Disgraced General Who Pushed for Torture in Iraq Is Now a Spokesman for Democrats?

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted November 27, 2007.

Amy Goodman: Every Saturday, the President of United States gives a radio address to the nation. It's followed by the Democratic response, usually given by a House or a Senate Democrat. It may have surprised some that this past Saturday the Democrats chose retired General Sanchez to give the address. That's retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez: For as long as we have troops in Iraq, the American people must insist that our deploying men and women are properly trained and properly equipped for the missions they will be asked to perform.

The funding bill passed by the House of Representatives last week with a bipartisan vote makes the proper preparation of our deploying troops a priority and requires the type of shift in their mission that will allow their numbers to be reduced substantially. Furthermore, the bill puts America on the path to regaining our moral authority by requiring all government employees to abide by the Army Field Manual on interrogations, which is in compliance with the Geneva Conventions. America must accept nothing less.

Goodman: According to the ACLU, documents show Army Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the former top US military commander in Iraq, urged his troops to "go to the outer limits" to extract information from prisoners. Previously released documents have linked Sanchez to the use of Army dogs during interrogations.

Democracy Now! interviewed Janis Karpinski in October of 2005. She was the only military officer to be disciplined after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. She said she was scapegoated. She served under General Sanchez and talked about his role in, among other practices, ghost detainees.

Col. Janis Karpinski: We were directed on several occasions, and directed through the CJTF-7, through General Fast or General Sanchez, by -- the instructions were originating at the Pentagon, from Secretary Rumsfeld, and we were instructed to hold prisoners without putting their -- giving -- assigning a prisoner number or putting them on the database, and that is contrary to the Geneva Conventions. We all knew it was contrary to the Geneva Conventions. And we were told that this -- these instructions were being given by Secretary Rumsfeld, and --

Goodman: Who told you that?

Karpinski: Colonel Warren and General Fast, the intel officer for General Sanchez, and General Sanchez himself.

Goodman: General Fast is General Barbara Fast?

Karpinski: General Barbara Fast. And we were told that these instructions were for specific individuals, and they were a special case. And we would hold them without assigning a prisoner number until they were -- until an order was given on how to handle them.

Goodman: So that the International Committee of the Red Cross would not know that they exist, would not ask to see them?

Karpinski: Correct. Now, they didn't -- the ICRC would not look for specific prisoners unless there was a reason or a number provided to them, for example, and because there was no communication between prisoners and family members, at least not from Abu Ghraib, because security detainees, as we were told, they fit into a different category. So, it would be unusual for the ICRC to be looking for a specific prisoner by a prisoner number. They would come in, they would look at conditions, they would talk to individuals. Sometimes they would randomly select numbers, but the purpose of not putting them on any database is to keep them from being known.

Goodman: Former Brigadier General Janis Karpinski was demoted to colonel. University of Wisconsin Professor Alfred McCoy, the author of A Question of Torture, spoke to Democracy Now! in February of 2006 about General Sanchez.

Alfred McKoy: In September of 2003, General Sanchez issued orders, detailed orders, for expanded interrogation techniques beyond those allowed in the US Army Field Manual 3452, and if you look at those techniques, what he's ordering, in essence, is a combination of self-inflicted pain, stress positions and sensory disorientation. And if you look at the 1963 CIA KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual, you look at the 1983 CIA Interrogation Training Manual that they used in Honduras for training Honduran officers in torture and interrogation, and then twenty years later, you look at General Sanchez's 2003 orders, there's a striking continuity across this forty-year span in both the general principles: this total assault on the existential platforms of human identity and existence, OK, and the specific techniques, the way of achieving that, through the attack on these sensory receptors.

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Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!

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