According to the Post story, and a document released to the American Civil Liberties Union that backs it up, Lt. Col. Allen B. West in 2003 admitted to letting three soldiers beat up an Iraqi police officer, and then threatened him with a knife and a gun, hoping to make the Iraqi think West would kill him if he didn’t provide information on a planned attack on the officer and his unit. He eventually provided the information.

Because the CIA inspector general in his 2004 report listed similar threats against detainees by a CIA interrogator among the most disturbing actions, writes Pincus, “CIA officials wonder whether a double standard is at play — one that penalizes intelligence officers more harshly than the military for the use of coercion in interrogating detainees.”

While this story could be read the way the CIA would like it to be — which would still require setting aside all the other brutal torture tactics they used on detainees — it could also be read to provide strong support for the view that a far broader investigation ought to take place to reveal what the United States government — both the CIA and the military — were doing to detainees in their custody, whether laws were broken, and if so, who should be held accountable.

Complaining that the Defense Department was as bad as the CIA is a lousy argument for burying our heads in the sand.

According to two anonymous sources, lawyers for the subjects of the investigation — which include former Office of Legal Counsel officials John Yoo, Steven Bradbury and Jay Bybee, all principal authors of at least some of the so-called “torture memos” — have encouraged senior Bush administration appointees to write and call senior officials in the Department of Justice.

The draft report is expected to harshly criticize the lawyers’ conduct and to recommend disciplinary action by state bar associations against at least two former OLC lawyers who prepared and signed the controversial memos.

As we’ve described earlier in detail, the memos, drafted between 2002 and 2005, provided legal justifications for waterboarding, slamming prisoners against a wall, prolonged sleep and food deprivation, and other techniques that would seem to violate the U.S. and international laws banning torture and “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”

Because the Convention Against Torture requires the U.S. government to prosecute any perpetrators of torture, it’s not surprising that lawyers for the subjects of the Justice Department’s ethics investigation would want to soften the language of the forthcoming report, particularly as pressure mounts to prosecute the lawyers who justified the abusive conduct.

“In dozens of interviews over several years at the U.S. military prison — where he was rewarded with his own cell, McDonald’s apple pies, chewing tobacco, a truck magazine and other “comfort items” — Yasim Muhammed Basardah provided the evidence needed to continue detaining scores of alleged terrorists, military and FBI records show,” The Post’s Del Quentin Wilbur wrote in February.

But “military officials have expressed reservations about the credibility of their star witness since 2004,” the article continued. Those worries intensified when in January, a federal judge ordered another prisoner freed, saying Basardah’s testimony was not sufficiently reliable to justify the man’s confinement. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, based on secret evidence presented in closed-door hearings, granted the habeas corpus petition of the 33-year-old Basardah.

According to The Post story, during a military hearing, Basardah said: “I am cooperative to the point where my cooperation with everyone has led many people threatening my life … therefore I cannot go back to my own country … They will not hesitate to kill me or anyone in my family.”

Because of that, and perhaps also because Basardah is from Yemen — to which, as I wrote on Monday, the government is having serious trouble returning prisoners — it’s not clear when Basardah will actually get to leave the Guantanamo prison, despite yesterday’s court order.

But some lawyers for detainees on Monday were predicting that Basardah’s release could spark widespread anger among the detainees who have not been cleared to go — some because of testimony provided by Basardah against them.

“The men will be outraged when they learn that Basardah has been ordered released,” David Remes, the executive director of Appeal for Justice who is representing 15 Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo, told me yesterday just after learning about the order.

“First, the government released Salim Hamdan, who was convicted of aiding terrorism,” explained Remes in a follow-up e-mail. “Then, it released Binyam Mohammed, who was charged with terrorism-related crimes. Then, it orders the release of [Ayman Saeed] Batarfi, who was accused of heading an organization on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups. And now, they order the release of Basardah, who is reputed to have falsely implicated scores of men.”

Remes worries that the order to release Basardah — even if he doesn’t actually get to leave just yet — could cause more dissension and unrest among the remaining prisoners.

“It was Hamdan’s release in November that sparked the current wave of hunger strikes,” said Remes. “With the new order to release Basardah, the number of prisoners on hunger strikes will likely explode.”

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