Bush Administration Lied About Abu Ghraib

The New York Times obtained part of the classified report by three generals on Abu Ghraib.

1. Military officials and the Bush Administration repeatedly lied -- they claimed prisoners in Iraq were being treated by the rules of the Geneva Convetion when they knew this was not true.

2. Abusive techniques were not the result of a bad few acting on their own -- these abusive methods that violated the Geneva Convention were approved at the highest level; indeed, by Lt. General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq. It doesn't get much higher up the chain of command than that. The abusive techniques they approved also violated those in the standard Army field manual -- so no one had any excuses in claiming they didn't know it was wrong.

3. The only reason any of this was "classified" and withheld from the American people? It was embarrassing.

"Army officials said Thursday that some sections of the report had been marked secret because they referred to policy memorandums that were still classified," wrote the New York Times.

"But the report's discussion of the September and October orders, while critical of General Sanchez and his staff, do not disclose many new details of the orders and do not appear to contain sensitive material about interrogations or other intelligence-gathering methods. They do show in much clearer detail than ever before how interrogation practices from Afghanistan and Guantánamo were brought to Abu Ghraib, and how poorly the nuances of what was acceptable in Iraq were understood by military intelligence officials in Iraq."