This diary is taking on the character of Washington Post promotional material, but remarkably the Post editorial page continues to hit the right notes regarding the torture scandal. Today they
demand that the administration stop screwing around and reveal just what policies were in place to direct interrogations in Iraq and elsewhere.
The Bush administration is doing its best to keep secret the policies it has developed for handling foreign prisoners and to stifle congressional examination of the issue. Rules for the interrogation of detainees used to be published in widely available Army manuals. But the Bush administration has classified the procedures it has approved for the Guantanamo Bay prison, Afghanistan and Iraq -- even though it claims that all are in compliance with the Geneva Conventions. It has been slow to release the procedures even to the Senate Armed Services Committee...
While the torture pictures have stoked public outrage, the potential poison for the Administration is in the interrogation policies they put into place. So far there is documentary evidence that the White House on Justice department advice carefully side-stepped the Geneva conventions in Afghanistan to shield US military personnel from war crimes jeopardy. The Defense Department has claimed that - unlike Afghanistan detainees - prisoners in Iraq were all afforded Geneva convention protections. The NYT
today puts the lie to this claim by revealing that Army lawyers responded to Red Cross reports on Abu Ghraib with assertions that some prisoners were not entitled to full Geneva protections. The White House and Defense Department are engaged in a colossal buck passing exercise hoping to outlast the public outrage. Lets hope that the Post effectively uses their stock of unreleased torture photos to keep up the pressure and assure Mr. Bush does not escape responsibility for creating the legal environment for torture.