Human pyramid will get you promoted

 "Those in charge of detention and interrogation operations and policies when the torture at Abu Ghraib first became public have been promoted,'' said Michael Posner, the group's executive director.

Alberto Gonzales, for example, helped prepare the administration's case for relaxing interrogation rules and ''was among the first to embrace the no-rules-apply approach to the 'war on terror','' and subsequently advanced to his current job as U.S. attorney general, Human Rights First said.

''The month after the Abu Ghraib photos became public, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, formerly in charge of interrogations at Guantanamo and credited with instituting the use of dogs at Abu Ghraib, was assigned to be senior commander in charge of detention operations in Iraq,'' the group added.

Jay Bybee, a former assistant attorney general and the principal author of a memo defining torture so narrowly as to require an act to ''be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death,'' was appointed as a judge on the federal appeals court, Human Rights First said.

William Haynes, who as Defense Department general counsel recommended over the protests of military lawyers many of the most abusive tactics used at Guantanamo, has been nominated to the federal appeals bench.

Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who oversaw detention facilities in Iraq and was ''excoriated in Pentagon reports for his role in letting torture continue under his command,'' was named the head of the Army's 5th Corps in Europe, Human Rights First said.

Indeed, it added, ''the highest ranking service member successfully prosecuted has been Marine Major Clarke Paulus, who was dismissed from the service without jail time after being convicted for his role in the strangulation death of a non-Abu Ghraib detainee.''