United States Military Cover Up

You gotta love the ACLU.

Daily KOS postingsummarizes it well:

On May 19th, 2004, Senator Jack Reed asked of Lt. General Ricard Sanchez in front of the Senate Armed Services Commitee: "today's USA Today, sir, reported that you ordered or approved the use of sleep deprivation, intimidation by guard dogs, excessive noise and inducing fear as an interrogation method for a prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison." To which Sanchez replied, using the acronym for Coalition Joint Task Force-7, "Sir, that may be correct that it's in a news article, but I never approved any of those measures to be used within CJTF-7 at any time in the last year."

So, the ACLU did a Freedom of Information Act request ( press release here ), and found that on Sept 14 2003, Lt. General Sanchez had done exactly that [memo here] giving that unit permission to use sleep deprivation, intimidation by guard dogs, excessive noice and inducing fear (2 kinds of fear! high! and medium!) as interrogation methods. Oh, and it wasn't some incidental or accidental permission. The memo is explicitly says it's for CJTF-7, explicitly that it lays out the interrogation policy, and explicitly lists those methods, and others, as permitted.

A baldfaced lie to the Senate. That's a military coverup.

Oh, and note that the interrogation policy is "modeled on the one implemented for interrogations conducted at Guantanamo Bay, but modifed for a theather of war in which the Geneva Conventions apply" (from Sanchez's cover memo). In other words, it was softened up.

So, was Lt. General Sanchez acting without consulting the Secretary of Defense, or was the Secretary properly exercising his overseeing power, and was fully aware of both the torture policy and Lt. General Sanchez's lie to the US Senate about it?