. There were clear ties to terrorism between the regime --

Q He said there were no ties with al Qaeda.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- certainly supporting suicide bombers in the Middle East.

Q Are you repudiating what the President said?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I think you're talking about September 11th.

Q Has the President been asked to answer questions before the CIA leak investigation?

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't have any update at this point. But those are the types of questions that you need to direct to the prosecutors who are overseeing that investigation. And I'll see if there's any further update beyond what we said previously.

Q Why can't you tell us? I mean, he's the President of the United States. You aren't going to tell us if he's been questioned in a criminal investigation>

MR. McCLELLAN: I just said I don't have any update from where he -- what he previously responded to, Terry.

Q Right, but we'd like it from you, please.

MR. McCLELLAN: And I'll see what else I can find out. But remember what we've made clear from the very beginning. There's an ongoing investigation right now. We want to do everything we can to help that investigation conclude successfully and get to the bottom of this. And in that spirit, that's why we've referred questions like that to the investigators, because if they feel it will help move their case forward, I'm sure that they will discuss that information with you. But I will -- but I'll go back and just check from our end to see what else I can find out.

Q It's an historic event. Not many Presidents --

MR. McCLELLAN: Understood. No, understood, but I have to balance that with the ongoing investigation that's underway.

Q Has he retained his lawyer yet, regarding this?

MR. McCLELLAN: That's what I said. I don't have any update from what he previous said. Let me look into things.

Go ahead.

Q Scott, Richard Clarke says that in the wake of his book, NSC lawyers were used to do opposition research against him, that they contacted his former colleagues to -- quote -- "dig up dirt" on him. Is that accurate? And is it an inappropriate --

MR. McCLELLAN: Arash, I think we've been through this issue and I don't think there's anything to add to what we've previously said.

How did those new relaxed rules get moved from Guanatanamo against high-profile Qaeda terrorists to people dragged in off the street in Baghdad? We don't yet know. But we do know that the administration debated various methods of torture - because Rumsfeld signed off on some and then had a change of heart and restricted some of the more horrifying methods. It's also clear that there was considerable internal debate about the new regulations. The CIA won out against the FBI most of the time. The reason I'm concerned about this is not simply because it is horrifying that the United States now uses forms of torture on captives. I'm concerned because, as Hitch has written, we are about to find out much more about Abu Ghraib, where rape and murder of inmates occurred. As John McCain has put it, "It's just incredible. Why doesn't every nation in the world now have a green light to do everything it thinks is necessary to combat a 'terrorist threat'?" I guess some will dismiss McCain as a wuss when it comes to terror. But I don't. He has a point about another notch downward in America's reputation. And I'm sick of being told that worrying about this is a sign of faint-heartedness in the war. It is a sign of basic decency. Torture is not only horrifying for the victim; it corrupts the perpetrator. I don't want to see America become indistinguishable from some Latin American police state in the way it treats its inmates in this war on terror. There are limits. How we conduct this war is as important as winning it. We cannot lose our soul in the process.

More here:

I haven't received more than a handful of emails supporting my position on the torture issue. But I have received dozens like the following:

I really enjoy your writing and insights and, like you, am concerned that we not torture innocent or non-threatening combatants. But like the old proverb says - "All's fair in love and war" - and this is war. I, for one, hope we intend to win - whatever it takes - if that includes torturing (not just humiliating the enemy) then I literally thank God we have people like Rumsfeld and Cheney with the balls to get it done.

My only question then is: why won't Rumsfeld and Cheney and Bush come out and defend this policy openly? Or maybe they will. Rummy has said he wants to make public all the memos on torture and abuse.

And again:

Now here's an interesting analogy:

With the whole stem-cell debate, the President's rationale (I assume) is that "While you may not care about these little old stem cells, once you start making them and doing experiments you are on the whole slippery slope to killing people for medical research". A position which I agree with, on balance.
Compare this, sadly, to his position on torture, where he did not seem to realise that while it may seem OK to slightly torture some cunning terrorist mastermind, you are then on the same slippery slope to a bunch of soldiers messing with random foreigners just for kicks.
Likewise, as I'm sure we'll hear over the next few years, the Patriot Act is probably being used for all kinds of non-national-security related criminal investigations.

Slippery slope arguments are dubious, to my mind, but I see the point here. The concrete issue we have to figure out is how the special rules for Guantanamo got transferred to Abu Ghraib. The obvious theory: once the insurgency got even more deadly, the Pentagon got frustrated with their lack of actionable intelligence. Some of the Gitmo techniques had apparently succeeded in getting some useful info, so a decision was made to experiment with them more widely in Iraq - against people who might well not have been in al Qaeda or merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. You can understand the motive, but the risks were under-estimated, and the abuses predictable. Well, we'll find out soon enough.

WE'VE LOST THE IRAQIS: The latest poll of Iraqis - skewed because it doesn't include the Kurds - is nonetheless bleak news. Paul Bremer will have spent over a year losing legitimacy completely. The Iraqis still have trust in the Iraqi security forces, while they have little or no trust in the CPA (it has an approval rating of 11 percent). (On the other hand, they also distrust the U.N., giving it only slightly higher grades than the loathed Americans.) 81 percent of Iraqis now think better of Moqtadr al Sadr than they did three months ago (but only 2 percent would elect him president). Allawi scores 24 percent support; al Sadr gets 67 percent. A staggering 92 percent view the Coalition forces as "occupiers" as opposed to 2 percent who consider them "liberators;" and 55 percent say they would feel more safe if the Coalition forces left (that number was 11 percent last November). It doesn't get more decisive a judgment than that.

SILVER LININGS? Hard to find - but they do exist. 63 percent are happy to have an interim Iraqi government after June 30; 51 percent feel "very safe" in their neighborhoods; 64 percent say that the conflicts in Fallujah and Karbala have made Iraq more unified; 51 percent are now more interested in joining the Iraqi security forces than they were three months ago; 87 percent believe that the Iraqi security forces will be capable of keeping order without the help of the coalition forces. Abu Ghraib didn't have much of an impact. Most Iraqis say that the abuses are what they expect from Americans (54 percent believe all Americans are like Lynndie England). But the fundamental reason that U.S. forces are opposed is because they are viewed as an occupation, not because of their conduct. Most believe that the violence is a function of a collapse in respect for the Coalition forces and a function of external meddling (which gets it roughly right). The obvious conclusion is that we have lost the window of opportunity to use the good will gained from the ouster of Saddam to leverage a pro-American democracy in non-Kurdish Iraq. But a democracy is still possible, and it's hard to think of a more rational way forward than the one now proposed. The task now is to achieve some kind of workable pluralist, non-Islamist government that will not be a major anti-American force in the region. That's much better than leaving Saddam in power; but it's far less than we might once have hoped for. Maybe in a decade or so, we'll see the real fruits of this noble, flawed experiment. I'm still hoping.

SLOWLY, AND IN spite of systematic stonewalling by the Bush administration, it is becoming clearer why a group of military guards at Abu Ghraib prison tortured Iraqis in the ways depicted in those infamous photographs. President Bush and his spokesmen shamefully cling to the myth that the guards were rogues acting on their own. Yet over the past month we have learned that much of what the guards did -- from threatening prisoners with dogs, to stripping them naked, to forcing them to wear women's underwear -- had been practiced at U.S. military prisons elsewhere in the world. Moreover, most of these techniques were sanctioned by senior U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the Iraqi theater command under Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez. Many were imported to Iraq by another senior officer, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller.

In December 2002, Mr. Rumsfeld approved a series of harsh questioning methods for use at the Guantanamo Bay base. According to the Wall Street Journal, these included the removal of clothing, the use of "stress positions," hooding, "fear of dogs," and "mild non-injurious physical contact." Even before that, the Journal reported, interrogators at Guantanamo forced prisoners to wear women's underwear on their heads. A year later, when some of the same treatment was publicized through the Abu Ghraib photographs, Mr. Rumsfeld described it as "grievous and brutal abuse and cruelty."

Administration officials have said that tougher techniques are available at Guantanamo, where the Geneva Conventions are considered inapplicable, than in Iraq, where they unquestionably apply. Yet through much of the past year, the opposite appears to have been the case. After strenuous protests from legal professionals inside the military, Mr. Rumsfeld ordered a review of interrogation techniques in early 2003 that led, in April that year, to the dropping of a number of methods at Guantanamo that he had earlier approved, including the use of dogs, stress positions and nudity.

Later, several of the techniques that were banned in Guantanamo were adopted in Iraq. In late August and September 2003 Gen. Miller visited Abu Ghraib with the mandate to improve interrogations. Senior officers have testified to Congress that he brought "harsh" techniques from Guantanamo. Gen. Sanchez's command then issued a policy that included the use of stress positions and dogs, along with at least five of seven exceptional techniques approved by Mr. Rumsfeld in the revised Guantanamo policy. After further objections from uniformed lawyers, Gen. Sanchez modified the policy in mid-October, but interrogators and guards at Abu Ghraib went on using the earlier rules. They were committing crimes, but they were not improvising: Most of what they did originally had been sanctioned by both the defense secretary and U.S. Central Command.

It's not clear why interrogation techniques judged improper or illegal by a Pentagon legal team were subsequently adopted in Iraq. Nor is it clear what those standards are today, either in Iraq or elsewhere -- breaking with decades of previous practice, the Bush administration has classified them. Congressional leaders who have vowed to get to the bottom of the prisoner abuse scandal still have much to learn; they will not succeed unless the scale and pace of their investigations are stepped up.

The Senate, however, has an opportunity today to directly address the mess the administration has made of interrogation policy and of America's global standing. An amendment to the defense authorization bill, sponsored by Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), would reaffirm the commitment of the United States not to engage in torture, and it would require the defense secretary to provide Congress with guidelines ensuring compliance with this standard. Sadly, the Bush administration's policy decisions have cast doubt on whether this country accepts this fundamental principle of human rights. Congress should insist that it does.

Andrew Sullivan is, once again, almost a lone voice in the right-leaning wilderness:

o what is it? Defensible interrogation techniques or something for which the Defense secretary has to apologize? Maybe it took seeing the actual abuse for Rumsfeld to realize how vile it is. But he approved many of the methods nonetheless. If people see nothing wrong with doing what was done at Abu Ghraib, then we need to have that debate. And that debate should be public, in front of the world. If the Bush administration wants to defend torture in an election campaign, it can go right ahead. But it has no right to change the rules of U.S. military conduct in secret, through a series of memos and improvisation, and then, when the evidence emerges, pretend it was all concocted by a handful of thugs. I keep remembering, as Anne Applebaum notes this morning, the look on the faces of those creeps humiliating inmates, and the grin on the face of Graner as he posed next to a murdered inmate. They are the faces of people who know they are doing what they are supposed to do. They fear no retribution. 37 inmates have died - died - in U.S. custody. Do we think they all caught pneumonia? Mercifully, some in the military upheld their own honor and disseminated the pictures. But what would have happened if we had not seen those pictures? Would torture still be going on? How would we have found out? This comes down to a fundamental compact between a government and the people. From all the evidence we see so far, the Bush administration has violated that compact, allowed America's hard-won reputation for decency and fairness to be tarnished, and compromised the moral integrity of the war on terror. What is their explanation?

The Applebaum column referred to can be found here.

QUOTES OF THE DAY: "The United States is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment.'" - president George W. Bush, June 27, 2003.

"If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job. I don't think we want to be promoting a view of zero tolerance on this," - an "official who supervised the capture of accused terrorists", from the same story. The worst examples of mistreatment cited at the time were the use of truth-serum, threats to deport prisoners to other countries where torture is common, and sleep-deprivation.

Story in question here, originally from the W. Post.

Dozens of military police officers interviewed during the past two weeks at Camp Bucca and Abu Ghraib described feelings of anger, resentment and frustration about being caught up in a scandal that they had no part in, feelings shared by other soldiers who were here when the abuse took place.

"Morale is a tough issue right now," said Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Kauffman, a military guard at Camp Bucca from Dothan, Ala.

Units are stretched thin. Soldiers are working 12-hour shifts at both prisons. Some work 6, 9 or 15 days without a day off. Most of them are Army reservists and National Guard soldiers, called up from their civilian jobs to serve a year in Iraq to do what some described as a tedious, boring job. Although most of the personnel pulling guard duty were trained as military police officers, others are field artillery or Marine expeditionary forces, filling the gap because there are not enough military police.

Their job is to guard the more than 5,000 civilians accused of crimes against the occupation authority, from owning an illegal weapon to killing soldiers.

They also report on a half-measure of accountability via Congress:

The Senate voted without dissent yesterday to require the Bush administration to issue guidelines aimed at ensuring humane treatment of prisoners at U.S. military facilities and to report any violations promptly to Congress.

But, as it plunged into the controversy over abuse of detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and whether interrogation methods were sanctioned by U.S. officials, the Senate balked at a Democratic proposal to bar interrogation by private contractors, who have been accused of involvement in the Abu Ghraib scandal.

It also rejected another Democratic proposal to make it a crime, punishable by as many as 20 years in prison and substantial fines, to engage in war profiteering. Instead, the Senate approved a Republican alternative extending two anti-fraud criminal statutes to cover overseas business operations.

In banning "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners, the Senate was writing into law the policies that the administration has said it is following in accordance with the U.S. Constitution and international law. But the action also reflected concern over recently disclosed administration memos suggesting that the government may not be bound by these constraints in combating terrorism.

The proposal by Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), which was included in the defense authorization bill for next year, also went beyond current policy in requiring new rules to ensure compliance and disclosure of any violations to Congress.

Passage of the proposal by voice vote came after Republicans, facing defeat on the measure, agreed to raise no objections and offer no alternatives if the vote was taken by voice instead of putting all senators on record with a roll call, according to Democratic sources.

Also, we apparently hid a detainee for a bit there.

A suspected Iraqi member of the terrorist group Al Ansar, whom CIA Director George J. Tenet asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to hide off the official registry of prisoners, became lost in the system for seven months and was not interrogated by CIA or military officials during that time, Pentagon and intelligence officials said yesterday.

In his report on abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, Army Maj Gen. Antonio M. Taguba criticized the CIA practice of maintaining "ghost detainees" -- prisoners who were not officially registered and were moved around to hide them from Red Cross teams. Taguba called the practice "deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine and in violation of international law."

The man was picked up by the Kurdish military in June or July 2003 and taken outside Iraq by the CIA. He was interrogated under secret authority to treat people believed to be involved in the insurgency against U.S. troops differently than others, a U.S. intelligence official said.

Now that's unconditional love.

The PCO looks to be the successor organization to the Program Management Office, the Pentagon's contracting office within the Coalition Provisional Authority. Clearly the Pentagon will play a role in overseeing the implementation of contractor projects, and that's no trivial matter: the $18.4 billion we're spending in Iraq is supposed to be an important aspect of our post-June 30 influence. But this is surely about more than just the reconstruction contracts. Remember that there are "security"-related contracts issued for Iraq as well--just ask Virginia-based CACI International, who sent employee Steven A. Stefanowicz to Abu Ghraib. And that "other contract-related authorities" responsibility designated to the PCO seems sufficiently broad to allow the PCO chief--chosen by Donald Rumsfeld, with input from Colin Powell--to exercise it as he sees fit. There's not a whole lot that's clear here, but it certainly seems like the NSPD doesn't give the State and Defense Departments the same sheet of music to sing from. Plus ca change...

US President George W Bush has insisted Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

But he said his administration never asserted that the former Iraqi leader had a role in the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

He told reporters there had been "numerous contacts between the two".

His comments came a day after a bi-partisan commission investigating 9/11 said it had found no evidence of links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda," he said.

"This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al-Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda."

Mr Bush cited a meeting in Sudan between Osama Bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence officers.

The 9/11 commission - in its interim report published on Wednesday - also acknowledged such a meeting had taken place.

But it concluded that there was no evidence that it led to any kind of working relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq.

The two reasons given for hiding this captive are a) to make sure his treatment wasn't monitored by the Red Cross (but no one condoned abuse of prisoners, did they?) and b) to keep his location secret (Why? The military cannot keep its own inmate records secret?). Besides, the reason that the suspect was regarded as so important, apparently, was because he "possessed significant information about Ansar al Islam's leadership structure, training and locations." And yet - here's the mind-blowing part - he was only interviewed once in "one cursory arrival interrogation"! Here's a military desperately trying to get information on the insurgency; they go to extraordinary lengths to sequester a key informant; they do something that is "deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine, and in violation of international law," according to the Taguba report; both Tenet and Rumsfeld sign off on this shady business; and then ... nothing! It boggles the mind. Here we have two features of the Iraq occupation that we have slowly come to see close-up: the violation of settled military ethics and international law, authorized by the highest authorities, and complete incompetence. At least that's the only rational explanation I can find for this story as it currently reads. Does Rumsfeld have a better explanation?

A contractor working for the CIA was indicted Thursday in connection with the beating death of a prisoner in Afghanistan -- the first civilian to face criminal charges related to U.S. treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The four-count indictment was handed up in Raleigh, N.C., against David A. Passaro, 38, for the June 21, 2003, death of a prisoner in U.S. custody. Attorney General John Ashcroft said Passaro was accused of "brutally assaulting" the man while questioning him over two days.

The prisoner, identified as Abdul Wali, was being held at a U.S. detention facility in Asadabad, in the Kunar province of Afghanistan. Court documents say Wali had surrendered and was being questioned by Passaro about frequent rocket attacks directed at the U.S. facility, close to the Pakistani border.

Ashcroft said al Qaeda and Taliban fighters were common in that part of the region.

Wali died in his prison cell after Passaro beat him "using his hands and feet and a large flashlight" during two days of interrogations, the indictment said.

Rumsfeld Says U.S. Hid Iraqi Prisoner from Red Cross
Thu Jun 17, 2004 04:57 PM ET

By Charles Aldinger

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged on Thursday that he ordered the secret detention of an Iraqi terrorism suspect held for more than seven months near Baghdad without notifying the Red Cross.

Rumsfeld told reporters CIA Director George Tenet asked him last November "to take custody of an Iraqi national who was believed to be a high-ranking member of Ansar al-Islam," which the United States has called a terrorist group.

"And we did so. We were asked to not immediately register the individual (with the International Committee of the Red Cross). And we did that," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing hours after President Bush again voiced support for the beleaguered Pentagon chief.

The Iraqi man remains in custody, and Rumsfeld said he has been treated humanely.

Rumsfeld did not explain the reasons for his actions, but added that "we are in the processing of registering" the man, whom he did not identify, with the Geneva-based ICRC.

Assigning a prisoner number and notifying the Red Cross are required under the Geneva Conventions and other international humanitarian laws.

Rumsfeld's comments came as the United States is conducting a major investigation into abuse, including sexual humiliation, of prisoners by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We should have registered him (the prisoner) much sooner than we did," Pentagon Deputy General Counsel Daniel Dellorto told the briefing.

"That's something that we'll just have to examine, as to whether there was a breakdown in the quickness with which we registered him," he said.

'GHOST' PRISONERS

Rumsfeld said the man's case was unique, but he was vague when reporters asked whether the United States was holding other "ghost" prisoners without Red Cross knowledge in Iraq.

"He has been treated humanely. There's no implication of any problem. He was not at Abu Ghraib. He is not there now. He has never been there to my knowledge," Rumsfeld added, referring to the prison on the outskirts of Baghdad where U.S. soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners.

In March, Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who investigated abuses at Abu Ghraib, criticized the holding of "ghost" detainees as "deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine, and in violation of international law."

Rumsfeld was asked how this case differed from the practice Taguba criticized. "It is just different, that's all," he said.

Washington has linked Ansar al-Islam to al Qaeda and blames it for some attacks in Iraq. Defense officials said the man was believed to be a senior official in the group and actively organizing attacks on U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

The prisoner has been held at Camp Cropper, a high-security facility near Baghdad International Airport, and has apparently been lost in the system in recent months, according to other U.S. officials, who asked not to be identified.

A report on Thursday by the rights group Human Rights First said the United States is holding terrorism suspects in more than two dozen detention centers worldwide, and about half operate in total secrecy.

At the White House meeting, Bush voiced support for Rumsfeld when reporters asked whether he was disappointed in the decision to hide the suspect from the Red Cross.

"I'm never disappointed in my secretary of defense. He's doing a fabulous job and America's lucky to have him in the position he's in," Bush said.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry told reporters in Detroit that Rumsfeld's order was a sign mishandling of prisoners reached high into the Bush administration.

That isn't the only thing Brooke wants to clarify. About the charge that fugitive INC intelligence chief Aras Habib Karem worked for Iranian intelligence, he says, "It is baseless. The best way to look at it is to look at his relationship with United States intelligence, or his relationship with Turkish intelligence, Syrian intelligence, Kuwaiti intelligence, Jordanian intelligence. He is an Iraqi intelligence officer. He is representing Iraqi interests."

Huh?

"He has liaison relationships with many intelligence services, including, at many times, with the United States. But he never works for no one. He has a liaison relationship with them"--that is, the Iranians--"in that we cooperate on issues that we agree with them on. We both hated Saddam. No question about it. We both opposed Saddam's domination of Iraq. And on those kinds of issues, we cooperated, no question--the same way we did with the government of the United States."

Hope that clears everything up. Iranian employee? Baseless. Iranian "liaison"? "Liaison relationship, that's right, we don't deny it."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is holding terrorism suspects in more than two dozen detention centers worldwide and about half of these operate in total secrecy, said a human rights report released on Thursday.

Human Rights First, formerly known as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, said in a report that secrecy surrounding these facilities made "inappropriate detention and abuse not only likely but inevitable."

"The abuses at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib cannot be addressed in isolation," said Deborah Pearlstein, director of the group's U.S. Law and Security program, referring to the U.S. Naval base prison in Cuba and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq where abuses are being investigated.

"This is all about secrecy, accountability and the law," Pearlstein told a news conference.

The report coincided with news that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered military officials to hold a suspect in a prison near Baghdad without telling the Red Cross. Pearlstein said this would be a violation of the Geneva Conventions and Defense Department directives.

She said thousands of security detainees were being held by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as locations elsewhere which the military refused to disclose.

"The U.S. government is holding prisoners in a secret system of off-shore prisons beyond the reach of adequate supervision, accountability of law," said the report.

Pearlstein said multiple sources reported U.S. detention centers in, among other places, Kohat in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan, on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia and at Al Jafr prison in Jordan, where the group said the CIA had an interrogation facility.

Prisoners are also being held at the Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina, and others were suspected of being held on U.S. warships.

A defense department spokesman told Reuters he would comment when he had more information about the report.

Pearlstein called for the U.S. authorities to end "secret detentions," provide a list of prisoners, investigate abuses and allow the International Committee of the Red Cross unfettered access to detainees.

U.S. treatment of detainees came under the spotlight after disturbing photos were leaked to the media showing U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners.

The United States is conducting several investigations into these abuses but Pearlstein said these were not enough and a full court of inquiry should be ordered.

Families of suspects detained by U.S. authorities have complained strongly about the lack of information about detainees held by U.S. authorities since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks against the United States.

Pakistani Farhat Paracha said via a telephone link-up at the news conference that she tried for weeks to find her husband, Saifullah Paracha, who disappeared last June when he took a business trip from Pakistan to Thailand.

Paracha said she asked the U.S. and Pakistani governments to track him down and only learned about his whereabouts when the Red Cross contacted her six weeks later to say her husband was being held at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

"I feel disgusted. It makes my heart sink. I feel so powerless and so helpless," said Paracha.

Q. Speaking of Mosul, how do you think the war in Iraq is going?

There are terrorists in Iraq who have been drawn into that part of the world. Every day we eliminate some of them; that's one more that won't be coming here.

Q. What do you mean by eliminate them? Where are the terrorists and insurgents going to go?

Well, they are going to be killed. When they attack our troops, 20 or 30 or 40 at a time are being eliminated.

Q. We can't kill everyone who hates America!

We can kill a lot of them, particularly when they try to kill us.

Q. And you think that will lead to democracy in Iraq?

It's kind of like the song about New York. If it can succeed in Iraq, it can succeed anywhere.

Q. You recently created a stir when you defended the interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib.

Most of the people in Mississippi came up to me and said: ''Thank Goodness. America comes first.'' Interrogation is not a Sunday-school class. You don't get information that will save American lives by withholding pancakes.

Q. But unleashing killer dogs on naked Iraqis is not the same as withholding pancakes.

I was amazed that people reacted like that. Did the dogs bite them? Did the dogs assault them? How are you going to get people to give information that will lead to the saving of lives?

the immediate superior of the officer in charge of interrogations at Abu Ghraib sed: "Well, if I go down, I'm not going down alone. The guys from Langley are going with me."

Could the abuse of prisoners in Iraq have gone beyond the beatings and sexual humiliation already alleged? Unreleased, classified parts of the report on prison abuse from Major General Anthony Taguba, which were read to TIME, contain indications of mistreatment of female prisoners. In a Feb. 21 statement to Taguba, Lieut. Colonel Steven L. Jordan, former head of the Abu Ghraib interrogation center, said he had received reports "that there were members of the MI [Military Intelligence] community that had come over and done a late-night interrogation of two female detainees" last October. According to a statement by Jordan's boss, Colonel Thomas Pappas, three interrogators were later cited for violations of military law in their handling of the two females, ages 17 and 18. Senate Armed Services Committee investigators are probing whether the two women were sexually abused. The Pentagon declined to comment.

Meanwhile, a class action filed in California on behalf of former detainees raises the specter of brutal physical abuse.

One plaintiff, identified only as Neisef, claims that after he was taken from his home on the outskirts of Baghdad last November and sent to Abu Ghraib, Americans made him disrobe and attached electrical wires to his genitals. He claims he was shocked three times. Although a vein in his penis ruptured and he had blood in his urine, he says, he was refused medical attention. In another session, Neisef claims, he was held down by two men while a uniformed woman forced him to have sex with her. "I was crying," said Neisef, 28. "I felt like my whole manhood was gone." The class action also claims that detainees were raped in prison. On June 6, Neisef was released, after a U.S. civilian told him, he says, that he had been wrongly accused by informants. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad confirms that a prisoner with Neisef's ID number was released on that date, and TIME has obtained a copy of his release order. But the Pentagon would not comment on the specifics of Neisef's account.

Sullivan's response:

We are getting information that electrocution of genitals, rape and murder are also part of the "coercive interrogation techniques" allowed at Saddam's former torture-palace. All the more reason to find out if these methods were approved by higher-ups, all the way to the secretary of defense. I will be harangued for continuing to write about this. But it is a huge deal if torture has been sanctioned by this administration in secret and on the authority of only the president, against U.S. and international law. We need to know what is in the April 2003 memo entitled "Coercive Interrogation Techniques approved by the Secretary of Defense." Did Rumsfeld authorize Abu Ghraib? Is he responsible? Is the administration knowingly scape-goating underlings for doing what they were told? The memo should help clear it up, and presumably exonerate Rumsfeld. So why won't he clear his name? It should be subpoenaed, if necessary.

Do you think that maybe Canada is a less surreal country than the USA is?

A U.S. Army judge on Monday accepted a request by attorneys of soldiers accused of abusing detainees to question the military's top commander in Iraq and all his subordinates.

The order effectively compels Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. general in Iraq, and Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the second-ranking commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and their subordinates to participate in a deposition with defense attorneys and Army prosecutors unless they invoke their rights against self-incrimination.

The judge, Col. James Pohl, rejected defense requests for memos between justice department attorneys, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials regarding the use of interrogation tactics.

"Quite frankly what they do in Washington, D.C., you have to connect it," Pohl said.

Pohl also ordered that the Abu Ghraib prison, where the abuse occurred, be preserved as a crime scene, and he rejected defense requests to move the proceedings out of Iraq.

Pohl issued the decisions at a hearing for Sgt. Javal S. Davis, one of seven Military Police soldiers accused of abusing and humiliating detainees at the prison.

Pohl also heard motions Monday in the cases against two other defendants -- Spc. Charles A. Graner Jr. and Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II -- and he decided to postpone the proceedings against Frederick, whose civilian lawyer failed to show up in court. Another soldier, Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits, pleaded guilty this past month and was sentenced to a year in prison.

It was not clear what legal authority the judge has to block demolition of the prison when an interim Iraqi government assumes control of the country after a formal transfer of power from the U.S.-led occupation authority at the end of the month.

President Bush had called for the prison to be torn down, a largely symbolic move that was quickly rejected by the interim Iraqi leaders.

The interim Iraqi president, Ghazi Yawar, has said that destroying the prison would be a waste of resources.

A defense attorney for Davis, Paul Bergrin, said he wanted court members to see Abu Ghraib for themselves, the Reuters news agency reported.

Washington, D.C.: Does the judge's decision in this case mean that Gen. Sanchez and other top brass will be testifying?

Michael Noone: No, it does not. It gives the defense the opportunity to send written questions or to seek to interview them and then to persuade the judge that the information the defense has gotten is relevant to the court martial trial. If the judge concludes that the testimony is relevant, then the generals will be called as witnesses.

--

Anonymous: Have these lawyers watched "A Few Good Men" too nay times, or do they really believe one of these generals will go off like Col. Jessup in the movie? I personally believe someone (CIA, DIA, MI?) "planted" the idea in the minds of some of these MPs that sexual activity might be particularly helpful in breaking down these prisoners (how else do you explain that our soldiers famously had little awareness of Iraqi and Arab culture but used a tactic specifically tailored to exploit that culture?), but I doubt anyone will ever admit that.

Michael Noone: The defense will argue that the generals' testimony is relevant to the soldiers' defense that they believed that their behavior was lawful. A soldier is not legally permitted to claim that he was following orders if the order was manifestly illegal. But if the guidance from higher headquarters was ambiguous enough so that the soldier could claim that he thought he was acting properly, that would give him a good defense. So the defense lawyers are going to be questioning the generals about what their written guidance was and whether or not what they said orally might have gotten passed down to the soldiers.

_______________________

Fairfax, Va.: Last week the Army announced that the investigation Appointing Authority in this matter had been transferred from LTG Sanchez to GEN Paul Kern in the Washington area. Will or has this affected the court-martial Convening Authority?

Michael Noone: No, it doesn't affect the court martial Convening Authority as a legal entity. I believe it simply makes Sanchez available as a witness or even a potential accused and removes his legal responsibility for the pending court martial actions.

--

Michael Noone: The order to declassify witness statements in the Taguba report is very unusual. A judge may give a lawyer access to classified reports in order to prepare a defense but the report stays classified and the jury -- if there is to be a jury -- is told that the material is classified. So it's very unusual for a judge to claim that he has the authority to declassify material.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration's new rules governing treatment of foreign prisoners have been contradictory and have sent mixed messages to American soldiers, according to military personnel and documents.

Six investigations are under way into abuses of detainees; none are expected to produce any conclusions soon. A close review of recently disclosed documents and interviews with soldiers, officers and government officials find a broader pattern of misconduct and knowledge about it stretching into the middle chain of command. But there is no clear evidence to date that the highest military or civilian leaders ordered or authorized the mistreatment of prisoners at American-run prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Still, the ever-shifting rules, in which lists of accepted interrogation tactics were widened drastically before being reined in over 17 crucial months, helped foster a climate in which abuse could flourish.

Starting with the 17 interrogation techniques approved in a standard Army manual, commanders at the Guantánamo prison doubled the permitted methods by late 2002, before shrinking the list. In Iraq last fall, directives on treatment of prisoners were changed at least three times in six weeks. Some of the procedures authorized in Iraq had been banned as too harsh months earlier at Guantánamo.

Some officers skirted international treaties governing prisoner treatment, some soldiers have said, instructing subordinates to hide detainees from monitors sent by the International Committee of the Red Cross. In one instance, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved an order to hold a suspected Iraqi terrorist but to keep his name off the prison rolls, effectively shielding the "ghost detainee" from Red Cross inspectors.

Lacking clear guidance, soldiers at various jails were apparently confused about the rules. In Iraq, some guards were such sticklers that they demanded paperwork to take away detainees' blankets, while others did not understand that they needed written authorization to intimidate prisoners with dogs.

Many guards at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq said they had been told by intelligence officers to "soften up" detainees, but some thought that meant making them do calisthenics to tire them out, while others took it to mean forcing them to crawl naked on leashes for hours.

Beatings were accepted enough at Abu Ghraib that some soldiers recorded the number of stitches their victims required with tack marks on the wall. In the worst cases in Afghanistan and Iraq, abuse resulted in deaths, including 10 cases now being investigated as homicides.

While President Bush has portrayed the events at Abu Ghraib as the actions of just a few soldiers at one prison, the picture emerging from documents, interviews and Congressional testimony points to a broader pattern of misconduct and knowledge about it stretching up the chain of command.

While the mistreatment did not go entirely unnoticed, many soldiers who had hints of the abuse did not report it. In a chaotic environment in the midst of a war, some soldiers said later, they assumed it must have been authorized.

hmmmmmmm

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040628fa_fact

Meanwhile, the White House decides to release some documents. Hmm.

The White House this afternoon released a stack of internal documents on the treatment of war prisoners to back up President Bush's declaration hours earlier that torture is "not part of our soul."

Hoping to quell a public relations and political problem spawned by the revelation of mistreatment of captives at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the White House made public an early 2002 memo by Mr. Bush in which he reaffirms the United States' commitment to humane treatment.

In the memo, dated Feb. 7, 2002, and addressed to high civilian and military officials, Mr. Bush says "the war against terrorism ushers in a new paradigm."

But, he says, whatever new thinking is necessary for this new kind of war it "should nevertheless be consistent with the principles of Geneva," an allusion to the Geneva Convention setting forth principles on the treatment of prisoners of war.

That memo is one of many from the White House, Pentagon and the Justice Department discussing how far detainees should be pressured during interrogations at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other places. At first glance, though, they appeared to shed little light on the events at Abu Ghraib.

Since early May, revelations about the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers — including some graphic photographs — have caused great embarrassment to the United States. The extent of the Bush administration's discomfort over the prisoner-abuse scandal was demonstrated by the very release of the pile of internal paperwork today, and the fact that the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, spent nearly two hours this afternoon going over the documents with journalists.

The February 2002 memo by Mr. Bush seems to say in essence that, even though Taliban detainees seized in Afghanistan and their ilk are not legally entitled to treatment as spelled out at the Geneva Convention, the United States is morally committed to giving them such treatment anyhow.

"Our values as a nation, values that we share with many nations in the world, call for us to treat detainees humanely, including those who are not legally entitled to such treatment," Mr. Bush writes.

President Bush claimed the right to waive anti-torture laws and treaties covering prisoners of war after the invasion of Afghanistan, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized guards to strip detainees and threaten them with dogs, according to documents released Tuesday.

The documents were handed out at the White House in an effort to blunt allegations that the administration had authorized torture against al-Qaida prisoners from Afghanistan and Iraq. "I have never ordered torture," Bush said a few hours before the release.

The Justice Department, meanwhile, disavowed a memo written in 2002 that appeared to justify the use of torture in the war on terror. The memo also argued that the president's wartime powers superseded anti-torture laws and treaties.

That 50-page document, dated Aug. 1, 2002, will be replaced, senior Justice Department officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. A new memo will instead narrowly address the question of proper interrogation techniques for al-Qaida and Taliban detainees, the officials said, citing department policy for requesting anonymity on their comments.

Bush outlined his own views in a Feb. 7. 2002, document regarding treatment of al-Qaida detainees from Afghanistan. He said the war against terrorism had ushered in a "new paradigm" and that terrorist attacks required "new thinking in the law of war." Still, he said prisoners must be treated humanely and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

"I accept the legal conclusion of the attorney general and the Department of Justice that I have the authority under the Constitution to suspend Geneva as between the United States and Afghanistan, but I decline to exercise that authority at this time," the president said in the memo, entitled "Humane Treatment of al-Qaida and Taliban Detainees."

In a separate Pentagon memo, dated Nov. 27, 2002, the Defense Department's chief lawyer, William J. Haynes II, recommended that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approve the use of 14 interrogation techniques on detainees at Guantanamo Bay, such as yelling at a prisoner during questioning and using "stress positions," like standing, for up to four hours.

Haynes also recommended approval of one technique among harsher methods requested by U.S. military authorities at Guantanamo: use of "mild, non-injurious physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger and light pushing."

Among the techniques that Rumsfeld approved on Dec. 2, 2002, in addition to that one, the yelling and the stress positions:

-- Use of 20-hour interrogations.

-- Removal of all comfort items, including religious items.

-- Removal of clothing.

-- Using detainees' "individual phobias such as fear of dogs to induce stress."

In a Jan. 15, 2003, note, Rumsfeld rescinded his approval and said that a review would be conducted to consider legal, policy and operational issues relating to interrogations of detainees held by the U.S. military in the war on terrorism.

First, the full press briefing with Gonzalez et al yesterday accompanying the release of the papers. Worth a read.

An excerpt:

"Q I'd like to push Judge Gonzales, if I could, just a little bit on why you convened this today? You said it was to clear up, in your words, much confusion. Mr. Haynes used the word 'extraordinary' to describe this session and this release several times in your presentation. And, certainly, I've covered this White House since day one and never seen anything like this. It is extraordinary. (Laughter.) So, thank you, but also, is it fair to assume you think you have an extraordinary public relations problem on your hands, is that why you're doing this?

"JUDGE GONZALES: I think -- what's your name, I'm sorry?

"Q Scott Lindlaw, AP.

"JUDGE GONZALES: Scott, we thought a lot about this, because we know that all the information that we convey to you and to the world also goes to our enemies. And that's something we had to consider very, very carefully. On the other hand, we also felt that it was harmful to this country, in terms of the notion that perhaps we may be engaging in torture. That's contrary to the values of this President and this administration. And we felt that was harmful, also.

"And so weighing those considerations and the fact that, regrettably, some of these techniques have already been leaked, and probably are already known by the enemy, we made the decision that this was probably the right thing to do at this particular time."

Later on:

"Q Judge, I wanted to follow on what Suzanne and Ed are asking you. I think people here are looking for more specifics about the President's actual involvement, other than signing his name, to this February document. Can you be more specific about how many meetings did he engage in with you to discuss this? Did you put together a memo yourself, because there isn't one here, that would have preceded his signature on his own? Was there a meeting that involved the Vice President? Can you just give us some more idea, because the President has said we should feel comforted, but I'm not sure there's a lot of specifics here about his interest, his personal interest.

"JUDGE GONZALES: I'm not going to get into a discussion about the internal deliberations of the White House. I can say that during this period of time there was a great deal of debate, over a period of days, maybe a period of a couple weeks, when the presidential determination was made, all the agencies had actually weighed-in very strongly.

"Q With the President, personally?

"JUDGE GONZALES: I believe so. But the equities of all the agencies were presented to the President, and they were before the President as he made his decision.

"Q And who did that, you?

"JUDGE GONZALES: Again, I'm not going to talk about --

"Q Well, wait, I'm not sure I understand, why is that a difficult thing to discuss?

"JUDGE GONZALES: It's not a difficult thing to discuss, it's just one that I don't choose to discuss.

"Q Why?

"JUDGE GONZALES: I just don't.

"Q Why wouldn't that be helpful?

"JUDGE GONZALES: We normally don't talk about the internal deliberations within the White House. I don't think that's appropriate."

This selection came from Froomkin's White House Briefing daily column thing, where these observations also appeared from Froomkin himself:

Coming from a White House that plays pretty much everything close to the vest, it was a day of extraordinary disclosure.

But today's coverage makes it clear that there are still a host of unresolved issues. Among them:

• Does President Bush still believe, as his 2002 memo said, that he has "the authority under the Constitution" to deny protections of the Geneva Conventions to some combatants?

• The memos describe Pentagon prohibitions against torture. But do the distinctions drawn between forceful interrogation tactics and torture meet the common-sense test? And what rules did the White House set for the CIA?

• Did the White House set a tone that led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib?

• What was the president's involvement in the deliberations on torture, beyond putting his name at the bottom of that one memo?

• And the debate within the administration, as illustrated most clearly by memos from the Justice Department, continued to rage long after Bush's memo. So how long did the issue of torture remain in play?

He also notes a separate story in the Wall Street Journal of interest -- can't get to that without being a subscriber so here's what Froomkin says of it:

The Values Debate

The Wall Street Journal's John Harwood writes in his Capital Journal column: "The ongoing scandal over prisoner abuse is creating a new values debate -- threatening one of Mr. Bush's bedrock strengths.

"Prisoner abuse has proven toxic for Mr. Bush in many ways: deepening pessimism over the occupation of Iraq, heightening doubts about the administration's competence in the antiterror war and damping attitudes toward the resurging economy. It also has begun eroding Mr. Bush's standing on values."

Harwood notes that at a news conference earlier this month, journalists gave the president three chances to condemn the use of torture. (See my June 11 column, A Tortured Non-Denial.)

"He didn't," Harwood writes. "Only yesterday, as investigations kept prisoner abuse in the headlines, did Mr. Bush declare 'I will never order torture' and release documents about administration deliberations on interrogation techniques."

Newly released documents and interviews portray the civilian leadership at the Pentagon as urgently concerned that al Qaeda and Taliban detainees might have information that could prevent terrorist attacks and as searching intently for effective and "exceptional" interrogation techniques that would pass legal muster.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his senior aides emerge as central players in the government's struggle over nearly three years to decide how far it could go to extract information from those captured in Afghanistan and Iraq and others imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The result, seen in the documents and in the officials' statements, is a trail of fitful ad hoc policymaking in which interrogation tactics were authorized for a time, then rescinded or modified after the Pentagon's lawyers or others raised legal, ethical or practical objections. Some practices authorized in the field were pulled back at the Pentagon level, and decisions on how to treat detainees were sometimes made case by case.

Rumsfeld, for example, approved in December 2002 a range of severe methods including the stripping of prisoners at Guantanamo, and using dogs to frighten them. He later rescinded those tactics and signed off on a shorter list of "exceptional techniques" suggested by a Pentagon working group in 2003, even though the panel pointed out that, historically, the U.S. military had rejected the use of force in interrogations. "Army interrogation experts view the use of force as an inferior technique that yields information of questionable quality," and distorts the behavior of those being questioned, the group report noted.

Although the White House this week repudiated a Justice Department opinion that torture might be legally defensible, Pentagon general counsel William J. Haynes II in 2003 forced the Pentagon working group to use it as its legal guidepost. He did so over objections from the top lawyers of every military service, who found the legal judgments to be extreme and wrong-headed, according to several military lawyers and memos outlining the debate that were summarized for The Washington Post.

In Iraq, where White House and Pentagon lawyers say all prisoners are protected by the Geneva Conventions, Rumsfeld agreed to hide an Iraqi captive from the International Committee of the Red Cross because, he said, CIA Director George J. Tenet asked him to. Legal experts call it a clear violation of the conventions. "A request was made to do that, and we did," Rumsfeld said this week, even as his deputy general counsel Daniel J. Dell'Orto acknowledged from the same podium that "we should have registered him much sooner than we did."

A letter about the handling of detainees sent in 2002 from the State Department's legal adviser to the Justice Department's deputy assistant attorney general made no attempt at bureaucratic pleasantries.

William H. Taft IV said that Justice's legal advice to President Bush about how to handle detainees in the war on terrorism was "seriously flawed" and its reasoning was "incorrect as well as incomplete." Justice's arguments were "contrary to the official position of the United States, the United Nations and all other states that have considered the issue," Taft said.

Taft's Jan. 11 letter, obtained by The Washington Post, was omitted from the hundreds of pages of documents released Tuesday by the Bush administration. The release was part of an effort to present the administration's policies on detainees since Sept. 11, 2001, as fully compliant with domestic and international law.

A fuller picture -- of senior administration officials who sought to reinterpret the law and sanction tougher treatment of detainees in the face of strongly expressed internal dissents at the State Department and the military services -- emerges from the State Department letter and other previously undisclosed memos.

The dissents include three classified memos written in the spring of 2003 by senior military lawyers in the Air Force, Marine Corps and Army, and a classified memo written by the Navy's top civilian lawyer, Alberto J. Mora, say government officials who have read them. Those officials, and others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition that they not be named.

Two officials said the memos were written by Air Force Maj. Gen. Jack L. Rives, Marine Brig. Gen. Kevin M. Sandkuhler and Army Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Romig.

Their common theme, the official said, was that tough interrogation techniques being advocated by senior civilians at the Defense Department and by the commander of the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would not only contravene longstanding military practice but also provoke a storm of public criticism if the tactics became known.

The military lawyers, the official said, argued that coercive interrogation techniques rarely produce data as reliable as the intelligence gleaned by rewarding prisoners who cooperate -- a view also expressed in the Army's field manual, as redrafted after the Vietnam War.

The Bush administration is distancing itself from a memorandum prepared two years ago by a government lawyer asserting that the president's power to use torture to extract information from suspected terrorists is almost unlimited.

Before the recent controversy concerning his work, however, some of the officials who received the memorandum worked diligently to elevate the lawyer, Jay S. Bybee, to the federal bench. Nominated by President Bush in 2002 and confirmed by the Senate last year, he now sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Former colleagues say the judge, whose chambers are in Las Vegas, is a serious, soft-spoken, reflective man. They say it is difficult to reconcile his discussion of torture in clinical, dispassionate detail with his background. A former legal academic, Judge Bybee told Meridian, a Mormon magazine, last year that he hoped to be remembered for his probity.

"I would like my headstone to read, `He always tried to do the right thing,' " Judge Bybee said.

The memorandum, dated Aug. 1, 2002, defined torture narrowly under a federal law that prohibits it. Only pain like that accompanying "death, organ failure or the permanent impairment of a significant body function" qualifies, Mr. Bybee wrote. It went on to say torture is unlawful only if the infliction of pain is the offender's specific objective. "Even if the defendant knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent," he wrote.

The memorandum also discussed various potential defenses to criminal prosecutions for torture, including necessity and self-defense. Finally, it asserted that the president was free under his authority as commander in chief to order torture notwithstanding treaties and laws barring it.

The memorandum said it was addressed to Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, in response to his questions. At a White House briefing on Tuesday, Mr. Gonzales specifically disavowed the part of the memorandum discussing the president's authority as commander in chief, saying it was "irrelevant and unnecessary."

Senior Justice Department officials took a broader view, saying the entire memorandum would be withdrawn.

"We didn't need the memo to tell us he had the power to override the Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, the Magna Carta and whatevertherfuckelse -- that power is implicit, motherfuckers!" Gonzales then peppered the press corps with rubber bullets and departed in a cloud of tear gas.

The newspaper said negligent homicide and manslaughter charges were being brought against two warrant officers over the death of Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, commander of Saddam Hussein's air forces.

Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, based at Fort Carson, Colorado and a member of the 66th Military Intelligence Group, is accused of suffocating the general in a sleeping bag while sitting on his chest and covering his mouth, according to Pentagon documents obtained by the newspaper.

The other soldier, Chief Warrant Officer Jeff Williams, was involved in the interrogation at a U.S. military facility at Qaim, Iraq, the newspaper said.

The general's death was among more than 30 prisoner deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan that the Pentagon said last month it was investigating.

The treatment of prisoners came under scrutiny after photographs of physical and sexual abuse of Iraqi inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad emerged earlier this year.

The general had undergone more than two weeks of daily interrogations while in U.S. custody, the newspaper said.

The U.S. military said at the time that he apparently died of natural causes after complaining that "he didn't feel well and subsequently lost consciousness." But an autopsy released by the Pentagon in May said Mowhoush died of asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression.

A spokesman at Fort Carson said he had no comment.

The company commander of the U.S. soldiers charged with abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison testified Thursday that the top military intelligence commander at the prison was present the night a detainee died during an interrogation and efforts were made to conceal the details of his death.

Capt. Donald J. Reese, commander of the 372nd Military Police Company, said he was summoned one night in November to a shower room in a cellblock at the prison, where he discovered the body of a bloodied detainee on the floor. A group of intelligence personnel was standing around the body, discussing what to do, he said. Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of military intelligence at the prison, was among those present, said Reese.

Reese said an Army colonel named Jordan sent a soldier to the prison mess hall for ice to preserve the body overnight. Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan was head of the interrogation center at the prison, but it was unclear whether he was the officer to whom Reese referred.

No medics were called, Reese said, and the detainee's identification was never recorded.

Reese testified that he heard Pappas say at one point, "I'm not going down for this alone."

An autopsy the next day determined that the man's death was caused by a blood clot resulting from a blow to the head, Reese said, and the body subsequently was hooked up to an intravenous drip as if it were a live detainee and taken out of the prison, Reese recalled. There is no known record of what happened to the body after that.

Reese's testimony came during the first day of an investigative hearing for Spc. Sabrina Harman, one of seven Army reservists from the 372nd charged with abusing detainees at the prison late last year.

Some repeat info, but still.