More Details On Miller's And Rumsfeld's Roles
The Washington Post has a terrific piece today on the role of not only General Miller in the abusive interrogations at Abu Ghraib, but also that of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and then Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone. The article suggests they had a much greater involvement in the discussions regarding interrogations than had previously been known.
Throughout the article is the constant refrain from senior officers that Gen. Miller encouraged the use of dogs; that Secretary Rumsfeld was apprised of much of the developments in interrogation at Abu Ghraib; and that legal theories were concocted to justify using dogs to "exploit Arab fear of dogs" as consistent with the Geneva Conventions.
The Government has argued that the rules on the use of dogs were clear at Abu Ghraib - that dogs were not to be used within interrogations themselves but to set the stage for interrogations; that using dogs required approval from on high; and that they had to be muzzled. But you be the judge: In the space of just one month, the rules on interrogation changed three times, never making anything particularly intelligible to interrogators, military police and other personnel. Read the three different memos here, here and here. In Sgt. Michael Smith's court martial in March, soldiers testified that there was no military dog policy at Abu Ghraib for the army dog handlers and Col. Thomas Pappas, who headed interrogations at Abu Ghraib, said he, himself, did not understand he needed approval to authorize the use of dogs.
Sadly it took until November of 2005 for the Defense Department to make unequivocally clear that the use of dogs is prohibited, issuing a directive that finally said: "Military working dogs, contracted dogs, or any other dog in use by a government agency shall not be used as part of an interrogation approach nor to harass, intimidate, threaten, or coerce a detainee for interrogation purposes." It's quite a comment on the level of confusion, if not the diametrically opposed policy that once governed U.S. military intelligence operations, that this directive even needed to be issued.
Throughout the article is the constant refrain from senior officers that Gen. Miller encouraged the use of dogs; that Secretary Rumsfeld was apprised of much of the developments in interrogation at Abu Ghraib; and that legal theories were concocted to justify using dogs to "exploit Arab fear of dogs" as consistent with the Geneva Conventions.
The Government has argued that the rules on the use of dogs were clear at Abu Ghraib - that dogs were not to be used within interrogations themselves but to set the stage for interrogations; that using dogs required approval from on high; and that they had to be muzzled. But you be the judge: In the space of just one month, the rules on interrogation changed three times, never making anything particularly intelligible to interrogators, military police and other personnel. Read the three different memos here, here and here. In Sgt. Michael Smith's court martial in March, soldiers testified that there was no military dog policy at Abu Ghraib for the army dog handlers and Col. Thomas Pappas, who headed interrogations at Abu Ghraib, said he, himself, did not understand he needed approval to authorize the use of dogs.
Sadly it took until November of 2005 for the Defense Department to make unequivocally clear that the use of dogs is prohibited, issuing a directive that finally said: "Military working dogs, contracted dogs, or any other dog in use by a government agency shall not be used as part of an interrogation approach nor to harass, intimidate, threaten, or coerce a detainee for interrogation purposes." It's quite a comment on the level of confusion, if not the diametrically opposed policy that once governed U.S. military intelligence operations, that this directive even needed to be issued.
posted by Avi at 5:16 PM
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