No subject

(including Abu Ghraib) as an Army interrogator. Following orders that I
believed were legal, I used military working dogs during interrogations. I
terrified my interrogation subjects, but I never got intelligence (mostly
because 90 percent of them were probably innocent, but that's another
story). Perhaps, I have thought for a long time, I also deserve to be
prosecuted. But if that is the case, culpability goes much farther up the
chain of command than the Army and the Bush administration have so far been
willing to admit.

When the chief warrant officer at our interrogation site in Mosul first told
me to use dogs during interrogations, it seemed well within what was allowed
by our written rules and consistent with what was being done at Abu Ghraib
and other detention centers. The dogs were muzzled and held by a handler.
The prisoners didn't know that, though, because they were blindfolded; if
they gave me an answer I didn't like, I could cue the handler so the dog
would bark and lunge toward them. Sometimes they were so terrified they'd
wet their jumpsuits. About halfway through my tour, I stopped using dogs and
other "enhancements" like hypothermia that qualify as torture even under the
most nonchalant readings of international law. I couldn't handle being so
routinely brutal.

In training, we learned that all P.O.W.'s are protected against actual and
implied threats. You can never put a "knife on the table" to get someone to
talk. That was clear. But our Iraqi prisoners weren't clearly classified as
P.O.W.'s, so I never knew what laws applied. Instead, a confusing set of
verbal and written orders had supplanted the Geneva Conventions.

When an Army investigator asked Col. Thomas Pappas, the top military
intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib, how intimidation with dogs could be
allowed under this treaty, he gave the chilling reply, "I did not personally
look at that with regard to the Geneva Convention." Colonel Pappas later
testified that he was taking his cue on the use of dogs from Maj. Gen.
Geoffrey Miller, who took over detainee operations in Iraq after running
them in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

General Miller has denied recommending the use of guard dogs to intimidate
prisoners during interrogations in Iraq. He also recently said he would not
testify in the courts-martial of Sergeants Cardona and Smith, invoking his
right to avoid self-incrimination. As someone who voluntarily spoke at
length about my actions in Iraq to investigators, without a lawyer present,
I can't have a favorable opinion of General Miller. By doing the military
equivalent of "taking the Fifth," he's decided to protect himself,
apparently happy to let two dog handlers take the fall ‹ a stunning betrayal
of his subordinates and Army values.

Sergeants Cardona and Smith have been accused of sick and sadistic behavior.
They face the prospect of serious jail time. But they almost certainly acted
believing they were following legal orders. In the military, orders are
orders unless there is clear, uncluttered law transmitted from far above our
commanders' rank and station. Instead of a clear message prohibiting
torture, our top commanders gave us a deliberate muddying of the waters.

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, recently shepherded a ban on
torture through Congress. Then, while reluctantly signing the legislation,
President Bush muddled this very clear ban on torture by stating that he
would construe it "in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority
of the president."

Those who serve in the prisons of Iraq deserve to know clearly the
difference between legal and illegal orders. Soldiers on the ground need a
commander in chief who does not seek strained legalisms that "permit" the
use of torture. The McCain amendment, prohibiting "cruel, inhuman, or
degrading" treatment in all instances, is an accurate reflection of the true
values of the military and American society. We should adhere to it strictly
and in all cases. I know, from personal experience, that any leeway given
will be used to maximum effect against detainees. No slope is more slippery,
I learned in Iraq, than the one that leads to torture.

Anthony Lagouranis served in the Army from May 2001 to July 2005.

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