Abuse Scandal Goes to the Top

Since the breaking of the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal, military and administration officials have insisted that the abuse was perpetrated by "a few bad apples"---namely, the young men and women who committed the acts. But new information indicates that, despite efforts to shift the blame, the soldiers were actually following a policy established by their superiors.

The top military officer in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, apparently authorized the use of techniques employed at the Guantanamo Bay detention center to be used against detainees in Iraq.

From the Washington Post: "Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior U.S.. military officer in Iraq, borrowed heavily from a list of high-pressure interrogation tactics used at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and approved letting senior officials at a Baghdad jail use military dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns, sensory deprivation, and diets of bread and water on detainees whenever they wished, according to newly obtained documents."

The people who made the decisions need to face the music.