How the U.S. Army's Field Manual Codified Torture -- and Still Does

[annabanana]

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/117807/

(emphasis mine)
How scary is it that "Appendix M" was slipped in without notice. (read the whole Alternet piece..)

In early September 2006, the U.S. Department of Defense, reeling from at least a dozen investigations into detainee abuse by interrogators, released Directive 2310.01E. This directive was advertised as an overhaul and improvement on earlier detainee operations and included a newly rewritten Army Field Manual for Human Intelligence Collector Operations (FM-2-22-3). This guidebook for interrogators was meant to set a humane standard for U.S. interrogators worldwide, a standard that was respectful of the Geneva Conventions and other U.S. and international laws concerning treatment of prisoners.

While George W. Bush was signing a presidential directive allowing the CIA to conduct other, secret "enhanced interrogation techniques," which may or may not have included waterboarding, the new AFM was sold to the public as a return to civilized norms, in regards to interrogation.

Before long, opponents of U.S. torture policy were championing the new AFM as an appropriate "single-standard" model of detainee treatment. Support for implementing the revised AFM, as a replacement for the hated "enhanced" techniques earlier championed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the CIA, began to appear in legislation out of Congress, in the literature of human-rights organizations and in newspaper editorials. Some rights groups have felt the new AFM offered some improvements by banning repellent interrogation tactics, such as waterboarding, use of nudity, military dogs and stress positions. It was believed the AFM cemented the concept of command responsibility for infractions of the law.

There was only one problem: the AFM did not eliminate torture. Despite what it said, it did not adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Even worse, it took the standard operating procedure of Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay and threatened to expand it all over the world.

[SpiralHawk]

1. "Smirk." - Commander AWOL & cabal of corrupt republicon chickenhawk cronies

[Solly Mack]

2. Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller ...a name that should never be forgotten

He brought the procedures from Camp Delta to Iraq in 2003..and to Abu Ghraib specifically.

I remember how the manual kept changing to keep up with a "new kind of war"

Miller is retired now...he got off free and clear.

[SpiralHawk]

3. ...A new kind of republicon war...

The republicon chickenhawk leadership stays home, pays off a bunch of blow-dry, 'elite' chickenhawk media propagandists on TV and radio to sing their praises and pimp their lies and spin, and then institutionalizes the the heinous, immoral, anti-American, and anti-Christian practice of torture.

You know what I think Jesus would do? He would arrest all the republicon chickenhawk torture freaks, and bring them to trial at the Hague to face ETERNAL DAMNATION.

[annabanana]

4. I'm concerned that this fact isn't generally known, even in online

communities that have been paying attention. This little nugget needs to be passed around and around until there is some semblance of recognition . .

[annabanana]

5. I wonder if there's a statute of limitations on what he did?

War crimes are war crimes forever, I think...

[Solly Mack]

7. No. They are

But I'm not cheering...

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. It certainly provides an easy out for the torturers. "I was just following orders."