Better late than never is a cliche that does not do justice to this announcement, as the title of this post also does not. A year or two late and 200 Billion Dollars short, a modified cliche, however, fits nicely, even if it is far too flippant:
The commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, will still consider requests to hold prisoners in isolation for more than 30 days, according to a senior Central Command official who briefed reporters on Friday. The general has approved 25 such requests since October, the official said. But the official said that General Sanchez would deny requests to use other harsh methods.
"Simply, we will not even entertain a request, so don't even send it up for a review," the Central Command official said.
Previously, certain interrogation techniques, including sensory deprivation were supposed to be used only with the general's explicit approval. General Sanchez issued the new guidelines on Thursday, the same day that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made a surprise visit to Baghdad and to Abu Ghraib prison, where the worst abuses occurred, in an effort to quiet the furor over the abuse scandal.
Mr. Rumsfeld has said that the American military in Iraq was abiding by the Geneva Conventions, and that the mistreatment was the work of a terrible few. But at a Senate hearing on Thursday, Mr. Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, acknowledged that hooding prisoners or forcing them to crouch naked for 45 minutes — tactics available to interrogators with General Sanchez's approval under the old policy — was inhumane. The International Red Cross had warned American officials for months that Iraqi prisoners were being abused in American-run prisons.
The senior Central Command official said the coercive practices were dropped because General Sanchez was not receiving requests to use most of them. But the Pentagon's chief spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, acknowledged that it was "likely that the heightened scrutiny of the last couple weeks" had prompted General Sanchez to revise the interrogation rules. He said Mr. Rumsfeld did not order General Sanchez to change the policy.
The changes appear to affect only operations in Iraq, and would not change interrogation methods at the American base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, or in Afghanistan. The rules also apply to any civilian contractors.
The Army's top intelligence officer, Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, had presented to senators this week a list of techniques, some of which were approved for use on all prisoners and others that required General Sanchez's approval. The chart also listed safeguards, including a warning that "approaches must always be humane and lawful." Senators said at the hearing on Tuesday that General Alexander had characterized the one-page chart as a product of the American military high command in Baghdad. But the Central Command official disclosed Friday that the document was actually produced sometime in October by the Army's 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, which oversaw interrogations at Abu Ghraib. The Central Command official also said that until last fall, commanders did not have an interrogation policy specific to Iraq.
That changed, however, after Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the head of detention operations at Guantanamo Bay, visited Iraqi prisons last September and recommended several changes, including the creation of a specific interrogation policy for prisons in Iraq. ...
On Capitol Hill, Senate Democrats who had accused the Pentagon this week of employing practices that violated the Conventions applauded the policy changes. "Pressure works," said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.
Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who clashed with Mr. Wolfowitz at Thursday's hearing, said in a telephone interview, "I'm glad they're changing them, but it's like closing the barn door after the herd is out. Why were these regulations promulgated in the first place?"
