[A] May 19, 2004 Defense Intelligence Agency document implicating Sanchez in potentially abusive interrogation techniques. In the document, an officer in charge of a team of interrogators stated that there was a 35-page order spelling out the rules of engagement that interrogators were supposed to follow, and that they were encouraged to "go to the outer limits to get information from the detainees by people who wanted the information." When asked to whom the officer was referring, the officer answered "LTG Sanchez." The officer stated that the expectation coming from "Headquarters" was to break the detainees.

The ACLU says these documents prove again that the torture and abuse have not been the work of "a few bad apples":

The ACLU also released an Information Paper entitled "Allegations of Detainee Abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan" dated April 2, 2004, two weeks before the world saw the pictures of torture at Abu Ghraib prison. The paper outlined the status of 62 investigations of detainee abuse and detainee deaths. Cases include assaults, punching, kicking and beatings, mock executions, sexual assault of a female detainee, threatening to kill an Iraqi child to "send a message to other Iraqis," stripping detainees, beating them and shocking them with a blasting device, throwing rocks at handcuffed Iraqi children, choking detainees with knots of their scarves and interrogations at gunpoint.

In other words, two weeks before Abu Ghraib news broke, the Defense Department knew there was widespread abuse and systemic problems.

Of the 62 cases being investigated at the time, at least 26 involved detainee deaths. Some of the cases had already gone through a court-martial proceeding. The abuses went beyond Abu Ghraib, and touched Camp Cropper, Camp Bucca and other detention centers in Mosul, Samarra, Baghdad, Tikrit, as well as Orgun-E in Afghanistan.

In related news, Amnesty International has released its torture report submitted to the UN Committee Against Torture which is meeting May 5 to 8 in Geneva to consider U.S. compliance with the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

The U.S. is sending a 30 person delegation to the meeting to defend its record. From the Amnesty Int'l press release:

The report reviews several cases where detainees held in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and Iraq have died under torture. To this day, no U.S. agent has been prosecuted for "torture" or "war crimes."

"The heaviest sentence imposed on anyone to date for a torture-related death while in U.S. custody is five months -- the same sentence that you might receive in the U.S. for stealing a bicycle. In this case, the five-month sentence was for assaulting a 22-year-old taxi-driver who was hooded and chained to a ceiling while being kicked and beaten until he died," said Goering.

"While the government continues to try to claim that the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody was mainly due to a few 'aberrant' soldiers, there is clear evidence to the contrary. Most of the torture and ill-treatment stemmed directly from officially sanctioned procedures and policies -- including interrogation techniques approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld," said Javier Zuniga, Amnesty International's Americas Program Director.

Rumsfeld should be leading the delegation. He has the most explaining to do. I'd bet he's not even going.