New Army documents reveal US knew of and
approved torture before Abu Ghraib scandal

From the Raw Story courtesy of AlterNet:

"When our leaders allow and even encourage abuse at the 'outer limits', America suffers," said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director. "A nation that works to bring freedom and liberty to other parts of the world shouldn't stomach brutality and inhumanity within its ranks. This abuse of power was engineered and accepted at the highest levels of our government."

Among the documents released today by the ACLU is a May 19, 2004 Defense Intelligence Agency document implicating Sanchez in potentially abusive interrogation techniques. In the document, an officer in charge of a team of interrogators stated that there was a 35-page order spelling out the rules of engagement that interrogators were supposed to follow, and that they were encouraged to "go to the outer limits to get information from the detainees by people who wanted the information." When asked to whom the officer was referring, the officer answered "LTG Sanchez." The officer stated that the expectation coming from "Headquarters" was to break the detainees.

Click here for the rest.

Of course, the torture mandate was approved at the very highest levels. That’s what the left, and others, have been saying for a couple of years now. It’s been far too widespread to be just a bunch of “isolated incidents.” The methods have been far too similar to have not been taught to the soldiers who carried it out. Numerous Oval Office attempts to find legal justifications to ignore the Geneva Conventions, Bush’s bizarre “signing statement” essentially nullifying Congress’ recent anti-torture legislation, and the White House’s lukewarm denials all indicate that this whole torture scandal comes from the tip top. It’s totally obvious. So, great, now we have documents implicating a general. When do we get the smoking gun that nails Bush to the wall?

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