The difference is that this time it comes
from the senior commander of American forces in Iraq, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. commander in Iraq authorized prisoner interrogation tactics more harsh than accepted Army practice, including using guard dogs to exploit "Arab fear of dogs," a memo made public on Tuesday showed.
The Sept. 14, 2003, memo by Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the senior commander in Iraq, was released by the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained it from the government under court order through the Freedom of Information Act.
"The memo clearly establishes that Gen. Sanchez authorized unlawful interrogation techniques for use in Iraq, and in particular these techniques violate the Geneva Conventions and the Army's own field manual governing interrogations," ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh said in an interview.
And in a somewhat related story, our punishment of the Iraqi people extends far beyond prisons. Malnurishment in Iraq is now reaching third-world levels.
GENEVA (AP) Almost twice as many Iraqi children are suffering from malnutrition since the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, a U.N. monitor said Monday.
Four percent of Iraqis under age 5 went hungry in the months after Saddam's ouster in April 2003, and the rate nearly doubled to 7.7 percent last year, said Jean Ziegler, the U.N. Human Rights Commission's special expert on the right to food.
The situation is ``a result of the war led by coalition forces,'' he said.
Overall, more than a quarter of Iraqi children don't get enough to eat, Ziegler told the 53-nation commission, the top U.N. human rights watchdog.