whitebeard

Don't curse the darkness, light a candle.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

we do not torture

From Dahr Jamil on Truthout.org:

While President Bush has regularly claimed - as with reporters in Panama last November - that "we do not torture," Janis Karpinski, the U.S. Brigadier General whose 800th Military Police Brigade was in charge of 17 prison facilities in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib back in 2003, begs to differ. She knows that we do torture and she believes that the President himself is most likely implicated in the decision to embed torture in basic war-on-terror policy.

While testifying this January 21 in New York City at the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration, Karpinski told us: "General [Ricardo] Sanchez [commander of coalition ground forces in Iraq] himself signed the eight-page memorandum authorizing literally a laundry list of harsher techniques in interrogations to include specific use of dogs and muzzled dogs with his specific permission."

All this, as she reminded us, came after Major General Geoffrey Miller, who had been "specifically selected by the Secretary of Defense to go to Guantanamo Bay and run the interrogations operation," was dispatched to Iraq by the Bush administration to "work with the military intelligence personnel to teach them new and improved interrogation techniques."

Karpinski met Miller on his tour of American prison facilities in Iraq in the fall of 2003. Miller, as she related in her testimony, told her, "It is my opinion that you are treating the prisoners too well. At Guantanamo Bay, the prisoners know that we are in charge and they know that from the very beginning. You have to treat the prisoners like dogs. And if they think or feel any differently you have effectively lost control of the interrogation."

Miller went on to tell Karpinksi in reference to Abu Ghraib, "We're going to Gitmo-ize the operation."

When she later asked for an explanation, Karpinski was told that the military police guarding the prisons were following the orders in a memorandum approving "harsher interrogation techniques," and, according to Karpinski, "signed by the Secretary of Defense, Don Rumsfeld."

For the full article by Dahr Jamail, go to: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030606L.shtml
We are in the midst of making more material from the Bush Crimes Commission widely available through expansion and development of the Commission web site. The whole world needs to read the documentation of these crimes against humanity. We urge you to contribute to make this possible. Checks should be made out to "Not In Our Name" and mailed to Not In Out Name, 305 West Broadway, #199, New York, NY 10013. Contributions can be made on line at www.nion.us/NSOC/sign.htm.