Former Guantánamo chief clashed with army interrogators

General's sacking cleared way for Pentagon to rewrite rules

The commander of Guantánamo Bay, sacked amid charges from the Pentagon that he was too soft on detainees, said he faced constant tension from military interrogators trying to extract information from inmates.

Brigadier General Rick Baccus was removed from his post in October 2002, apparently after frustrating military intelligence officers by granting detainees such privileges as distributing copies of the Koran and adjusting meal times for Ramadan. He also disciplined prison guards for screaming at inmates.

In one of the general's first interviews since his dismissal, he told the Guardian: "I was mislabelled as someone who coddled detainees. In fact, what we were doing was our mission professionally."

Gen Baccus's unceremonious departure offers a rare insight into how the Pentagon rewrote the rules of warfare to suit the Bush administration's view of a radically changed world following the terror attacks of September 11 2001.

more…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1219887,00.html

peace

rules of Land Warfare... what can I say? He was sacked
for being a true profesional and was replaced
by Miller...

I salute you Sir.

deserving of scorn

Add them up: Shinseki, Clark, O'Neill, Wilson, Plame, Baccus, and many many others.

Keep the list going.

NT!

April 7, 2002

Updated: Saturday, April 13, 2002

Peace Be With You,

I will continue to address you when I have information that you need to know.

I KNOW YOU ARE AWARE THAT NOT ALL OF THOSE WHO CAME TO THIS CAMP ARE STILL IN THIS CAMP. SOME ARE BEING CARED FOR AT OUR HOSPITAL. OTHERS ARE IN JAILS ELSEWHERE.

Each of your cases is different. As we LEARN the truth ABOUT EACH OF YOU, WE ARE BETTER ABLE TO ADDRESS OUR CONCERNS WITH EACH OF YOU, AND THE UNITED STATES Government CAN RESOLVE YOUR STATUS.

WHETHER YOU ARE HERE AT THIS CAMP, OR ELSEWHERE, AS LONG AS I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR YOU, BE ASSURED THAT YOU WILL BE TREATED HUMANELY, AND IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE REPUTATION OF THE UNITED STATES AS A NATION OF LAWS.

I also expect you to RESPECT THE CAMP RULES. YOUR COOPERATION encourages me to consider improvements in the camp.

My priority continues to be the safety of the guards and your safety.

The new DETENTION facility will be ready in ABOUT two weeks, God willing. We will inform you about your move to the new and better facility as we near the completion. I continue to urge you to be patient. I will inform you of any developments as we learn.

May god be with you.

that we usually are proud to have in the Army...

DAMN THEM, they are destroying the Army

and I appreciate his service to our country.

The following snip makes me sick to my stomach.

After his departure, the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, gave military intelligence control over all aspects of Guantánamo, including the MPs, and Gen Miller was appointed commander.

Under his watch, Guantánamo instituted a "72-point matrix for stress and duress", which the Washington Post said set out a guide for the levels of force that could be applied to detainees. These included hooding or keeping prisoners naked for more than 30 days, threatening by dogs, shackling detainees in positions designed to cause pain, and extreme temperatures

US Representative Jim Saxton, is the chairman of the House Terrorism and Special Operations Subcommittee. He made the statement just today, prisoner abuse was limited to Abu Ghraib.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040518/pl_afp/us_...

according to today's Guardian article:

"Gen Baccus said there were fewer than 10 instances of abuse during his seven months in command.

After his departure, the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, gave military intelligence control over all aspects of Guantánamo, including the MPs, and Gen Miller was appointed commander.

Under his watch, Guantánamo instituted a "72-point matrix for stress and duress", which the Washington Post said set out a guide for the levels of force that could be applied to detainees. These included hooding or keeping prisoners naked for more than 30 days, threatening by dogs, shackling detainees in positions designed to cause pain, and extreme temperatures.

Human rights organisations say the directive shows that practices exposed at Abu Ghraib took place on a far wider scale than the Pentagon is willing to admit. "The pattern of abuse and disregard for fundamental human rights has been set by the continuing indefinite detentions at Guantánamo bay, and at other undisclosed locations around the world," said Sarah Green, of Amnesty Internation. "Detainees are already denied their basic rights in these locations, and the context has been set for abuse at Abu Ghraib."

Former inmates at Guantánamo have levelled the same charge. Last week, two British men who were held at Guantánamo claimed their US guards had inflicted abuse similar to that perpetrated at Abu Ghraib. In an open letter to President George Bush, Britons Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal described a prison regime that included assaults, prolonged shackling in uncomfortable positions, strobe lights, loud music and being threatened with dogs."

((Thanks Ksiska for posting this piece!))

===

<snip>

Gitmo dispute

The Defense Intelligence Agency, which is in charge of interrogating the prisoners held at the prison at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is having trouble getting information. Defense sources tell us interrogators are being undermined by the general in charge of the prison, Army Brig Gen. Rick Baccus, who is being too nice to the 598 captured terrorists.

<snip>

Gen. Baccus in April addressed the detainees and began speaking with the words "peace be with you" and finished with "may God be with you." He promised that as long as he is in charge the prisoners will be "treated humanly."

Gen. Baccus also authorized putting up posters supplied by the International Committee of the Red Cross around the camp. The posters remind prisoners they need only cooperate as required by the Geneva Convention on the rules of war — name, rank and serial number.

The too-kind treatment upset Army Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey, who is in charge of the interrogation unit at Guantanamo Bay, nicknamed "Gitmo." A spokesman for Gen. Dunlavey could not be reached for comment.

<snip>

Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough are Pentagon reporters. Mr. Gertz can be reached at 202/636-3274 or by e-mail at bgertz@WashingtonTimes.com. Mr. Scarborough can be reached at 202/636-3208 or by e-mail at rscarborough@WashingtonTimes.com.

http://www.gertzfile.com/gertzfile/ring100402.html
===


Relieved of his command ... Brigadier-General Rick Baccus was accused of wanting to allow the prisoners too many human rights. Photo: AFP/ Rhona Wise
====

<snip>

"The commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp - who was criticised in the US press for being too soft on the inmates - has been dismissed" Turns out that he hadn't violated enough of the Geneva Conventions. "In August Gen Baccus told a visiting group of journalists, including the Guardian, that uniformed officers had concerns that the Guantanamo Bay inmates continued to be labelled 'enemy combatants' rather than 'prisoners of war', a classification which would give them more rights under the Geneva conventions and which would assure their release at the end of hostilities. "

<snip>

Officials at the Guantanamo Bay base, a US enclave in Cuba, said Gen Baccus had left because his unit, responsible for running Camp Delta, the base's detention centre, was merged with Joint Task Force 170, a combined unit drawn from the Defence Intelligence Agency, CIA and FBI, which questions the inmates.

His commanding officer in the Rhode Island national guard, Major-General Reginald Centracchio, said he had sacked him for various reasons that "culminated in my losing trust and confidence in him". A national guard spokesman said General Baccus had failed to keep the headquarters up to date with reports on the troops' well-being.

<snip>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,812646,00.html

===============

Soldiers at Guantánamo Bay mark anniversary, carry on
Troops pray, observe moment of silence; detainees aren't told

09/12/2002

Associated Press

GUANTÁNAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba – The 598 detainees at this U.S. outpost thousands of miles from ground zero have no calendars and were not told that Wednesday was Sept. 11.

"We're not making any special announcements to them," said Brig. Gen. Rick Baccus, who heads the detention mission at the base in remote eastern Cuba.

<snip>

"Although the Department of Defense is preparing to conduct military commissions, no trials are imminent," said Maj. Ted Wadsworth, a Pentagon spokesman. "No charges have been approved."

U.S. officials say the detainees are being treated humanely under conditions set by the Geneva Conventions, though Washington has refused to classify them as prisoners of war, calling them unlawful combatants.

"While the public debates the technicalities of how these people should be classified, we will continue to follow the traditions of humane treatment," Brig. Gen. Baccus said.

<snip>

http://www.txcn.com/sharedcontent/dallas/nation/9-11/stories/091202dnintwotfiller.3bca.html

========================
<snip>

Last week, a brief article in the Washington Post gave a lot more details than we were able to glean from the local media about the recent removal of Vo Dilun-based Brigadier General Rick Baccus as a National Guard commander. Baccus was the head of the military police in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where suspected Al Qaeda members and other alleged terrorists have been held for months. The Post article indicated that Baccus "has been removed from his job amid allegations that he was uncommunicative with superiors and that he improperly tried to interfere in the interrogation of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners jailed there."

He was also said to have "clashed repeatedly with a number of senior officers, including the head of the camp's interrogation unit, Army Reserve Major General Michael Dunlavey. Some sources said Baccus complained that at times interrogators were rude or too intrusive with the detainees, an assertion Baccus denied in interviews with Rhode Island news organizations."

Now, imagine this incredible outrage: "A number of military officers also have complained that Baccus coddled detainees by beginning his addresses to them over loudspeakers with the phrase, `peace be with you.' Others said Baccus raised questions about some tactics of psychological pressure that interrogators sometimes used on prisoners, even though the interrogators were within the bounds of proper tactics, sources said. Baccus has denied those accusations."

Well, there you go. According to the report, Baccus appears to be a stickler for following Geneva Conventions for detaining prisoners of war. We'll wait until the whole story becomes clearer, but based on this, it sounds as if Rick Baccus is one of the good guys.

<snip>
http://www.providencephoenix.com/archive/pj/02/10/24/pj.html

===

According to a news article of June 21, 2002, at the US Department of Defence website, he said: "As to the detainees, the task force must ensure they're treated humanely within the spirit of the Geneva Convention. Humane treatment means we have to provide them clothing, food, shelter and allow them to practise their religious beliefs."

<snip>

Brigadier-General Rick Baccus refused to soften up the detainees for interrogation purposes. Eventually, he was relieved of his duties on October 9, 2002, for being "too nice" to prisoners. In addition to that, he also lost his appointment with Rhode Island National.

Whatever happened at Abu Ghraib is an offshoot of the shameful removal of Brig Baccus who had tried to treat prisoners with minimal human dignity and eventually lost his job.

Prosecuting and blaming a dozen low-ranking soldiers and guards is implausible. The responsibility lies at a much higher level in the chain of command.

<snip>
http://www.dawn.com/2004/05/10/letted.htm

===

<snip>

Rick Baccus, who headed the military police operation at Guantanamo for seven months in 2002, said that the two sides were sometimes at odds.
Baccus had ordered religious books for the detainees and arranged a special meal schedule for Ramadan, the Muslim holiday. He also proposed more recreation time and showers.

But the interrogators, Baccus said, complained that these were special accommodations that undermined their information gathering.

"They would view that as us giving a reward. And I would view that as humane treatment," said Baccus. "There is nothing inherently wrong. It's just a natural tension that existed." ...

<snip>

Baccus said he taught the MPs to keep their emotions in check when dealing with detainees. The MPs received two weeks of training when they arrived and were under close supervision, he said.

One problem was that soldiers liked taking pictures.

"One of the things you realize is that everybody has a camera," Baccus said. The guards were forbidden to photograph the detainees, but images left the camp anyway, he said.

Baccus said he ordered regular inspections and confiscated photographs from soldiers.

<snip>

Baccus said the specifics of how the MPs and interrogators handled the detainees are classified. "There was no question that we were to treat the detainees humanely," he said...

<snip>

He used three groups to help him watch the MPs: The Red Cross, which had regular access to the facility; his noncommissioned officers, who monitored the cell blocks; and the Muslim chaplins, who relayed complaints from the detainees.

<snip>

http://floricane.typepad.com/buttermilk/sand_storm_the_middle_east/
http://www.projo.com/news/content/projo_20040509_baccus9.19caf1.html

====

<snip>

Rick Baccus, who, a Defense source recalled, mainly "wanted to keep the prisoners happy." Baccus began giving copies of the Qur'an to detainees, and he organized a special meal schedule for Ramadan. "He was even handing out printed 'rights cards'," the Defense source recalled. The upshot was that the prisoners were soon telling the interrogators, "Go f--- yourself, I know my rights." Baccus was relieved in October 2002, and Rumsfeld gave military intelligence control of all aspects of the Gitmo camp, including the MPs.

Pentagon officials now insist that they flatly ruled out using some of the harsher interrogation techniques authorized for the CIA. That included one practice—reported last week by The New York Times—whereby a suspect is pushed underwater and made to think he will be drowned. While the CIA could do pretty much what it liked in its own secret centers, the Pentagon was bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Military officers were routinely trained to observe the Geneva Conventions. According to one source, both military and civilian officials at the Pentagon ultimately determined that such CIA techniques were "not something we believed the military should be involved in."

<snip>
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4989438/

==
<snip>

The dismissal came as 12 Kuwaiti prisoners mounted the first organised legal and diplomatic effort to challenge the US policy that holds terrorism suspects indefinitely at Guantanamo without court hearings or charges being filed.

<snip>

The 12 captives contend they are not members of al-Qaeda, nor the Taliban, but charity workers who were helping refugees created by Afghanistan's harsh regime when they were caught up in the chaos of the war last northern autumn and winter. In trying to flee to Pakistan, they say, they fell into the hands of Pakistanis who "sold" them to US troops, collecting a bounty.

Their families have retained a Washington firm that specialises in international law.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/16/1034561210959.html

===


Brig. Gen. Rick Baccus, 51, who ran the detention operation from March to October 2002, said in an interview Friday that he directed subordinates to make surprise visits to all areas of the detention center and to report mistreatment. He regularly spoke with Muslim chaplains who served the prisoners and maintained "a constant, open dialogue" with the Red Cross, he said.
"They were welcome any time of day or night," Baccus said. In contrast to Abu Ghraib, Red Cross representatives were at Guantanamo nearly the entire time he was there, he added.

<snip>

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/05-04/05-17-04/a02wn366.htm

===


American military officers are taught the rules of the Geneva Conventions and told they must ignore illegal orders which violate these treaties, even if they come from "temporary occupants of the White House" as General Douglas MacArthur once described. This caused conflicts last year as a courageous General in charge of security at Gitmo, Brigadier General Rick Baccus, insisted on obeying the Geneva Conventions by referring to the prisoners as POWs. Baccus was removed after irritating Major General Michael Dunlavey, who is in charge of interrogating the prisoners, with his decision to allow the Red Cross to put up posters advising detainees they need only provide their name, rank and number during questioning.

Meanwhile, quiet resistance within the US military delayed plans for military tribunals, avoiding another violation of the Geneva Conventions. The British sent stern warnings that executing British citizens deemed POWs by the Red Cross would not be tolerated, so their nine citizens have been excused from death threats. This past Summer, after months of private discussions about POW treatment at Gitmo, the Red Cross openly declared the US Government in violation of the Geneva Conventions based upon first hand reports from Cuba. Food quality and exercise rights were tied to cooperation during interrogations, reports of physical torture emerged, and it was revealed that three boys under age 16 were in custody. Since Gitmo was run as a high security facility with all activities considered secret, Gitmo commanders were enraged at the prospect of facing an international war crimes tribunal in the future.

<snip>

http://www.g2mil.com/Dec2003.htm

===
<snip>

Speaking in a get-acquainted interview with The Herald and The Associated Press, Brig. Gen. Rick Baccus said it was "not really" of concern to him that Pentagon guidelines for any upcoming Military Commissions consider the captives innocent until proven guilty.

Baccus added that he had not received word yet to prepare for the trials. Guantánamo Bay is considered a likely location to hold them, although none of the 299 prisoners now held at Camp X-Ray have been charged and no venue has been set.

"They're all killers. They all were carrying weapons against United States servicemen," said Baccus, 49, a career army officer, lately with the Rhode Island National Guard, who took command of the prison project March 28.

<snip>

http://www.broward.com/mld/broward/news/3031790.htm

=

Military Uniform = Deceit to CNN

CNN reporter Bob Franken: “Journalists were kept in polite custody during the operation far from here. Military officials cited operational security, what they like to call ‘OpSec.’ So reports of the transfer were provided only by the ones who were in charge of it.”
Franken to Brigadier General Rick Baccus: “How can we know that you’re telling the truth?”
Baccus: “As you are well aware, the International Committee of the Red Cross is on station. They were informed of the move yesterday and they have access to the detainees as of today with no problems, so they could verify that.”
Franken: “May I follow up? The International Red Cross, as you know, does not report to the public, nor do you report whatever their deliberations are. How can the public know that you’re telling the truth about the move?”
Baccus: “Well, as a commissioned officer in the armed forces, I can assure you that what I’ve said is the truth.”
– Story on the move of detainees from Camp X-Ray to Camp Delta, April 29 NewsNight on CNN.

http://www.mediaresearch.org/notablequotables/2002/nq20020513.asp
Entire transcript: http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0204/29/asb.00.html
==

Brigadier-General Rick Baccus, commander of the prison-guard unit at Guantanamo, says "some sections" of the 1949 Geneva Convention on prisoners of war are being applied to the inmates. He lists food and shelter, medical treatment and freedom of religion.

When asked who decides when to follow the conventions and when to ignore them, he replied, "That has been directed by the Secretary of Defence."

But the Geneva Convention says a "competent tribunal" should decide the status of detainees if there is doubt as to whether they are prisoners of war. The idea of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as sole arbiter does not sit well with Michael Byers, a professor of international law at Duke University in North Carolina.

<snip>

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0905-01.htm

==

<snip>

WHEN I sat down with US Brigadier General Rick Baccus in July and
asked him if he was happy that the Guantanamo Bay detainees were
terrorists and if he believed they were being treated humanely, he
grimaced.

The man in charge of the 598 detainees held in cages on the cliff-top
Cuban prison then smiled and trotted out the official line.

"Dangerous men... Geneva Convention... enemy combatants..." he
droned, following the official US line to the letter.

But it was the grimace that gave the game away.

Even the senior officer supervising this extraordinary internment
camp clearly had doubts about the wisdom of Guantanamo Bay.

<snip>

http://squawk.ca/lbo-talk/0210/2114.html

===

Prison abuse scandal limited to Abu Ghraib: US lawmakers

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US lawmakers said after a private meeting with General Antonio Taguba that they were assured that the prison abuse scandal in Iraq was limited to the facility at Abu Ghraib.

"The general theme of General Taguba's statements ... after visiting most, if not all of the detention centers in Iraq, that the problem was limited to Abu Ghraib and that a breakdown in leadership at the prison was the primary cause," said US Representative Jim Saxton, chairman of the House Terrorism and Special Operations Subcommittee.

Taguba was the author of a Pentagon report last January revealing "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" against Iraqi prisoners by their US jailkeepers.

According to the document, military intelligence officers told US military police guards to give Iraqi detainees rough treatment to facilitate interrogation, leading to the abuses highlighted in shocking photos and video images broadcast around the world.

Taguba held Tuesday's two-hour briefing with members of the House of Representatives one week after providing testimony at an open Senate committee hearing.

Lawmakers said Taguba also reiterated an earlier conclusion that there was no official policy of mistreatment or order to guards from top Pentagon officials to abuse detainees.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040518/pl_afp/us_...

seeing that Taguba was tasked to "investigate the conduct of operations within the 800th Military Police (MP) Brigade" only.

He investigated no one above Brigade level or outside of the Brigade.

As Aretha sang "Who's zooming who?!"

Now how the hell did that old sumka Saxon make such a brazen leap & also, have you noticed that Taguba has been back-peddling a bit on his report and letting them draw different conclusions for him? He's in a bad spot & I pity him but damn it, he's a General, he'll have great retirement pay- please General Taguba, just truck on with the truth for all our sakes!

Private meeting!! Oh to be a fly on that wall!

Do you think they'll be able to stuff this genie back into the bottle?

You are a real educational aid to DU'ers, Tinoire. There's enough material you provided to give us a far better understanding of what's going on there.

I found this article written after he left interesting:

'Soft' Guantanamo chief ousted

Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday October 16, 2002
The Guardian

The commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp - who was criticised in the US press for being too soft on the inmates - has been dismissed, it emerged yesterday.
Brigadier-General Rick Baccus was relieved of his duties as camp commander and as an officer in the Rhode Island national guard on October 9, five days after a newspaper report quoted defence sources as saying he was "too nice" to the 598 inmates, and was consequently making it hard for the military interrogators to extract information from them.

Back home in Rhode Island General Baccus told a local radio station that"in no instance did I interfere with interrogations", and expressed surprise at his treatment.

"I'm a little amazed that after being deployed for seven months, separated from my wife, family and my job and being called to active duty, this is the kind of reception I'm getting."
(snip/...)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,812647,00.html

Your Sidney Morning Herald article says Major General Michael Dunlavey was the head interrogator, and that he took over Baccus's job. That sounds like one colossal step backwards, doesn't it? Absolutely unbelievable by normal standards.

I'll bet we know a whole lot more today about what got Chaplain Yee and the translator in trouble at Guantanamo. No doubt they, also, were guilty of having been "too nice," also, to the prisoners, and that everything told us about them was complete baloney.

for viewing "pornographic pictures on a government computer"?

I am wondering now... WHAT pornographic pictures? Pornographic pictures of what was going on in the prisons????

Captain Yee was quoted in an October 2001 interview with the Los Angeles Times as saying, “When I go into the field, I have a copy of the Koran and next to it a copy of the US Constitution.”

<snip>

It seems certain, however, that there is something else going on in the case of Captain Yee. One US police official, again speaking not for attribution, told the Washington Post that the “fear and suspicion” guiding the persecution of Yee is that he was too sympathetic to the Guantanamo detainees and may have been planning to help them in some way.

In what way could he have helped these men and youth who have been held behind razor wire without charges, lawyers, visits from their families or indeed any contact with the outside world for nearly two years? It hardly seems likely that he was plotting a jail break or was preparing to hand over secret information to Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

The more likely threat was that he was intimately familiar with the illegal and brutal treatment that is being meted out to these prisoners and was not trusted to keep quiet about it. There have already been 31 suicide attempts among the detainees—an astronomically high rate for that number of prisoners. US military personnel at Camp Delta outnumber the prisoners by a ratio of 4-to-1 and conduct constant interrogations in an attempt to “break” them with psychological stress techniques that are defined under international law as torture.

<snip>

It is possible that Yee knows more about the illegal and appalling treatment of the prisoners at the US concentration camp in Cuba and was prepared to make it public. Have prisoners been subjected to outright physical torture? Have some already suffered extra-judicial executions? Yee, held incommunicado at the navy brig in Charleston, cannot say; and the public, having no constitutional oversight over the extraterritorial prison in Cuba, does not know.

<snip>

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/sep2003/yee-s23.shtml

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/sep2003/yee-s23.shtml

unless some conscientious journalist picks up on the cover-up story.

Here's the full link:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040518/pl_afp/us_iraq_prisons_taguba_040518172120

Don't want to lose this story!

I think this is one of Sen. Clinton pet projects. Getting to the bottom of how prevalent the abuse was..thanks for the in depth research on Baccus. Well appreciated..

((On edit: Anytime- it's a pleasure to swap information with you!))

I have to admit that she really impressed me during the Taguba hearing because she came across as having done her homework. I thought she was a welcome breath of fresh air but I don't trust even her to push for the full truth or fix (color me jaded & too cynical).

Do you really have faith in her? I would really like to and wonder, if we send her all the info we're gathering, will she, the one who ent after Nixon, have the courage to go after the Intelligence apparatus of the US & do anything with it?

If Hillary does that, she has my vote assured for whenever she wants to run!

<<I have to admit that she really impressed me during the Taguba hearing because she came across as having done her homework.>>

yes, she was relentless but she never got a straight answer though due to so much interference. Truthfully, I didn't know that is what she was after until I read it somewhere today.

I don't think it would hurt to e-mail her the info we gleaned, especially where Congressman Saxon is blatantly lying to sweep the Gitmo story under the rug, doing his 'move along nothing to see here dance.'

precisely for superior officers to study.

Maybe there are some DU'ers who didn't see this info. when someone
posted it earlier.

I just read it again, and saw things I didn't notice before:

Lieutenant Colonel Leon Sumpter, the Guantanamo Joint Task Force spokesman, confirmed this last night, saying all ERF actions were filmed so they could be 'reviewed' by senior officers. All the tapes are kept in an archive there, he said. He refused to say how many times the ERF squads had been used and would not discuss their training or rules of engagement, saying: 'We do not discuss operational aspects of the Joint Task Force mission.'

The Observer can also now disclose that a British military interrogator posted to the now notorious Abu Ghraib abuse jail raised the alarm about maltreatment of detainees by US troops as long ago as last March.
(snip)

Senator Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has been an outspoken critic of the Abu Ghraib abuse, said he would demand that Rumsfeld must produce the videos this week.

'Congressional oversight of this administration has been lax in many areas, including detention policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo,' Leahy said. 'It is past time for that to change. If photos, videotapes or any other evidence exists that can help establish whether or not there has been mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, it should be provided without delay to Congress.

'I have asked the Pentagon for sufficient information to allow Congress to evaluate the effectiveness and propriety of the treatment of those in our custody. Pentagon officials owe the Congress a comprehensive response. I have made clear that compliance must include any tapes or photos of the activities of the ERF or any other military or intelligence units there.'
(snip)

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1217973,00.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Can't they get in BIG trouble if it's discovered they have destroyed any of these tapes which would be used as evidence?

thanx, Judi..great stuff.

I just found this while looking for some thing else..posted it in GD..to archive.

This is the reason why everything that is evidence is and can be considered classified:

Ck this out.. The strikes in the text are the revisions ordered by the Bush Administration to further protect their secret government activities and how they are getting away with MASS tortures and Murder!

http://www.fas.org/sgp/bush/drafteo.html

Looks like tons and tons of records will be salted away 25 years from the most recent addition to any file. I presume they're hoping they'll all be far a-way, gone, hasta la bye bye......

You might remember he had his records from Texas stashed within his father's "Presidential Library" almost immediately after getting to Washington, and they are beyond the reach of researchers, the press, or anyone in the world as we know it.

Then he started messing with retaining secrecy for Presidential records prior to his arrival, which got Reagan, and his dad off the hook, and unavailable to scrutiny and research.

So the p.n.a.c.kers probably have been planning how to run the country for years, and simply looking for dummies who are easy to manipulate every 4 years, maybe, you think?

exclusively the strikes in the first draft of the text, it's becomes apparent (when applied to the prisoner abuse) the torturous atrocities were intentionally and knowingly "preplanned" to inflict an extraordinary amount of cultural humiliation without fear of accountability and recriminations.

The severely edited protocols engineered by the Bush legal team has effectively removed any avenues of cross examination of government conduct, virtually rendering the foia nothing more than a toothless rendering.