Hersch Corroborrated: Jag Lawyers Say Their Warnings On Prisoners Ignored

So Much For The WH denial....


JAG Lawyers Say Political Appointees Ignored Their Warnings on Prisoner Treatment

By Jake Tapper and Clayton Sandell
ABCNEWS.com

W A S H I N G T O N, May 16, 2004 - Lawyers from the military's Judge Advocate General's Corps, or JAG, had
been urging Pentagon officials to ensure protection for prisoners for two years before the abuses at Iraq's
Abu Ghraib prison came to light, current and former JAG officers told ABCNEWS.

But, the JAG lawyers say, political appointees at the Pentagon ignored their warnings, setting the stage for
the Abu Ghraib abuses, in which military police reservists photographed each other subjecting Iraqi
prisoners to physical abuse and sexual humiliation.

snip

"If we - 'we' being the uniformed lawyers - had been listened to, and what we said put into practice, then
these abuses would not have occurred," said Rear Admiral Don Guter (ret.), the Navy Judge Advocate
General from 2000 to 2002.

Specifically, JAG officers say they have been marginalized by Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for
policy, and William Haynes II, the Pentagon's general counsel, whom President Bush has nominated for a
judgeship on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

snip

Matters got so frustrating that in May and October 2003, eight senior JAG officers took the rare step of going outside the chain of command to meet secretly with the New York City Bar Association, warning of a "disaster waiting to happen".

"They felt that there had been a conscious effort to create an atmosphere of legal ambiguity surrounding these detention facilities, and that it had been done to give interrogators the broadest possible latitude in their conduct of operations," Scott Horton, former chair of the New York City Bar Association's Committee on International Human Rights, told ABCNEWS. Horton's meeting with the JAG officers was first reported by Salon.com.

more
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/US/JAG_detainees_040515-1.html

he appears to be a made-man with the CIA.

this is the end of the neocons.

All of this hasn't come out for nothing. We're in "Bourne Identity" terrirory here.

Remember, Bush blamed CIA for bad intelligence, Bush outed Joe Wilson's deep-cover wife, Rumseld's interrogation unit was a counter-CIA operation according to Hersh. The CIA doesn't sit for this kind of thing.

Remember folks, the Watergate scandal became front-page news AFTER Nixon tried to get the CIA to take responsibility for the break-in in order to keep a lid on the "Bay of Pigs." And Haldeman himself said that the "Bay of Pigs" reference meant the Kennedy Assassination.

There's a long thread, no CABLE, of lies, deceipt and corruption within the government. Occasionally, when they piss each other off we get to see a bit of it.

After what appeared to be some sort of scuffle during the MTP interview with Powell, the Secretary managed to answer:

I'm very concerned. When I made that presentation in February 2003, it was based on the best information that the Central Intelligence Agency made available to me. We studied it carefully; we looked at the sourcing in the case of the mobile trucks and trains. There was multiple sourcing for that. Unfortunately, that multiple sourcing over time has turned out to be not accurate. And so I'm deeply disappointed. But I'm also comfortable that at the time that I made the presentation, it reflected the collective judgment, the sound judgment of the intelligence community. But it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases, deliberately misleading. And for that, I am disappointed and I regret it.

What do you make of this in relation to what you are saying about the CIA working to get rid of Bush. I'm trying to understand because, here once again we have a member of this administration saying 'it is the CIA's fault, I had bad intelligence regarding WMD'. Not only THAT, but underscoring the message that Powell just delivered is this "scuffle" business. Moreover, I believe it was reported (only read about it in a post somewhere here on DU) that Sy Hersh said that the administration *had been* set up by the CIA in regards to the Nigerian 'yellow cake' business.

I'm getting very confused. Where is Powell in all this?

Specifically, JAG officers say they have been marginalized by Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy

Feith's name comes up AGAIN.

PLASTERED on the TV screens in tens of millions of households ...

Rumsfeld ..

Cheney ...

Wolfowitz ...

Cambone ....

Now Feith ....

ALL are PNAC stooges ...

ALL are AEI hachet men ...

ALL are dangerous purveyors of hatred and war ...

Hmmmmm ? .... Wasnt Feith AND Cambone charter members of the Office of Special Plans ? ...

DIDNT the OSP discard the studious conclusion by the CIA that Saddam wasnt developing Nuclear Arms ? .... Wasnt it the the OSP that used 'curveball' and sources like Chalabi to promote LIES and FALSEHOODS about ties between al Qaeda and Hussein ? ...

It is poetic justice to see these crooks called to the fore to answer for thier lies ....

It will be true justice to see them tossed out on their ears ...

(all together now, 1... 2... 3...) :bounce:

might pay more attention to what these guys say than what a politician or journalist is saying. That show is one of my conservative father's favorites.

about a mother who lost a son in Iraq.

the military, the civilians, the media, and those in Congress. It's hard to find a more non-partisan group.

I hate to say it, but this information must get to the major media. Way too many people just don't search or read the internet for information. Even cable news has a relatively low number of viewers compared to the US population.

If this finally hits the major networks it's a big time problem for Shrub & Rummy. Even though lots of people don't watch network news, there are enough who do to create the "water-cooler" talk....whether that be in an office or assembly line.

There have been way too many groups stating facts of abuse for BushCo to ignore. You might want to invest some $$ in the drug co that makes Prozac..........sales in Washington alone have got to be skyrocketing!

and the JAG guys will testify.

Hmmmm, JAG Officers don't understand...they're Clinton supporters!

Ah, JAG guys don't understand how a real military ought to work.

Er, Jag guys are just looking to get on the TV show.

I have a classmate who went into JAG. I am glad that these members of the bar are doing the right thing here and have come forward to complain about torturing prisoners.

:kick:

:kick:

"They felt that there had been a conscious effort to create an atmosphere of legal ambiguity surrounding these detention facilities, and that it had been done to give interrogators the broadest possible latitude in their conduct of operations,"

Regarding the conscious effort to create legal ambiguity: Haven't enlightened souls who actually think been saying this since the first "detainees" went to Gitmo? And so much for that "just a few bad apples" premise. And they were saying this TWO YEARS AGO! This all could have been prevented.

Once again, I'm sick at our government.

They did talk about the January 2002 memo from Gonzales to Bush, but ended the segment almost appologitic about it. Nothing about the JAG officers.

Cowards.

from the mentioned original Salon article (note the last sentence):

"Long before official reports and journalistic exposés revealed the horrific abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, high-ranking American officers expressed their deep concern that the civilian officials at the Pentagon were undermining the military's traditional detention and interrogation procedures, according to a prominent New York attorney.
Scott Horton, a partner at Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler who now chairs the Committee on International Law of the Association of the Bar of New York City, says he was approached last spring by "senior officers" in the Judge Advocate General Corps, the military's legal division, who "expressed apprehension over how their political appointee bosses were handling the torture issue." Horton, who once represented late Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, was serving as the chairman of the bar association's Committee on Human Rights law when the JAG officers first contacted him.
Prompted by their allegations as well as press reports of torture and mistreatment of detainees in Afghanistan, Horton and other members of the New York bar began to compile a report examining U.S. and international legal standards governing the treatment of military prisoners. Horton says he and his colleagues met with JAG officers expressing the same concerns again last fall.
The bar association's 110-page report, released last week, leaves no doubt that the practices revealed at Abu Ghraib violated both U.S. and international law. During the preparation of that report, Horton and his colleagues were more concerned with practices in Afghanistan and Guantánamo than in Iraq. What they have learned recently, however, suggests that questionable practices and attitudes toward prisoners stem from broad policy decisions made at the very highest levels of the Defense Department."

Thanks to dArKeR for finding this!!

Could Bush administration officials be prosecuted for 'war crimes' as a result of new measures used in the war on terror? The White House's top lawyer thought so

May 17 - The White House's top lawyer warned more than two years ago that U.S. officials could be prosecuted for "war crimes" as a result of new and unorthodox measures used by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism, according to an internal White House memo and interviews with participants in the debate over the issue.

The concern about possible future prosecution for war crimes—and that it might even apply to Bush adminstration officials themselves— is contained in a crucial portion of an internal January 25, 2002, memo by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales obtained by NEWSWEEK. It urges President George Bush declare the war in Afghanistan, including the detention of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, exempt from the provisions of the Geneva Convention.

In the memo, the White House lawyer focused on a little known 1996 law passed by Congress, known as the War Crimes Act, that banned any Americans from committing war crimes—defined in part as "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions. Noting that the law applies to "U.S. officials" and that punishments for violators "include the death penalty," Gonzales told Bush that "it was difficult to predict with confidence" how Justice Department prosecutors might apply the law in the future. This was especially the case given that some of the language in the Geneva Conventions—such as that outlawing "outrages upon personal dignity" and "inhuman treatment" of prisoners—was "undefined."

more

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4999734/