If I am reading this correctly, the Pentagon has just admitted that the approved rules for interrogation in Iraq included violations of the Geneva convention. My source is today's Senate Armed Services hearing, where the vice chairman of the joint chiefs and the assistant secretary of Defense were questioned. It is described at:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040513/ts_nm/iraq_abuse_dc_51 <quote> During a Senate Armed Services Committee (news - web sites) hearing, Democrats confronted Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the No. 2 official at the Pentagon, and Gen. Peter Pace, the No. 2 U.S. general, with "rules of engagement" for interrogations approved by the top commander in Iraq (news - web sites), Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. These methods included sleep and sensory deprivation, forcing prisoners to assume "stressful" body positions for up to 45 minutes, threatening them with guard dogs, keeping them isolated for longer than 30 days, and dietary manipulation. Sen. Jack Reed (news, bio, voting record) asked Pace if a foreign nation held a U.S. Marine in a cell, naked with a bag over his head, squatting with his arms uplifted for 45 minutes, would that be a good interrogation technique or a Geneva Convention violation. "I would describe is as a violation, sir," replied Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "As I read Gen. Sanchez's guidance, precisely that behavior could have been employed in Iraq," said Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat. Reed later asked Wolfowitz a similar question. Wolfowitz initially tried to sidestep it, but eventually replied, "What you've described to me sounds, to me, like a violation of the Geneva Convention." U.S. interrogation techniques have come under scrutiny amid revelations that prisoners were kept naked, stacked on top of each other, forced to engage in sex acts and photographed in humiliating poses. Human rights activists have said the U.S. interrogation methods clearly violated the Geneva Convention and a separate international treaty against torture. <end quote> If this is true, then it is an extremely serious manner. It would be admitting deliberate, systematic, authorized violations of the Geneva Convention. That is not just the actions of a few bad apples. It seems to me to be high level illegal orders. I'll stand being corrected by someone who better understands the military, but I cannot see how a general could legally order his reports to delibrately violate a treaty agreed to by the United States. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
