Friday, November 03, 2006



Forced retirement is not enough

Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, previously the commander of US forces in Iraq, has been forced into early retirement over the Abu Ghraib scandal. While I'm not sad at all to see him go, at the same time this isn't enough. As commanding officer, Sanchez authorised interrogation techniques which violated both the Geneva Conventions and US Army regulations, including isolation, "stress positions", and use of military working dogs to "exploit(s) Arab fear of dogs". He collaborated with Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and CIA Director George Tenet in keeping prisoners "off the books" and hidden from the Red Cross - again, in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Even without looking at the question of the legality and conduct of the war, the man is a war criminal. And rather than being allowed to retire, he should be dragged into a courtroom and prosecuted for it.

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