High Priority Put on Prison Interrogation Led to Use of Untrained Workers

[TacticalPeek]

High Priority Put on Prison Interrogation Led to Use of Untrained Workers
By DOUGLAS JEHL and KATE ZERNIKE

Published: May 28, 2004

WASHINGTON, May 27 - The interrogation effort at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq took on such urgency last fall that untrained personnel were pressed into service as analysts and even interrogators, according to accounts spelled out in documents and interviews.

The pace accelerated last December, after the capture of Saddam Hussein, which led to a near-doubling of the number of two-person "Tiger Teams" assigned to an interrogation center at the prison, which operated under the control of Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez's top deputy for intelligence.

The accounts depict a high-pressure environment at the prison, particularly within the interrogation center, where military intelligence personnel exerted substantial influence over a cellblock where most of the notorious abuses at Abu Ghraib apparently took place. In interviews, some soldiers who served in military intelligence units at the prison said the sense of urgency contributed to the loosened standards and the abuses that followed.

"When you let people take power in their own hands, it's going to happen," said a soldier who served as a military intelligence analyst at the prison. "There was no higher authority really."


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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/28/international/middleeast/28ABUS.html

[jdj]

1. I saw Karpinski on a discovery channel special on

Abu Ghraib last night, it was on this whole debacle. She said at one point during her interview that initially the prisoners were treated better than the soldiers and seemed to be implying that this led to some of the abuses happening when the prison filled up after Hussein's capture. Weird as hell. Lyndie England was on there, and they are saying they were following orders, some of which I believe, but I don't believe that they can justify the rapes, I am quite sure they were not told to rape the prisoners.

This thing was spun very badly, they essentially kept showing pictures of 9/11 and never once pointed out that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and had some guy on there saying that anything used to get information from terrorists was justified, however, never stated that these were not terrorists, that 70 to 90% were innocent. It was disappointing, but the good thing was they showed all the pics over and over, slowly, and these pics speak for themselves.

[struggle4progress]

2. It sounds like propaganda to me.

[TahitiNut]

10. Discovery Channel = Cox + Liberty Media + Time/Warner

It's very carefully designed to indoctrinate "good consumers" of corporate bread and circuses. Just watch the product placements for one clue.

[daleo]

3. Didn't somebody visit last fall, with a turkey?

"The interrogation effort at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq took on such urgency last fall that untrained personnel were pressed into service as analysts and even interrogators, according to accounts spelled out in documents and interviews."

Maybe somebody wanted to impress him. Now, who was that again?

[SandyUSA]

4. Trained or untrained -- they were told to brutalize these prisoners

I am especially horrified at some of the interrogation tactics that involve any kind of suffocation. I have major respiratory problems. I know what it is like to have to fight for breath.

Other folks can only imagine how horrible it would be to have some sack over your head you can hardly breathe through. It is a clear horror that the one man was put into a sleeping bag head first and rolled over back and forth and probably sat on and so forth till he died. Not to mention the water board torture technique where the person has a cloth over the face and is held something like upside down and has water poured onto the cloth which creates a desperately terrifying sensation of drowning. And the very recent photos of right out in the hall, the interrogators leaning on the prone prisoners to shut off their breath during questioning. I personally turn almost purple inside with fright at the thought! I have some idea, from the experience of being hospitalized over suffocation issues from a medical condition, how much terror and anguish beyond belief these prisoners were experiencing.

Hey, do we think these evil practices were somehow invented by a bunch of random bullies and untrained interrogators? No way! They were taught, you can count on it. To think that these vicious tactics were used not only on Iraqi combatants (which would also be dead wrong!) but on huge numbers of total innocents who were swept up in mass arrests makes me totally heartsick for the victims. The responsibility for these crimes is on both the immediate perpetrators and the higher ups who created and authorized these tactics. This did not happen by chance.

[daleo]

7. Interesting perspective

I couldn't agree more. The reporting is framed to make very serious assaults, including inducing terror through means such as cutting off breath, seem somehow minor. Ironic that a "war on terrorism" should use methods that induce terror.

[lakeguy]

5. If the interrogation was so important

you'd think they would have wanted the best trained personnel they had. Not some stupid fucks who didn't know what the hell they were doing. What a total load of BS!:wtf:

[Jim Warren]

6. Would you suppose thie high priority

given interrogations was due to the frenzy to implicate WMDs into the scenario?

[TNOE]

8. Did they need training in humanity???

Shouldn't that come naturally?? If someone gave me an order to do this heinous shit - I would absolutely refuse, no matter the consequences. And I sure as hell wouldn't be smiling about it.

[TahitiNut]

9. "took on such urgency last fall" ... after Rumsfeld's visit

This is not a mere coincidence! This is a program of human rights violations conducted for purely reich-wing ideological and partisan political purposes.

Interrogation "objectives" ...
(1) Gather "evidence" (no matter how specious) about WMD
(2) Whereabouts of Saddam Hussein (even though that information was obtained "on the street" rather than from detainees)
(3) Turn in your friends and neighbors (an interrogation "pyramid scheme" ... see #1).

War Crimes!