No chance of THAT happening
Lawyer Wants Bush on Witness Stand Over Iraq Abuse
Mon Jun 21, 2004 09:06 AM ET
By Michael Georgy and Matthew Green
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should take the witness stand at the trial of a U.S. soldier charged with abusing prisoners in Iraq, the soldier's lawyer said on Monday.
Policies adopted in Bush's "war on terror" created a climate encouraging cruelty, said lawyers for U.S. soldiers accused of subjecting detainees to sexual humiliation and physical abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
"No one can suggest with a straight face that the MPs (military police) acted alone," said defense lawyer Guy Womack, representing Specialist Charles Graner, who faces the most serious charges of the soldiers to be court martialed.
"They were directly under the supervision of military intelligence officers," he told reporters after a pretrial hearing.
Pretrial hearings were held on Monday for Specialist Charles Graner -- who faces the most serious charges of all the Abu Ghraib accused -- and Sergeant Javal Davis.
Davis's defense counsel Paul Bergrin said Bush and Rumsfeld sidestepped the Geneva Convention, encouraging abuse that stretched down the chain of command to the soldiers at Abu Ghraib, notorious as a torture center under Saddam Hussein.
He said his client -- accused of jumping on a pile of prisoners and stomping on their feet -- was instructed on a daily basis to soften up Iraqi prisoners to obtain intelligence.
"Bush gave a speech declaring his war on terror and said the Geneva Convention no longer applied," he told reporters after an impassioned address in the court room.
