[Vision2020] More Torture Ahead

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Please note who is being quoted here: a former Army Judge Advocate General, but I suppose he's one of those unpatriotic misfits we've heard about on this list.

October 19, 2006,  10:39 am, The New York Times
Prediction: More Torture Scandals Ahead

More Abu Ghraibs: That will be the effect of the Military Commissions Act, in the judgment of Christopher Graveline, a former Army Judge Advocate General officer who helped prosecute 10 soldiers for detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib. “[O]ur national leadership has ensured more abuse scandals” and “there seems little hope for a cure for the systemic problems exposed at Abu Ghraib,” Graveline writes at The Washington Post op-ed page. He explains why:

    The interrogation abuses could be linked to three main areas of breakdown: confusion in the military ranks about what was acceptable behavior, given the conduct of civilian contractors and “other governmental agencies”; migration of certain techniques within the intelligence community without an understanding of how to implement them properly; and exploitation of the ambiguity in apparently innocuous interrogation tactics.

    The new law does nothing to remedy these weaknesses. Perhaps more important, the law could allow a C.I.A. interrogator to get away with negligent homicide. Graveline cites the case of Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, an Army interrogator (not at Abu Ghraib). Welshofer “exploited the ambiguous language of the ‘harsh’ interrogation approach to wrap an Iraqi general in a sleeping bag, tie electrical cords around the bag and sit on the man’s chest in an attempt to scare him with suffocation. The general died,” Graveline writes. “Welshofer was convicted by the military of negligent homicide. But given the language of the new law, it is unclear whether a civilian interrogator performing the same actions would be prosecuted, since it would be impossible to prove that the interrogator ‘specifically intended’ to torture or inflict ‘severe or serious physical or mental pain.’”