"
The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply a result of a few soldiers acting on their own," the Senate report says. "
Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at (Guantánamo) ... Rumsfeld's authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques and subsequent interrogation policies and plans approved by senior military and civilian officers conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody. What followed was an erosion in standards dictating that detainees be treated humanely." [/url]
The abuses at Abu Ghraib coincided with the arrival of Major General Geoffrey Miller, former GITMO commander. General George Fay wrote in the Taguba Report that,
Policies and practices developed and approved for use on Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees [in Afghanistan and Guantánamo] who were not afforded the protection of the Geneva Conventions, now applied to detainees who did fall under the Geneva Conventions' protections.
So let's address your points...
FUNNY AS HELL, they haven't a leg to stand on and you should know that.
First they were not interrogating prisoners, they were abusing them.
They were given orders, vague orders, by intel officers to "soften up" the prisoners. Failing to seek clarification of those orders, however, is no excuse.
Second they were not using the approved methods authorized by the Government.
As the memos released recently show, stress positions, dogs, sleep deprivation and other techniques WERE authorized by the Bush administration. Techniques which were authorized for use against alleged Al Qaida operatives who were being held in Afghanistan and Iraq...prisoners who, at that time, were held not to be covered under the Geneva Conventions...were being used against Iraqi prisoners who were all covered under the Geneva Conventions. The SCOTUS in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruled that detainees at GITMO were indeed covered under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
Third no one ordered them to do what they did.
Testimony from their courts martial show otherwise.
And FOURTH, the Appeal goes through the military which is NOT a civilian Court and the Lawyers are not going to be allowed to make sensationalist statements in the hopes of swaying a Judge or Jury. They can not make random claims with NO EVIDENCE that disparages Officers either. They can not make claims against the Prosecution with out concrete evidence.
Ohh and they had a mandatory APPEAL when convicted.
Guess what else? The military does not give one rats ass what some civilian paper implies or lies about their criminal Court system.
I am betting the Military does not even grant an appeal.
It would seem that the Bush administration anticipated this as Art. 73 of the UCMJ was amended on Jan 8, 2008, as was Article 76 pertaining to the Finality of Proceedings, Findings and Sentences, to limit petitions for a new trial to no more than two years after the original sentence was passed. After that, there is no appeal despite the discovery of new evidence...evidence withheld by the government these men and women were acting on behalf of.
