Time magazine yesterday revealed new allegations of systematic abuse of Iraqi detainees made by a “decorated former Captain in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.” For months, the Captain says, U.S. soldiers were directed “to conduct daily beatings of prisoners prior to questioning.” In one instance, “a soldier allegedly broke a detainee’s leg with a metal bat.” Other prisoners had “their faces and eyes exposed to burning chemicals.”

The Captain revealed this abuse to Human Rights Watch in July 2005. He also reported his charges to “three senior Republican senators,” including Majority Leader Bill Frist and Sen. John McCain. The torture, he said, was due primarily to “chronic confusion over U.S. military detention policies and whether or not the Geneva Convention applied.”

On July 27, the same month the Captain came forward, Sen. Frist single-handedly derailed a bipartisan effort — led by Sen. McCain — to clarify rules for the treatment of enemy prisoners at U.S. prison camps. In what news reports at the time described as an “unusual move,” Frist “simply pulled the bill from consideration” before it could be debated.

Bill Frist needs to come clean: Was his office told of the “systematic abuse” in the 82nd Airborne before he torpedoed the new detainee laws?

Bill Frist is under investigation by the Justice Department and the SEC “about his sale of stock in his family’s hospital company [HCA] one month before its price fell sharply.” But that’s just the beginning of Frist’s problems.

Frist contacted the trustee of his “blind trust” and directed him to sell the HCA stock. According to Senate ethics rules there is only one circumstance where that is allowed. From the Senate Ethics Manual, page 339:

[D]irections to the trustee to sell all of an asset initially placed in the trust by an interested party which in the determination of the reporting individual creates a conflict of interest or the appearance thereof due to the subsequent assumptions of duties by the reporting individual.

In other words, the only time Frist could contact his trustee and tell him to sell a specific stock is when he took on new “duties” which created a new “conflict of interest.” The problem is that Frist is the Majority Leader, a position which he’s held since 2002.

What duties did Frist take on in June that he didn’t have before?

“Another White House official involved in preparing Mr. Bush’s way noted that with the sun shining so brightly in San Antonio, the images of Mr. Bush from here might not have made it clear to viewers that he was dealing with an approaching storm.” (Via AmericaBlog)