from Daily Kos - Another Example of What's Wrong

Daily Kos: "by Hunter
Sun Apr 3rd, 2005 at 17:52:24 PST

The ACLU has obtained through a FIOA request a 2003 memo signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez approving a variety of torture techniques for use against Iraqi prisoners being held at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere:

The memorandum, dated September 14, 2003, was signed by Lt. Gen. Sanchez and laid out specific interrogation techniques, modeled on those used against detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for use by coalition forces in Iraq. These include sleep 'management,' the inducement of fear at two levels of severity, loud music and sensory agitation, and the use of canine units to 'exploit [the] Arab fear of dogs.'

During sworn testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Lt. Gen. Sanchez flatly denied approving any such techniques in Iraq, and said that a news article reporting otherwise was false.

Specifically, Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) asked Sanchez, 'today's USA Today, sir, reported that you ordered or approved the use of sleep deprivation, intimidation by guard dogs, excessive noise and inducing fear as an interrogation method for a prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison.' To which Sanchez replied, using the acronym for Coalition Joint Task Force-7, 'Sir, that may be correct that it's in a news article, but I never approved any of those measures to be used within CJTF-7 at any time in the last year.'

In case you're wondering, Sanchez's testimony to Congress was on May 19th, 2004.

So, is lying in sworn testimony to Congress a big deal these days?

Update [2005-4-3 21:38:58 by Hunter]: A number of Kossacks point out that this news is a few days old, which prompts me to try a Google News experiment:

News stories matching 'ACLU Iraq Sanchez': 101.

News stories matching 'Schiavo': 79,300

Ouch. "