U.S. Struggled Over How Far to Push Tactics: "Rumsfeld, for example, approved in December 2002 a range of severe methods including the stripping of prisoners at Guantanamo, and using dogs to frighten them. He later rescinded those tactics and signed off on a shorter list of 'exceptional techniques' suggested by a Pentagon working group in 2003, even though the panel pointed out that, historically, the U.S. military had rejected the use of force in interrogations. 'Army interrogation experts view the use of force as an inferior technique that yields information of questionable quality,' and distorts the behavior of those being questioned, the group report noted.
Although the White House this week repudiated a Justice Department (news - web sites) opinion that torture might be legally defensible, Pentagon general counsel William J. Haynes II in 2003 forced the Pentagon working group to use it as its legal guidepost. He did so over objections from the top lawyers of every military service, who found the legal judgments to be extreme and wrong-headed, according to several military lawyers and memos outlining the debate that were summarized for The Washington Post.
In Iraq, where White House and Pentagon lawyers say all prisoners are protected by the Geneva Conventions, Rumsfeld agreed to hide an Iraqi captive from the International Committee of the Red Cross because, he said, CIA (news - web sites) Director George J. Tenet asked him to. Legal experts call it a clear violation of the conventions. 'A request was made to do that, and we did,' Rumsfeld said last week, even as his deputy general counsel, Daniel J. Dell'Orto, acknowledged from the same podium that 'we should have registered him much sooner than we did.'
Rumsfeld played a direct role in setting policies for detainee treatment in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, according to a list of Defense Department memos related to Guantanamo Bay obtained by The Post. He signed seven orders from January 2002 to January 2003 establishing the interrogation center, placing the Army in charge, allowing access by the Red Cross and foreign intelligence officials, and even deciding how detainee mail would be handled.""
- posted by geoff @ #