Torturers love loopholes Needlenose: “A secretive military Special Operations group in Iraq used several unauthorized interrogation tactics on detainees in early 2004 after it erroneously received an outdated policy from commanders in Baghdad, according to a high-level military investigative report released yesterday at the Pentagon.

. . . Army Brig. Gen. Richard P. Formica found that members of the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Arabian Peninsula used official guidance that had been developed in September 2003 to create its own set of rules for interrogations, unknowingly including the forbidden tactics.

. . . The September 2003 guidance — from the office of Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then the top U.S. commander in Iraq — was rescinded and reissued the following month, with fewer tactics allowed. But the September memo has been at the center of the debate about the U.S. interrogation policy in Iraq because its broad approval of controversial methods served as the baseline for interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere.

. . . But Formica concluded that the soldiers using the tactics were not responsible for violating policy or the law from February to May 2004 because they believed what they were doing had been approved. . . . ‘I didn’t find cruel and malicious criminals that are out there looking for detainees to abuse,’ Formica said in an interview with reporters at the Pentagon yesterday. He said it was ‘regrettable’ that the soldiers were given the wrong policy”