Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Clear Connection

The liberal blogosphere has been making this point for a year and a quarter: the techniques used at a specialized prison like Guantanamo, where many of the prisoners were combatants, are not at all appropriate for the larger, mass-population prison of Abu Ghraib, where many of the prisoners are innocent civilians caught up curfew sweeps (evil idiots: Rumsfeld, Cambone, Feith, etc.):
The former warden of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq testified Wednesday that he attended a meeting in which the then-commander of the Guantanamo Bay prison recommended using military dogs for interrogation.

Maj. David Dinenna testified at the end of a preliminary hearing for two Army dog handlers accused of abusing Iraqi detainees. Dinenna said at a September 2003 meeting, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the Guantanamo Bay commander, talked about the effectiveness of using the dogs.

"We understood that he was sent over by the secretary of defense," Dinenna testified.

He said teams of trainers were sent to Abu Ghraib "to take these interrogation techniques, other techniques they learned at Guantanamo Bay and try to incorporate them in Iraq."

The statements bolstered defense claims that the use of dogs to terrify inmates were sanctioned high up the chain of command and were not the actions of a few rogue soldiers, as the government claims.

...A defense lawyer told reporters the approval came from top officials as the Army tried to bring to Iraq some of the techniques that human-rights advocates have criticized at Guantanamo Bay.

"They were trying to Gitmo-ize Abu Ghraib," said Harvey J. Volzer, civilian attorney for Cardona, 31.

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