Amidst new torture reports, US military defends architect of abuse at Guantánamo

Against the recommendations of the military’s own investigators, who urged that Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller be reprimanded, Gen. Bantz Craddock, head of the US Southern Command, rejected any disciplinary action. There could hardly be a clearer signal that, despite the Bush administration’s official disavowals, torture of prisoners is and will remain American policy.

Craddock explained his reasoning to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which held a hearing July 13 on the findings of the latest probe, the last of a dozen such inquiries by the military and supposedly independent investigators. This one was conducted by Lieut. Gen. Randall Schmidt and Brig. Gen. John Furlow.

Miller took command of the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in late 2002, with a mandate to extract more information from prisoners. He was sent to Iraq in September 2003 with instructions to “Gitmo-ize” the interrogation of Iraqi detainees—i.e., duplicate the brutal methods utilized at Guantánamo.

As the Washington Post noted July 14, “Miller traveled to Iraq in September 2003 to assist in Abu Ghraib’s startup, and he later sent in ‘Tiger Teams’ of Guantanamo Bay interrogators and analysts as advisers and trainers. Within weeks of his departure from Abu Ghraib, military working dogs were being used in interrogations, and naked detainees were humiliated and abused by military police soldiers working the night shift.”

Schmidt and Furlow confirmed the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners at Guantanamo and other methods, which they acknowledged were “abusive and degrading,” such as stripping detainees naked, depriving them of sleep, and using women interrogators to sexually humiliate them. They acknowledged that such methods were authorized from above, and not the actions of “rogue” interrogators. Nevertheless, they concluded that such “creative” and “aggressive” methods did not constitute torture.

At the same time, they recommended that Miller be reprimanded for his failure to properly supervise the interrogation of Mohamed al-Kahtani, the alleged “20th hijacker” in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, who was subjected to prolonged and brutal interrogation at Guantánamo.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2005/jul2005/guan-j16.shtml