JURIST - Paper Chase: JAG warnings on Iraq prisoner treatment ignored by Pentagon political appointees

ABC News reports that lawyers in the military's Judge Advocates Corps urged Pentagon officials to ensure protection for Iraqi prisoners for two years before the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, but their warnings were ignored and their efforts marginalized by political appointees, including Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes (see DOD official biography). Haynes has recently been nominated by the Bush administration for a seat on the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. ABC quotes Rear Admiral Don Guter (ret.), the Navy Judge Advocate General from 2000 to 2002, as saying that: "If we — 'we' being the uniformed lawyers — had been listened to, and what we said put into practice, then these abuses would not have occurred." ABC News has more.