Major General Geoffrey Miller had been in charge of obtaining intelligence information from detainees who were held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His methods were extreme and bordered on torturous. In declassified statements from the FBI, some prisoners at Guantanamo were shackled to an object for 18 hours or longer without food or water and left to deficate or urinate on themselves.
Rumsfeld approved of these methods of enhanced sensory disorientation and stress positions such as nudity and humiliation. On the bottom of the memo in which he signed he asked the question "I stand for 8-10 hours a day, why is standing only limited to 4 hours?" This added statement was the silent nod of approval for harsher methods of interrogation. Rumsfeld, who was pleased at the ease in which information was coming from GITMO decided to send Miller to Abu Ghraib in an effort to gather intelligence that had been lacking from the detainees.
Rumsfeld approved of these methods of enhanced sensory disorientation and stress positions such as nudity and humiliation. On the bottom of the memo in which he signed he asked the question "I stand for 8-10 hours a day, why is standing only limited to 4 hours?" This added statement was the silent nod of approval for harsher methods of interrogation. Rumsfeld, who was pleased at the ease in which information was coming from GITMO decided to send Miller to Abu Ghraib in an effort to gather intelligence that had been lacking from the detainees.
Following Miller's arrival in Abu Ghraib, General Ricardo Sanchez who was in charge of operations in Iraq issued a memo on September, 2003 authorizing the use of extreme techniques that could potentially violate international law such as that written in the Geneva Conventions. Unsure of exactly what their orders were in Iraq, the MP's in charge at Abu Ghraib never knew what was required of them and which methods violated a prisoners rights, for example the stripping naked of detainees and interrogating them in the nude. This left many of them feeling uncomfortable in their positions in the prison.
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