Report: Pentagon Warned on Torture, Abuse (WaPo)

[kpete]

Report: Pentagon Warned on Torture, Abuse

The Associated Press
Sunday, February 19, 2006; 2:49 PM



WASHINGTON -- The Navy's former general counsel warned Pentagon officials two years before the Abu Ghraib prison scandal that circumventing international agreements on torture and detainees' treatment would invite abuse, according to a published report.

Legal theories granting the president the right to authorize abuse in spite of the Geneva conventions were unlawful, dangerous and erroneous, Alberto J. Mora advised officials in a secret memo. The 22-page document was obtained by The New Yorker for a story in its Feb. 27 issue.

A Pentagon spokeswoman said Sunday she had not read the magazine story.

The memo from July 7, 2004, recounted Mora's 2 1/2-year effort to halt a policy that he feared would authorize cruelty toward suspected terrorists.

It document also indicates that some lawyers in the Justice and Defense departments objected to the legal course the administration undertook, according to the report.

Mora said Navy intelligence officers reported in 2002 that military-intelligence interrogators at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were engaging in escalating levels of physical and psychological abuse rumored to have been authorized at a high level in Washington.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/19/AR2006021900537_pf.html

[vi5]

1. And the sounds of crickets chirping will ring out yet again...

..as america shrugs in yet another reaction of willful indifference to their government committing more atrocities in their name.

[The Doctor.]

2. I have to wonder how many more

of these plans were in the works before 9/11.

The administration was planning on invading Iraq before Bush took office.
Did they already have plans to brush aside international law?

[Twist_U_Up]

9. These are plans set were up many years ago

along with everything else that has been going on and they are right on schedule.

[tecelote]

3. Torture doesn’t work because...

...people will simply say what you want them to say instead of telling the truth. Hmm. Wait a minute. Yeah, I get it! KKKarl, you’re a genius.

[disndat]

12. Torture works

to provoke more terrorist attacks, to prolong the "war on terror" thereby keeping Bush in power and more tax dollar$$ for Halliburton. I don't think the people understand or appreciate what a Machiavellian schemer Karl Rove is. So far, everything Bush & Co. want has come to past, starting with the "trifecta."

[berni_mccoy]

4. kpete, you are the best...

how do you find and post these stories so quickly???

:kick:

[kpete]

6. Tireless attempt to bring down Admin

nothing will stop me, nothing....

[Peanutcat]

5. I don't know why

Anyone even bothers to warn the Bush administration, unless it to cover their own ass. Bush and Co. never listen and do whatever the hell they want, and damn the consequences.

[mom cat]

7. And what will happen when this gets to the Alito, Roberts, Scalia.,Thomas

court?

Note this from the article in the OP:

"I was appalled by the whole thing," Mora told the magazine. "It was clearly abusive and it was clearly contrary to everything we were ever taught about American values."

Mora said he thought his concerns were being addressed by a special group set up by the Pentagon. But he discovered in January 2003 that a Justice Department opinion had negated his arguments with what he described as:

"an extreme and virtually unlimited theory of the extent of the president's commander in chief authority."

[nytemare]

8. This policy has not only made torturers of some of our troops

but has put the other troops in danger from the reaction.

Those pictures were sickening.

[Adelante]

10. Please Please Please - SIGN the PETITION

In my sig.

Thank you.

[madrchsod]

11. he works for walmart now......

the truth is finally coming out but since it post 9/11 it`s ok

[Disturbed]

13. The Bush Regime approved of all of the Torture.

All of the high ranking civilians of the DOD and the Military went right along with the program. Why haven't any of them been procecuted? The answer is real simple.

[ktlyon]

14. Like I said before if our troops are torturing prisoners on their own

then we have a serious discipline problem. I personally doubt that. Our troops are the best trained in the world. Someone high up ordered this. I don't even think our Generals would make such a call on their own so it must be the Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld cabal.