Law Prof. Marty Lederman nails the larger point about the relevations in the Wash Post that an Iraqi general was tortured by a series of interrogators, including GIs as well as a CIA-led unit of Iraqi exiles:
[T]his was a concerted, planned, systematic and extended series of brutal interrogations, carried out by numerous persons and entities, within the military and the CIA, in a manner that they all considered to be authorized. No rotten apples. No nightshift.
Lederman wonders how soldiers could have possibly thought torture was OK. One likely explanation: The Pentagon--following the White House--redefined torture downward, such that "abusive and "degrading" treatment could be OK, so long as it wasn't "unhumane." Get it? Abusive treatment is not neccesarily inhumane and thus A-OK.
The White House--and later the Pentagon--obviously seems to have followed a policy of strategic ambiguity, not explicitly ruling out torturous tactics and leaving it to local commanders to 'get the job done.' The exact details of who ordered what, when, and where are still murky. But one thing that's clear is that the U.S. needs to uncover those details. That's what a democracy does, or at least should do. Which is why for me the most depressing part of the whole torture scandal is that the White House--aided by top Republicans--have succesfully opposed an independent commission to investigate abuses.
"No President has ever done more for human rights than I have," Bush once told the NYer. I'm sure he thinks that.
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