Senior US military lawyers had strongly opposed the harsh interrogation methods against foreign terror suspects in 2003, but their voices were neglected by the US government, according to newly declassified documents.
Rather than listening carefully to the lawyers’ opinions, an administration legal task force concluded that US President George W. Bush had authority as commander in chief to order excessive interrogations of prisoners at the US naval base of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Thursday’s New York Times quoted the documents as saying.
The task force claimed that US military interrogators and their commanders should be immune from prosecution of torture under federal and international laws because of the "special character of the fight against terrorism."
But in memorandums written by a number of leading military lawyers two years ago, they warned that the government’s position on the issue could endanger US interests.
In one of the documents, Maj. Gen. Jack L. Rives, the deputy judge advocate of the US Air Force, advised the Bush administration that several of the "more extreme interrogation techniques amount to violations of domestic criminal law" as well as military law.
Rives pointed out that these interrogation methods would be unacceptable in the international community and could put the interrogators at risk of criminal accusations abroad.
Other senior lawyers also warned that the aggressive interrogation techniques could diminish the country’s standing as a leader in "the moral high road" approach to the laws of war.
However, the US government and the Pentagon were largely unmoved by suggestions from the military lawyers.
The memorandums were declassified recently at the request of US Senator Lindsey Graham.
Graham and several other Senate Republicans are pushing for legislation in order to set rules for the treatment and interrogation of terrorism suspects in US custody, despite a White House veto threat.
