torture prosecution falters

[Hamlette]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/13/national/13bagram.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

FORT BLISS, Tex. — In the chronicle of abuses that has emerged from America's fight against terror, there may be no story more jarring than that of the two young men killed at a United States military detention center in Afghanistan in December 2002.

The two Afghans were found dead within days of each other, hanging by their shackled wrists in isolation cells at the prison in Bagram, north of Kabul. An Army investigation showed they were treated harshly by interrogators, deprived of sleep for days, and struck so often in the legs by guards that a coroner compared the injuries to being run over by a bus.

snip

Of 27 soldiers and officers against whom Army investigators had recommended criminal charges, 15 have been prosecuted. Five of those have pleaded guilty to assault and other crimes; the stiffest punishment any of them have received has been five months in a military prison. Only one soldier has been convicted at trial; he was not imprisoned at all.

snip

interrogators there adopted some of the more extreme interrogation methods that Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld approved on Dec. 2, 2002, exclusively for use at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Yeah. The Bush admin takes torture seriously. 5 months.