Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez and his role in the Administration of Torture

In his review of Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez’s new book Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story, Scott McLemee of Bloomberg.com notes that the former head of coalition forces in Iraq offers a similar message found in other books about how things went wrong in Iraq: “Don’t blame me.”

McLemee also points to the fact that while Sanchez tries to explain or explain away his role in creating the policy regarding the Army’s policy toward detainees, he omits the inclusion of the actual documents that point to his involvement.

As McLemee writes, these documents can be found in Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond edited by Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh.

In their introduction Jaffer and Singh describe what could be found in Sanchez’s directives from the Fall of 2003. You can also read the original memo from Sanchez (pdf):

Of the twenty-nine methods authorized by Sanchez’s directive, some were similar to those listed in the Field Manual—these included “pride and ego down,” and “fear up harsh—but the directive also authorized the use of twelve methods beyond those endorsed by the field manual. For example it authorized interrogators to isolate prisoners for extended periods, to subject them to “stress positions and extreme temperatures, and to deprive them of sleep. It also authorized interrogators to “exploit [] Arab fear of dogs and to deceive prisoners into believing that they were being interrogated by foreign intelligence services.

For more on Administration of Torture you can also listen to a podcast interview with Jaffer and Singh or read Scott McLemee’s interview in Insidehighered with Jameel Jaffer.