One prisoner was fed only bread and water for 17 days. Other detainees were locked for as many as seven days in cells so small that they could neither stand nor lie down, while interrogators played loud music that disrupted their sleep.
Who perpetrated these crimes?
The US military.
WASHINGTON, June 16 — United States Special Operations troops employed a set of harsh, unauthorized interrogation techniques against detainees in Iraq during a four-month period in early 2004, long after approval for their use was rescinded, according to a Pentagon inquiry released Friday.
The investigation is the last of 12 major inquiries to be made public that focus on allegations of detainee abuse by American personnel in Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the first to focus on Special Operations troops, who operate with more latitude than other military units. It detailed harsh treatment that continued at isolated bases even after the abuses first surfaced at the Abu Ghraib prison.
Anyone...anyone who continues to believe that these violations were not systemic no longer has any justification for that belief - except, of course, agents of the Bush administration:
Despite the findings, General Formica recommended that none of the soldiers be disciplined, saying what they did was wrong but not deliberate abuse. He faulted "inadequate policy guidance" rather than "personal failure" for the mistreatment, and cited the dangerous environment in which Special Operations forces carried out their counterinsurgency missions. He said that, from his observations, none of the detainees seemed to be the worse for wear because of the treatment. "Seventeen days with only bread and water is too long," the general concluded. But he added that the military command's surgeon general had advised him "it would take longer than 17 days to develop a protein or vitamin deficiency from a diet of bread and water."
Words escape me...
In November, 2005, Army Brig. Gen. Richard P. Formica was promoted.
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