*Ø* Blogmanac | "Only Following Orders" . . . Where've We Heard That Before?


BATTLE LINES BEIN' DRAWN (AT HOME) -- War and Peace

Top brass 'picked man who ordered torture'
By William Lowther in London
May 10, 2004

THE torture tactics used to "soften up" Iraqi detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail began under orders from the highest level of the US defence administration, it was claimed yesterday.

The creation of torture units was the consequence of orders by the Defence Department –headed by Secretary Donald Rumsfeld – to prise information out of prisoners.

Last August, the Department ordered General Geoffrey Miller – then in charge at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay – to go to Iraq to find ways to improve the flow of intelligence from detainees, an investigation by Britain's Mail on Sunday newspaper has found.

The general recommended creating a single central interrogation unit at Abu Ghraib. It was in this unit where the degradation of Iraqi prisoners – now graphically exposed by more than 1000 photographs – took place.

Unit members, acting to the orders of Military Intelligence officers, carried out the sexual sadism and other abuses which have shamed the US – and there is still worse to come.

SOURCE