Separate Interrogation Rules For Special Forces?

[babylonsister]

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003459.php

Separate Interrogation Rules For Special Forces?
By Spencer Ackerman - June 18, 2007, 3:58 PM

Sy Hersh's piece on the stifling of General Antonio Taguba's inquiry into Abu Ghraib begs a big question: What would Taguba have uncovered if he had been free to investigate?

Buried within three of the Pentagon's official investigations into torture, there's plenty of circumstantial evidence to suggest that the answer is a separate, harsher set of rules for detainee and interrogation operations led by Special Operations Forces -- the elite units specializing in unconventional warfare -- than those that apply for the rest of the U.S. military. Yet none of the inquiries follows through on how highly trained SOF units, increasingly important in the war on terrorism, could have created detention facilities so brutal as to give them the motto "No Blood, No Foul" absent official guidance.

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Knowing whether SOF plays by a different set of detention and interrogation rules would help explain how Human Rights Watch could have documented a SOF detention facility rife with abuse, down to the gruesome motto, "No Blood, No Foul." As Hersh writes, SOF activities have massively expanded worldwide in the years since 9/11, with little oversight into the rules under which they operate. In particular, three big questions remain outstanding:

* What additional interrogation techniques are contained in the February 2003 Standard Operation Procedure?
* Are they still in place?
* And is there any other guidance differentiating what SOF task forces can do from that of the rest of the U.S. military?

Taguba wasn't able to get the answers. Neither has the new Democratic Congress. Even without Rumsfeld in charge, the Pentagon wants to keep it that way.