A new Human Rights Watch report out today collects accounts from soldiers in Iraq who participated in and witnessed detainee abuse.
You won’t be surprised by the findings, which Human Rights Watch says show that the abuse was not merely conducted by a few aberrants but was sanctioned up the chain of commnd. I was struck, however, by the existence of written documentation authorizing the abuse:
In March 2004, when Lagouranis and another interrogator voiced concerns about the techniques, their supervising MI officer provided them with an Interrogation Rules of Engagement card, authorizing the use of dogs, exposure to hot and cold temperatures, sleep deprivation, forced exercises and use of painful stress positions, and environmental manipulation (allowing strobe lights and loud music):
When we were doing that stuff it was under the direction of Chief Warrant Officer [name withheld]; he was telling us, this is what he wants. But when he told us this, you know, of course, we got a little worried. So we asked for IROE [Interrogation Rules of Engagement] and he gave us the IROE that his unit was supposedly using.
I think it was sort of an outdated IROE now that I think about it, because I feltâbecause I saw others later that were different. I think he was using one from Afghanistan or something like that. But everything that he said, as far as I could tell, was it was legal on the IROE [i.e., the techniques were detailed in the IROE:] that we could use dogs, we could use environmental manipulation, sleep deprivation, sort of stress positions. But who knowsâI don’t know if it was legal or not, what we were doing.
Then there’s this account:
There was an authorization template on a computer, a sheet that you would print out, or actually just type it in. And it was a checklist. And it was all already typed out for you, environmental controls, hot and cold, you know, strobe lights, music, so forth. Working dogs, which, when I was there, wasnât being used. But you would just check what you want to use off, and if you planned on using a harsh interrogation youâd just get it signed off.
I never saw a sheet that wasnât signed. It would be signed off by the commander, whoever that was, whether it was 03 [captain] or 06 [colonel], whoever was in charge at the time. . . . When the 06 was there, yeah, he would sign off on that. . . . He would sign off on that every time it was done.
The bureaucracy of torture.
