Army Expressly Bans Harsh Interrogation Techniques

There still needs to be a full congressional investigation into the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, but there is progress being made on other fronts.

The New York Times is reporting:

The Army is preparing to issue a new interrogations manual that expressly bars the harsh techniques disclosed in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, and incorporates safeguards devised to prevent such misconduct at military prison camps in the future, Army officials said Wednesday.

The new manual, the first revision in 13 years, will specifically prohibit practices like stripping prisoners, keeping them in stressful positions for a long time, imposing dietary restrictions, employing police dogs to intimidate prisoners and using sleep deprivation as a tool to get them to talk, the officials said.

Those practices were not included in the manual in use when the bulk of the abuses occurred at Abu Ghraib in Iraq in the fall of 2003, but neither were they specifically banned.

This does not put an end to the issue, but it’s good to see the Army directly condemning such deplorable interrogation techniques.