Spooks Plead the Fifth as Grunts are Scapegoated

In Iraq prison torture scandal:

Relatives of three of the six soldiers who were charged, and a lawyer for one of them, said in telephone interviews that the soldiers were being made scapegoats for following orders from officers who actively supported, and even commended, the way they treated the prisoners.

The soldiers “were provided no guidance on how to run the prison while they were there,” Myers said. “They came under the influence of the intelligence community, whose interests may not be necessarily consistent with good prison management. The prison was set up in such a fashion that the intelligence community had far too much influence.

“They were instructing or advising the MPs to create ‘favorable conditions’ for interrogation. . . . ‘Favorable conditions’ were conditions where the detainees were susceptible to providing intelligence information, and that process involved techniques of humiliation.”