Friday, May 21, 2004

Feith's 'Gestapo Office': "Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner that he is seeking testimony in the coming weeks from Feith may have unwittingly cast new light on the reasons why Secretary of State Colin Powell is alleged by Woodward to have referred to Feith's operation as the ''Gestapo Office.'" GI Sabrina Harmon grins over the body of beaten to death Iraqi Manadel al-Jamadi.

"Evidence of Feith's involvement in the prisoner abuse scandal rests primarily on reports that have appeared in Newsweek, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. They have reported that, even before the Iraq War, top officials in the Pentagon, acting on the advice of civilian lawyers, authorized a reinterpretation of the Geneva Conventions to permit tougher methods of interrogation of prisoners of war (POWs).

"This effort was strongly resisted by Powell, a retired army general, when it came to his attention, and by the Judge Advocates Generals (JAG) Corps, the formal name given to the military's lawyers. They argued, among other things, that the introduction of ''stress and duress'' techniques, sleep deprivation and other methods that violate the Conventions would not only result in dubious intelligence, but could also be cited as a precedent for use against U.S. soldiers who fell into enemy hands."

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