Witness: harsher Abu Ghraib methods condoned

Senior U.S. officials silently condoned harsher methods at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and one general urged guards to use dogs to the “maximum extent possible” to control detainees, witnesses said on Thursday.

That sure is a surprise. Who knew that the government wouldn’t report the full extent of horrible acts it committed?

The testimony came on the fourth day of the military trial of Army dog handler Sgt. Santos Cardona, 32, who is accused of taking part in abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib that the U.S. government blames on rogue low-ranking soldiers.

Defense attorneys are trying to show that Cardona—who faces 16 years in prison if convicted on all charges—and other soldiers were acting on orders from their superiors.

As we all know, you can never trust the defendant. Ever.

Prosecutors say he and an already convicted colleague were “corrupt cops” who used dogs to terrify detainees into urinating and defecating on themselves.

They were ordered to. If they hadn’t, they would have been “disciplined.”

Steven Pescatore, a former Air Force officer who worked as a civilian interrogator at Abu Ghraib, said in written testimony that silence from superiors on the treatment of prisoners was widely seen as meaning consent.

“We still had to submit a memo requesting the harsher techniques, but we could go under the assumption that a technique was approved unless we heard back otherwise,” he said.

Don’t ask, don’t tell, eh?

“There was a lot of pressure and stress among the interrogators; we were constantly being told that we needed to get more information from the detainees.”

Information gathered from torture is 100% accurate and would not ever be fabricated in order for the torture to stop. Thus, torture works.

Despite evidence of pressure from above to extract more information from prisoners, there are few signs that senior Army leaders or administration officials will be charged with condoning the abuse.

Of course not. The seniors have so many connections that there’s no way anyone would ever consider thinking about potentially seeking advice on whether or not he should file charges.

The U.S. government, which often justifies its foreign policy on the grounds of improving human rights, was severely embarrassed when photographs showing prisoners being abused and sexually humiliated were leaked in 2004.

“Severely embarrassed”? Severely embarrassed because it tortured prisoners? It’s such a shame that photos proving U.S. government torture would ever get leaked, because they shatter our squeaky-clean we’re-the-good-guys mentality that the government’s given itself over the past half-century!

If I continue any further, I’ll lose it. And then I’ll be committed.

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