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NUCLEAR
Nuclear holocaust on a hair trigger
UK exposed to nuclear terror risk
MILITARY
Sand, Rough Roads and Insurgents' Bullets
China Warns Hong Kong Legislators to Halt Debate on Elections
Danish Leaders Beset on War Data
Hard-Liners In Iran Back Torture Ban
Militiamen Go on the Offensive in Two Southern Cities
Iraqi Cleric's Forces Broaden Assaults
Despite Bush's Worry, Arafat Says 2005 Is Realistic Date
Sharon Cancels Visit to Washington
Pentagon Approved Tougher Interrogations
Rumsfeld Warns Not All Images Are Out
Enemies catch up with Kadyrov
U.S. Presses U.N. on Role in Iraq for Politicians
How the Department of Defense mishandled the disaster at Abu Ghraib
Dissension Grows In Senior Ranks On War Strategy
In Abuse, a Picture of G.I.'s Ill Prepared and Overwhelmed
A Prison on the Brink Usual Military Checks and Balances Went Missing
Reservist to Face Court-Martial for Prisoner Abuse
New Head Of Prisons Defends Advice Guards Were to Be 'Actively Engaged'
Prison Chief Defends Using M.P.'s to Help Interrogators
Military Abuse Is As American As Apple Pie
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
The Supreme Court Asks: Who Will Guard the Guardians?
'Patriot' games
POLITICS
Forget Rumsfeld's fate; give us facts
Rice Says She and Bush 'Strongly' Support Rumsfeld
The War's Lost Weekend
Sorry's Such a Hard Word
OTHER
White House to Discuss Stem Cells With House
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Nuclear holocaust on a hair trigger
SCOTT PETERSON IN MOSCOW
Sun 9 May 2004
The Scotsman
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=528832004
IT PROMISED to be a quiet evening when Lt Col Stanislav Petrov settled into his commander's seat at the Soviet nuclear early warning centre near Moscow, but within minutes he was in the middle of what was perhaps the most dangerous drama of the Cold War.
An alarm sounded, warning screens blinked and to Petrov's horror a computer map showed the hostile launch of a US nuclear warhead.
The decision the colonel made on September 26, 1983, in those vital minutes - that the computer, and the elaborate early warning system that he helped build were wrong - may have prevented a nuclear holocaust.
Twenty years later, there is growing concern that a similar nuclear miscue could happen again. Despite the Cold War being consigned to political history, the US and its former rival still have thousands of missiles aimed at each other's major cities on hair-trigger alert.
And plans devised by former presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin to create a joint command centre to prevent a catastrophic accident have foundered amid Russian bureaucracy and US preoccupation with the new nuclear threat from North Korea.
But experts on both sides are now planning to issue a wake-up call designed to convince both governments that close co-operation to prevent accidental nuclear conflict is more vital than ever.
Petrov remembers every moment of that nightmare evening. "Every second counted," he said. "My legs were unsteady, my hands were trembling, my cozy armchair became a hot frying pan. It only got worse. Within five minutes the computer registered five more launches and the alarm flashed: 'Missile Attack.'
"I wish I could say there is no chance of it [today]. But when we deal with space - when we [play] God - who knows what will be the next surprise?"
At presidential summits in both 1998 and 2000, the US and Russia announced plans for a joint, real-time warning system in Moscow. The blueprint, drawing on American's sophisticated satellite network and Russia's wide radar net, promised to keep better tabs on the superpower arsenals as well as on terrorist threats.
But now dreams of joint efforts have ground to a halt and neglect has left Russia's system in disrepair.
"The fact is, the Russians are flying blind," said Jon Wolfsthal, a nonproliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
"There are huge portions of their periphery that are unmonitored because their satellites are down, and they've lost a number of [Soviet-era] radar sites."
Growing concern has been augmented by a string of Russian military accidents, from failed test missile launches to a sunken nuclear submarine.
After a secret year-long investigation into the 1983 incident, Petrov said the false readings that shocked him and his team were attributed to a rare but predictable reflection off the earth. The system was fooled again in 1995, when Russians briefly thought that a scientific launch from Norway was a nuclear-tipped US missile heading their way.
Yeltsin reportedly brought out the launch suitcase called the "nuclear football" - perhaps the closest it's ever come to being used in Soviet or Russian history - before deciding there was no need to respond.
"There are examples of weather satellite launches, the full moon rising, flocks of geese - all these horror stories in history," said Wolfsthal.
When Clinton and Yeltsin first announced plans to build the centre in 1998, it was heralded as a breakthrough. And when Vladimir Putin replaced Yeltsin as president and signed the deal in 2000, the White House touted it as a "milestone in ensuring strategic stability".
Bruce Blair, president of the Centre for Defence Information in Washington, who oversaw the detailed research with Russian scientists, said: "We looked at detections of the US system operating alone, and the Russian one alone, and found the combined performance would be 20% to 70% better."
Russian missile officers used a US command centre in Colorado for months at the end of 1999 to familiarise themselves with the US early-warning system and to be on hand during the millennium New Year to ensure direct contact with Moscow in case any computer bug affected the Russian system.
"It was incredibly useful, and built a lot of trust between early-warning groups on both sides," said Wolfsthal. "But in the end, they went away, and we're left without real-time sharing."
The joint project, first envisioned for completion in mid-2001, has foundered on everyday issues of what Russian taxes should be paid for imported US equipment, and legal concerns about liability.
"It's a lack of political will on both sides," said Vladimir Dvorkin, a former major general in Russia's nuclear forces.
The mundane points stalling the project are surprising security experts. "If you're a lawyer at the State Department, [liability and taxes] may be very important issues," said Wolfsthal. "But if you are concerned about the geostrategic survival of the human species, they are minuscule in their relevance."
Experts on both sides are now to begin a year-long exercise examining the need for the joint centre.
"We want to show what can happen without this centre," said Pavel Zolotarev, a former Strategic Forces major general. "We'll get these results in a year, but who knows when we will be able to convince the leadership?"
Over the past decade, the US has spent roughly £3.9bn funding nuclear-threat-reduction programmes to control "loose nukes" and to secure weapons-grade nuclear material and scientific expertise that might be easy targets for terrorists. But the £560m total spent per year on all threat reduction amounts to less than one-third of 1% of US defence spending.
Experts estimate that there is a total of 30,000 assembled nuclear weapons around the world and enough bomb-grade material to create nearly a quarter million more.
A version of this article orginally appeared in the Christian Science Monitor
MAXIMUM ALERT
IN THE weeks and months leading up to the drama of September 26, 1983, several developments had inflamed US-Soviet relations:
• The Soviet military shot down a Korean passenger jet on September 1, killing all 269 people on board, including many Americans. Soon after, the KGB sent a flash message to its operatives in the West, warning them to prepare for possible nuclear war.
• The American leadership began referring to the Soviet Union as an "evil empire".
• After the 'Star Wars' speech by President Ronald Reagan, right, on March 23 the Soviets feared such a system would increase the likelihood that the United States would launch a first strike since it would no longer fear retaliation. Russian strategy was to fire its arsenal immediately after receiving indications of an attack.
• The US and Nato organised a military exercise that centred around using tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. Soviet leaders were concerned this was a cover for an actual invasion.
-------- britain
UK exposed to nuclear terror risk
Leaked government report warns plants may not be secure from '9/11' attacks
By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor
Sunday Herald
09 May 2004
http://www.sundayherald.com/print41866
Millions of people could be killed by a terrorist attack on the Sellafield nuclear complex, according to an expert report for the Westminster parliament leaked to the Sunday Herald.
The document also says that flying a large plane into one of the United Kingdom's 13 nuclear reactors could cause an accident comparable to that which occurred at Chernobyl 18 years ago. The cloud of radioactivity that escaped from the wrecked Ukrainian reactor contaminated most of northern Europe and triggered a tenfold increase in thyroid cancers.
The report, by scientists from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology in London, concludes that the UK's current emergency planning arrangements may not be able to cope with such attacks. It also says that official secrecy means people have to take a lot on trust.
"There is insufficient information for the public to make an informed decision about the level of threat faced from potential attacks at nuclear facilities. Thus a very high level of confidence must be placed in the regulators," the report says.
The study was requested by the House of Commons Defence Committee in 2002, and is almost completed. Due to be published in the next few weeks, the findings will be presented to MPs at a meeting in parliament. The report is viewed as the first serious independent attempt to assess the true threat posed to UK security by terrorists. Its release is keenly awaited by all sides in the nuclear argument. A copy, with the working title of Risks And Consequences Of Terrorist Attacks On Nuclear Facilities, was obtained by the Sunday Herald last week.
"Civilian nuclear facilities in the UK are not required to withstand deliberate attacks," it says. In the worst-case scenario, a large aircraft crash could breach the containment building around a reactor and lead to an uncontrolled release of radioactivity.
The report does not specify the size of such an emission, however it says that if the reactor core was badly damaged, then the release could amount to more than half of its inventory of radioactive iodine. This is "comparable with Chernobyl", says the document.
An aircraft crash at a nuclear reactor could also lead to spent fuel storage ponds overheating and releasing radioactive material into the atmosphere, the leaked report says. It adds that material would also be vulnerable to attacks in transit.
But by far the most damaging attack would be one that breaches the high-level waste storage tanks at Sellafield in Cumbria. "Some reports predict several million fatalities", the document states, due to cancers triggered by leaking radioactivity. However, as there is no framework to establish the probability of such a scenario, the report says that "it is difficult to place these analyses in context". An attack on Sella field's plutonium stores could also disperse particles which, if inhaled, might increase the risk of lung cancer.
High-level waste and plutonium are also stored, in smaller amounts, at Dounreay in Caithness, and the report suggests "an attack on a 'softer' target could still cause widespread panic and disruption".
Current emergency plans for evacuation and sheltering extend just tens of kilometres from nuclear plants.
"Many analysts argue that the UK should have more robust plans in place to deal with larger releases of radioactive material which could affect a wider area - eg of the scale seen during Chernobyl," the document concludes.
"There is sufficient information to identify possible ways terrorists might bring about a release of radioactive material from the facilities examined in this report, but not to draw definitive conclusions on the likelihood of a successful attack, or the size and effects of any release."
Llew Smith, the Labour MP for Blaenau Gwent in Wales, is planning to question ministers in parliament this week on the report's revelations. "If this government is going to take the terrorist threat seriously, it can no longer pretend that an attack on a nuclear installation can't or won't happen," he said.
"The consequences are truly horrific. I will be demanding that ministers come clean to parliament about the true nuclear threat."
Last week the Sunday Herald revealed that RAF aircraft had breached no-fly zones around nuclear plants six times in the past three years.
The most serious incident occurred on December 19 last year, when a Hercules C130 transport plane came within a few hundred feet of Scotland's oldest and most vulnerable reactor, at Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway.
There was a further breach of the restricted zone at Torness nuclear power station in East Lothian, as well as another two at nuclear sites in England. Scotland has another nuclear station, at Hunterston on the North Ayrshire coast.
The prospect of a terrorist attack on a nuclear plant was "the nightmare scenario", according to Mark Ruskell MSP, environment spokesman for the Greens in the Scottish parliament. "It appears that the potentially devastating impact of such attacks has never been properly worked out," he said.
"The Scottish Executive and other public bodies could be working without the vital details needed for effective emergency planning.
"There needs to be far more intelligence on potential disasters and how to avoid them, alongside concrete measures to make our nuclear installations less vulnerable."
The government and the nuclear industry never comment in detail on security, saying they don't want to alert terrorists to measures taken. However, they stress that security, which is overseen by the Office for Civil Nuclear Security, has been upgraded since the attacks against the US on September 11, 2001.
The report complains that "much of the information needed to carry out a balanced assessment is classified".
Nevertheless, it discloses that its researchers received considerable help from the nuclear industry and regulatory agencies.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
Sand, Rough Roads and Insurgents' Bullets Place a Tremendous Strain on Army Equipment
May 9, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/international/middleeast/09GENE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, May 8 - The Army is wearing out its equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan as much as 10 times as fast as in peacetime, straining the service's ability to repair battlefield weaponry, and accelerating the point at which entire fleets of costly trucks and aircraft need to be replaced, the Army's chief logistician warned this week.
Army drivers hauling supplies to Iraq from Kuwait are putting 80,000 miles a year on heavy trucks and tractor-trailers that had been expected to log only 8,000 miles to 10,000 miles a year. Troops are complaining of a shortage of windshields, which are shot out by insurgents' fire or pitted with rocks that kick up on rough Iraqi or Afghan roads. Fine desert sand is gnawing away at helicopter rotor blades at an alarming rate. The Army is struggling to supply batteries to power radios, computers, laser range finders and night-vision goggles.
The logistician, Gen. Paul J. Kern, chief of the Army Materiel Command, said his far-flung supply network had so far averted any crippling shortages despite attacks on convoys in Iraq that have reduced the flow of equipment to 70 percent of capacity. But he said the supply system was just keeping pace with the demand for spare parts.
"We're meeting the requirements but we don't have a lot of slack," General Kern said in an interview last Monday at his headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Va. "If you're in the supply business, you'd like to say you have six months of supplies on the shelf. Right now, we are delivering to meet demands. We're not building any significant reserves."
As the Army's chief logistician, General Kern is responsible for ensuring that there is a steady stream of ammunition and battle-ready equipment for ground commanders, and the people to fix and maintain matériel. His sobering assessment came just a day before the Pentagon announced on Tuesday that it would defer plans to reduce the number of troops in Iraq, and keep at least 135,000 forces there through 2005, adding more strain to the supply system.
General Kern said current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Army operations over all, were not a temporary spike, as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has suggested, but rather the standard for at least the next two or three years.
"I don't see this as a peak right now; I see it more as a plateau," said General Kern, a West Point graduate and former commander of the Fourth Infantry Division. "We are ramping to sustain about the level of 10 times what our requirements had previously been in peacetime."
General Kern also broke ranks with Mr. Rumsfeld and senior Army officers by asserting that the Army needs to make permanent a temporary increase of 30,000 soldiers in the size of the Army if operations remain as busy as they have been. "As I see it today, the 30,000 additions which are currently added to our end strength, if we sustain the current levels, will be required," he said.
Last year, ground action in Iraq was so intense that the Army ran out of track for its Abrams battle tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles. Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters experienced unusually high rates of suspension problems, largely because of dust-obscured hard landings.
This year, with commanders relying more on lighter infantry forces to quell insurgents, General Kern said he expected that his biggest challenge would be maintaining thousands of Humvees, many laden with extra armor designed to give soldiers more protection against roadside bombs, but whose extra weight also wears out suspensions faster and strains vehicles' engines.
The Army has lost more than 60 helicopters in Iraq and Afghanistan to accidents and hostile fire in the past two years, and the risky conditions have put a greater demand on equipment like flares and ground-surveillance radar that protect the aircraft from shoulder-fired missiles.
In addition, the Army has increased production of heavily armored Humvees to 220 a month, to meet a goal of about 5,000 vehicles in Iraq later this summer, and all the Army depots have been producing two-door and four-door armor kits that can be fitted onto Humvees.
In response to these growing demands, General Kern said he had rushed special maintenance teams, including many specialized National Guard units, to Afghanistan and Iraq to speed repairs that normally would be done at depots in the United States. The command has about 250 military and civilian experts now in Iraq, but has also hired 4,785 contractors to help meet the workload.
The Army's five depots, which handle in-house repairs and refurbishing of equipment, have increased production and spending by 25 percent in the past year, Army officials said. Government-owned and contractor-operated ammunition plants have added 33 percent more contract workers in the past year, to 2,410 workers from 1,850 in fiscal year 2003.
Nonetheless, it still takes about a year to refurbish fully Black Hawk or Chinook transport helicopters. The Army's reliance on contractors to help bridge the gap with the extra work has increased to the point at which Army officials may soon need to seek a waiver from Congress exempting the service from a federal law that requires no more than 50 percent of repair work be contracted out.
"There's pressure to return equipment in better condition," General Kern said. "People know they'll be used in more difficult conditions."
Aside from the immediate logistics challenges, a longer-term problem looms: conducting extensive equipment overhauls or replacing fleets of equipment altogether.
"We're going to go through the life span of equipment faster," General Kern said, "and it's clearly accelerated the need to replace Army equipment."
For the Army's fleet of heavy trucks, in particular, General Kern said there was "a finite life for those vehicles which in the past haven't been as challenged as we are today." '
General Kern said that the Army was still at least a few years away from an equipment crisis, and that budget planners were fine-tuning the service's future needs. But he warned that "even after hostilities are curtailed or reduced, we still have a lot of equipment which will require being rebuilt or replaced. The bill does not end when operations end."
-------- china
China Warns Hong Kong Legislators to Halt Debate on Elections
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 9, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11161-2004May8.html
BEIJING, May 8 -- China warned Saturday that pro-democracy lawmakers in Hong Kong are violating the law by proposing legislative resolutions criticizing the government's refusal to allow the territory to choose its leaders in direct elections.
The warning, from the government's liaison office in Hong Kong, marked the first time Beijing has sought to limit discussion in Hong Kong's Legislative Council since the former British colony reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Attributed to an unnamed senior official, the statement was the latest step in a government campaign seeking to end debate on its April 26 decision to bar direct elections for Hong Kong's chief executive in 2007 and the full legislature in 2008.
"The official says any move by Legislative Councilors in Hong Kong to advance motions to voice 'discontent' or 'condemn' the April 26 decision by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress over Hong Kong's constitutional development is against the law as well as the constitution," the statement said. "He says the moves do not accord with the Legislative Council's constitutional status as a local legislature and go beyond the limit of its duty and authority."
The statement, issued late Friday night in Hong Kong and relayed Saturday by the official New China News Agency, came in response to attempts by members of the Legislative Council to pass a resolution condemning the Beijing government and another expressing regret at its decision not to allow expanded voting.
Both motions have been blocked by the Legislative Council president, Rita Fan, on grounds they violate the Basic Law, negotiated between China and departing British officials, which outlines the "one country, two systems" arrangement for Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong.
Yeung Sum, chairman of the Democracy Party, told Hong Kong reporters that Fan's rulings in support of Beijing's views amount to restrictions on freedom of speech in the Legislative Council.
The first motion was introduced a week ago by Martin Lee, a leading pro-democracy legislator. It called on the Legislative Council to "strongly condemn" the April 26 decision by Beijing.
After Lee's motion was blocked, another pro-democracy legislator, Albert Ho, introduced a motion accusing Beijing of violating the Basic Law by infringing on the one-country, two systems arrangement that was supposed to guarantee Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy. In addition, it expressed "regret and discontent" at the April 26 decision.
With their motions stymied, pro-democracy activists had called a meeting for Monday to decide the next step in the confrontation. Legislators said they could introduce a third, softer resolution in hopes it would be allowed to come to a vote. If Fan remained firm, they could take the rulings to court seeking to have them overturned.
But Beijing's tough statement appeared designed as a warning that the debate had gone on long enough. The pro-democracy lawmakers are not entitled to voice any criticism of central government decisions through legislative resolutions, the Chinese government said, adding that the April 26 decision was "an important legal document" that "cannot be questioned or challenged."
Audrey Eu, one of 24 elected members in the 60-seat legislature, suggested Beijing's warning, if heeded, would rob the body of its oversight function. "The move implies that Legislative Councilors cannot speak freely, and how could you expect us to speak for the people, to monitor the government?" she said.
"It is not in the interest of Hong Kong's society," said Edward Chan, chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association.
Chinese authorities and their followers in Hong Kong have suggested repeatedly that the debate over political reform in Hong Kong should wane now that Beijing has spoken. Premier Wen Jiabao said during a recent visit to Europe that the April 26 decision did not rule out direct elections forever, only for now. But the message in Hong Kong has been that it is time to move on.
Chinese officials and like-minded Hong Kong officials have put forward two reasons for delaying the expansion of Hong Kong's voting rights. First, they suggest that moving swiftly toward full democracy could destabilize the territory and endanger its economic well-being. Second, they say that those who push for full democratic rights are not patriotic Chinese citizens but are following a U.S. or British agenda.
Special correspondent K.C. Ng in Hong Kong contributed to this report.
-------- europe
Danish Leaders Beset on War Data
Critics Suggest Nation Was Misled
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 9, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11393-2004May8?language=printer
COPENHAGEN -- Denmark's coalition government has come under sharp attack from opposition parties and the media over allegations that political leaders exaggerated or misused intelligence claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify joining the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last year.
The controversy, which has forced the resignation of the defense minister, echoes similar ones in Washington and London. It began when a Danish military intelligence analyst leaked classified documents that appeared to show that the country's intelligence agency had doubts about Iraq's military power.
The government denies it misled Parliament; the analyst, Frank Soholm Grevil, 43, was fired for disclosing the information and now faces legal charges.
In an interview, Grevil said he and colleagues at the Danish Defense Intelligence Service felt "indirect pressure" to submit reports to the government that conformed to claims by U.S. and British intelligence agencies that Hussein possessed banned weapons.
He nonetheless wrote many reports saying that "very little is known" about what Hussein actually had, he said. But in making the case for war to Parliament and the public last year, he said, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen "left out the reservations bit."
Rasmussen's critics say he is most vulnerable for an unequivocal statement in March 2003 that Hussein possessed banned chemical and biological weapons. The prime minister said, "This is not something we just believe. We know."
Danish leaders might think that, Grevil said, but "our basis for saying so is nil." Denmark is a small country with no independent intelligence capability to confirm claims about Iraq's arsenal, according to Grevil.
Government officials insist they never misled Parliament in making the decision to dispatch troops, who now number around 500 and are deployed around the southern city of Basra.
Officials note that Iraq's arsenal was not their official justification for war against Hussein. "We did not ask Parliament to send forces to Iraq because of the weapons of mass destruction, but because he did not cooperate with the inspectors" whom the United Nations sent to try to ascertain the nature of his arsenal, the Danish foreign minister, Per Stig Moller, said in an interview in his office.
"He would have been a much bigger danger if everybody had gone home and said, 'He has not cooperated, okay, what the heck,' " Moller said.
Like President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Danish officials have shifted emphasis, now saying Hussein had "weapons programs" that could have been reactivated, even if he did not have actual weapons.
"He had programs," Moller said. "Nobody is in doubt about that." Saddam Hussein, he said, "was a danger, and would have become a bigger danger."
Grevil's public revelations, first made in February, caused a sensation in Denmark and forced the government to release classified intelligence reports that officials said supported their contention that they never deliberately misused the intelligence.
The controversy has caused one high-level casualty, Defense Minister Svend Aage Jensby, who resigned April 23 after saying he was the target of a "smear campaign." He had been criticized for speaking in a television interview about a closed-door session of the parliamentary intelligence committee.
For now, the government's ruling coalition seems secure, and it is not required to call an election before November 2005. But the continuing controversy over Iraq, coming at a time when the government is under pressure on a host of domestic issues, appears to have taken a toll on its credibility.
"The prime minister is in a lot of the same trouble as Tony Blair is," said Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen, a political scientist at the University of Copenhagen and no relation to the prime minister. Members of the government "would very much like for things to quiet down in Iraq," he said. "What they would dream of is that this would turn into a NATO mission. They are basically hoping this all goes away."
Even the prime minister's most vocal critics in the opposition parties are reluctant to say directly that he was lying. But they accuse him of exaggerating the available intelligence and of speaking in black-and-white terms when the reports he was receiving were closer to gray.
"This discussion over the files will give you no definite answer," said Mogens Lykketoft, a former foreign minister and leader of the Social Democrats, the largest opposition party. "There's no smoking gun."
Unlike Blair in Britain, or former prime minister Jose Maria Aznar in Spain, Rasmussen has had some protection during this controversy because Danes, unlike most other Europeans, largely supported military action against Iraq, and most still do.
"It's somewhat paradoxical that this government has had a lot of trouble dealing with this issue," said Ole Waever, a professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen. "The war still has stronger support here than anywhere else." Waever attributed the prime minister's troubles to the public perception that the government, which came to power in 2001, is in a general state of drift.
In Denmark, much of the debate over the war concerned the country's traditional role as a staunch ally of the United States. In addition to making a case against Hussein, the government contended that the relationship would have been jeopardized if the country stayed out of the conflict.
Waever argues that this role may stem in part from national guilt over failing to resist the Nazi occupation more energetically during World War II and for dissenting from some NATO policies in the 1980s, during the Cold War. Now, Washington can usually count on small Denmark as a steadfast military partner in Europe.
"The relationship between Denmark and the United States was more important than the merits of the case against Iraq," said Mikkel Rasmussen.
For now, not even the main opposition parties are calling for Danish troops to leave Iraq. "We didn't accept Danish participation in the war," said Lykketoft. "But we accepted after the war that there was a necessity of stabilizing Iraq."
Grevil, the former intelligence agent, now faces charges of leaking secrets. In the interview, he said his only intention had been to inform the public debate over the Iraq issue. "The opposition and the press wanted to know more about this issue," he said. "So I decided to take an interest in this debate."
Asked whether he expected to ignite such a controversy, he replied: "Never, never, never. I never expected anything like that. It was a frenzy." He added, "I never expected the prime minister to see it as a duel between him and me."
-------- iran
Hard-Liners In Iran Back Torture Ban
May 9, 2004
By NAZILA FATHI
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/international/middleeast/09iran.html
TEHRAN, May 8 - Iran's hard-line Guardian Council, in a surprise move, has approved a law banning torture two days after the measure was passed by the departing reformist Parliament. The council, a powerful oversight agency, had rejected an earlier bill three times, saying it violated Islamic law.
The approval of the bill on Thursday is an important political achievement for Parliament, which ends its term on May 26. Its reform agenda has suffered because of pressure from the council, which must approve all measures before they become law.
The new bill was drafted after the leader of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi, a hard-line cleric, issued an order in recent weeks that banned torture and the extraction of confessions under duress. Ibrahim Azizi, the spokesman for the Guardian Council, said Thursday that the current bill was found not to be in conflict with Islamic law or the Constitution.
Bahaedin Adab, a reformist member of Parliament, said the lawmakers took advantage of the statement and had reflected all aspects of it in the bill's text. "It was more complete than Parliament's original antitorture bill because it even pointed to the details of interrogation," he said. "It did not matter which political faction was the source of the bill. We are not pursuing political goals and want to serve people's interests."
Although banned by the Iranian Constitution, the use of torture has been common in prisons and during interrogations. An Iranian-Canadian photojournalist, Zahra Kazemi, died last year while in custody. She died July 10 from a brain hemorrhage caused by a blow to her head, a government statement said.
Mr. Shahroudi's statement ruled that suspects could not be blindfolded, shackled or humiliated. It added that a suspect should be considered innocent until proven guilty and stressed the right of the suspect to have a lawyer. "All forms of torture aiming to obtain confession are banned, and confessions obtained in this way have no legal or religious value," the statement said.
Political analysts say the shift by the Guardian Council may indicate an intention to work more closely with the new Parliament. Hard-line politicians won elections in February amid low voter turnout and wide-scale disqualifications of reform candidates by the council. Runoff elections were held Friday for 57 of 290 seats for which no candidate had won the required 25 percent of votes in the first round of voting in February.
"There are signs that indicate hard-liners have changed and that we will see them allow more social, cultural and political freedoms," said Saeed Leylaz, an economist and political analyst.
Three political prisoners were allowed a few days of leave last week after a year in custody without being brought to trial. In Hamedan, a court confirmed a death sentence for another political prisoner, Hashem Aghajari, a university professor, but the judiciary said the ruling was not final. Mr. Aghajari's crime was to say in a speech a year ago that people were not monkeys and should not be required to follow the rulings of clerics without thinking about them.
-------- iraq
INSURGENTS
Militiamen Go on the Offensive in Two Southern Cities
May 9, 2004
By EDWARD WONG and CHRISTINE HAUSER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/international/middleeast/09IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
KARBALA, Iraq, May 8 - After enduring half a week of American attacks in southern Iraq, insurgents backing a rebel Shiite cleric took the offensive on Saturday, trying to seize government buildings and striking at convoys in two southern cities controlled by British forces.
The move signaled the possible opening of another front in the military campaign against the cleric and his followers.
Militiamen led by the cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, traded gunfire with British soldiers as the insurgents took to the streets in Amara and Basra, the country's largest city after Baghdad. Acrid black smoke from burning tires drifted through the air in Basra. In several neighborhoods, the streets remained empty, save for groups of British soldiers or guerrilla fighters operating roadblocks, witnesses said.
British forces, on foot and in armored vehicles, killed at least two insurgents there.
Here in Karbala, a city revered by Shiites, American soldiers continued to attack the Mukhaiyam neighborhood, where insurgents have barricaded themselves. For the first time, the Americans encountered antitank mines. Militiamen greeted the soldiers with the usual flurry of rocket-propelled grenades and fire from AK-47's, and it was unclear by Saturday evening how many insurgents had been killed. Three American soldiers were wounded.
At least 19 militiamen were killed in firefights on Friday night as soldiers in tanks and other armored vehicles swept through the area. Beginning on Thursday morning, after the Americans blew up a large weapons cache in an amusement park, and going through Friday night, at least 44 insurgents were killed and 19 wounded, said Capt. Noel Gorospe, a spokesman for the First Armored Division, which controls the area.
Even as armored and infantry patrols left to hunt down insurgents, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the First Armored Division, flew into the base here, Camp Lima, to meet with the top officers.
"We are on plan," the general said in an interview. "What we want to accomplish is to eliminate the influence and intimidation of the Moktada militia, especially in Karbala and Najaf. We also want to allow the Iraqis themselves to find a solution for Moktada."
The uprising in Basra took place a day after an aide to Mr. Sadr, Abdulsattar al-Bahadli, gave a sermon at Friday Prayers there denouncing the Americans for torturing detainees in Abu Ghraib prison. Mr. Bahadli invoked jihad, or holy war, and offered financial rewards to anyone willing to attack the British: the equivalent of $350 for capturing a British soldier or $150 for killing one. He said that captured female British soldiers could be kept as slaves.
Mr. Bahadli called for street protests against the prisoner abuse and for closing state offices. Then on Saturday, he led men from Mr. Sadr's thousands-strong militia, the Mahdi Army, in strikes in Basra.
"Occupation forces do not keep their promises, so we have to stand up to them," he said in an interview. "This is only the beginning. The start of a rainstorm is one drop."
Knots of fighters patrolled the streets, witnesses said. British soldiers in a convoy of more than a dozen armored vehicles surrounded Mr. Sadr's office. The soldiers stormed the building, but withdrew after finding no one.
A British military statement said the clashes began when men dispersed among the demonstrators attacked British soldiers with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades.
Three British troops were wounded, none seriously, the statement said. At least two militiamen were killed, said hospital officials and a representative of Mr. Sadr. At least four Iraqis were wounded.
In Amara, at least three British troops were wounded after their convoy was ambushed. The British military said its forces and Iraqi troops later secured the area and conducted joint patrols.
Early last month, Mr. Sadr, 31, ignited a mass uprising in Baghdad and the south by calling on members of his militia and other Shiite followers to take up arms against occupation forces.
Basra was one of a half-dozen cities where there was fighting, though it remained calmer than the holy cities of Najaf, Kufa and Karbala, which Mr. Sadr seized and still controls. Americans are now trying to destroy his Mahdi Army here in Karbala to isolate him in his home in Najaf, where the occupiers hope senior clerics will deal with him.
He is disliked by many members of the Shiite religious seminary in Najaf, but commands devoted followers because of the clout once wielded by his murdered father, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr.
American officials said an Iraqi judge had issued an arrest warrant for the young Mr. Sadr in connection with the killing in April 2003 of an American-backed cleric in Najaf.
More than 2,500 American soldiers have surrounded the city in a tense standoff with Mr. Sadr and his forces. But American commanders say they have no intention of going into the middle of Najaf in pursuit of Mr. Sadr for fear of angering Shiites across Iraq.
The golden-domed Shrine of Ali in the center of Najaf is one of the most revered sites for Shiites, and senior clerics have warned the Americans not to intrude in the area. Representatives of those same clerics and Shiite politicians met on Tuesday in Baghdad to publicly urge Mr. Sadr to withdraw his militia from Najaf and Karbala.
The American military is being similarly cautious about its approach in Karbala. It began a major operation here on Tuesday night to root out insurgents in areas away from the city's Shiite shrines.
The Americans are officially acting under a Polish general at Camp Lima. At about 10 a.m. on Saturday, a Polish soldier was killed and two were wounded in a road accident outside the city, Polish officers here said. Three Poles of a force of about 2,400 have died so far in Iraq.
Mission to Continue, Bush Says
WASHINGTON, May 8 (AP) - The abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American guards is "a stain on our country's honor and reputation" but will not deter America's mission to bring democracy to Iraq, President Bush pledged Saturday.
He said in his weekly radio address that the abuse and sexual humiliation of prisoners in Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison "was the wrongdoing of a few" and should not reflect on the thousands of United States military personnel "who are serving and sacrificing in Iraq."
"Our mission in Iraq will continue," he said.
Edward Wong reported from Karbala, Iraq, for this article and Christine Hauser from Baghdad.
--------
Iraqi Cleric's Forces Broaden Assaults
U.S. Troops Raid a Sadr Stronghold
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 9, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11228-2004May8?language=printer
BAGHDAD, May 8 -- Shiite Muslim militiamen loyal to radical cleric Moqtada Sadr attacked coalition positions in two southern cities Saturday, broadening their assault beyond their headquarters in Najaf where U.S. forces have been battering them for four days.
Hundreds of black-clad guerrillas assaulted British positions and public buildings in Basra and in Amarah with rifle and grenade fire. Youths set fires to obscure the vision of charging British troops.
The attacks appeared aimed at relieving pressure on Sadr's forces in Najaf and demonstrating that the group has power to launch a general insurrection in Shiite areas of Iraq.
U.S. troops, for the first time during this week's offensive, brought their battle against Sadr to Sadr City, a vast slum in Baghdad that is home to the cleric's largest base of support. In a quick thrust Saturday night, the troops raided the small al-Amer mosque searching for weapons. U.S. soldiers traded gunfire with guerrillas hidden in the dark as Apache attack helicopters hovered overhead.
Sadr and his militia stand in the way of U.S. efforts to establish relative calm in the vast southern region of the country as the June 30 deadline for the creation of a new interim Iraqi government approaches.
After struggling for a month against Sadr's attempts to take over several Shiite towns, U.S. forces this week settled on a strategy of driving his militia, the Mahdi Army, from urban centers by destroying its offices and fixed positions, killing as many guerrillas as possible and collecting weapons from storehouses. Sadr, who is wanted by occupation officials on murder charges, is bunkered in the twin cities of Najaf and Kufa, protected by as many as 1,000 guerrillas.
U.S. commanders have likened the Mahdi Army to a Los Angeles street gang, but some Iraqis have questioned whether the occupation forces are taking Sadr seriously enough. The Iraqis point out that Sadr, whose fiery rhetoric draws large crowds to his sermons, appeals to the many unemployed and poor among Iraq's majority Shiite population.
"The Americans cannot neglect this phenomenon," said Sabeeh Jasim, a former Iraqi policeman and political prisoner. "The problem now is that the Americans and British cannot let the Mahdi Army return to any place they have been driven from. That would really give Moqtada a big push forward."
In Amarah, a city between Basra and Baghdad, masked gunmen attacked a convoy Saturday morning, according to television and news service reports. For nine hours, British troops fought hit-and-run battles with the insurgents, who wielded rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and automatic weapons. Three Iraqis were killed in the battles, which subsided by late afternoon.
In Karbala, which U.S. forces have attacked three times this week, tanks rumbled into the city from two directions in an effort to surround Mahdi forces near the city's central mosque, according to television and news service reports. Witnesses said two U.S. armored vehicles were set aflame.
Clashes later erupted in Najaf, where U.S. troops took possession of a government compound Thursday. Tanks fired on a building where suspected Mahdi fighters had hidden and blasted an apartment house, killing seven Iraqis, witnesses said.
Troops in flak jackets put up sand barriers in front of the government complex and roamed the nearby neighborhood in six tanks, six Bradley Fighting Vehicles and three Humvees. Apache helicopters patrolled the night skies and at one point dropped leaflets with quotes from L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator for Iraq, urging peace, democracy and political and economic freedom.
In early evening, U.S. forces clashed with guerrillas on the outskirts of Kufa, six miles northeast of Najaf. There were no reports of casualties Saturday, but U.S. military officials said that more than 40 Mahdi Army fighters were killed near the city this week. It was impossible to confirm the numbers; Sadr followers bury the dead directly rather than take them to hospital morgues.
About 2,500 U.S. troops are based near Najaf and Kufa, and repeated battles have brought business to a standstill. Many residents blame Sadr.
"The city is a battleground, and our business is a wreck," said Hussein Alwan Safeena, owner of the Nabaa Hotel. Najaf relies on pilgrims who visit its major Shiite shrines for much of its prosperity. "They have stopped visiting the city," Safeena said.
Rafed Farhan, another hotel owner, said: "I want the Mahdi Army to leave, not tomorrow, but now. People don't like Moqtada."
U.S. officials say they expect Shiite religious and political leaders to help persuade Sadr to leave the Najaf area and disband the Mahdi Army.
A leaflet circulated in Najaf and Karbala accused Sadr of undermining the Shiite drive for political power in Iraq. "We ask, how did the nation allow this arrogant young man to lead it to destroy all the Shiite efforts which we fought for all these years?" the leaflet asked.
The document raised the issue of whether Iranians were influencing Sadr's actions. Sadr is backed financially by Ayatollah Kadhim Husseini Haeri, a top Iraqi Shiite cleric based in Qom, Iran, Iraqi analysts say. Haeri chose Sadr, who is the son of a deceased grand ayatollah, as a counterweight to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the paramount Shiite religious leader in Iraq.
Haeri has the blessing of hard-liners in Iran's intelligence service and Revolutionary Guards to support Sadr, said Jasim, the former policeman. The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and other Shiite parties that are cooperating with the United States have the support of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and his reformist allies. "Iraqi is mirroring the struggle between the conservatives and reformers in Iran," Jasim said.
Meanwhile, a Polish soldier was killed when an "improvised booby trap" exploded as he walked by in a town south of Baghdad, the Polish military said, according to the Associated Press. Another Polish soldier was killed and two were injured when a civilian truck accidentally hit their vehicle in a convoy near Karbala, said Lt. Col. Robert Strzelecki, a spokesman for Polish forces in the area.
A U.S. soldier from the Army's Stryker Brigade was killed in an electrical accident, in the northern city of Mosul, the U.S. command said.
[One U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded Saturday in a mortar attack on a military base in Mosul, a U.S. military statement said on Sunday, the Reuters news agency reported.]
Special correspondent Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.
-------- israel / palestine
Despite Bush's Worry, Arafat Says 2005 Is Realistic Date for Palestinian Statehood
May 9, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/international/middleeast/09mide.html
JERUSALEM, May 8 - Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, said Saturday it was still possible to establish a Palestinian state next year despite the stalled Middle East peace efforts. His remarks came in response to comments by President Bush, who said the timetable now appeared unrealistic.
Mr. Bush's recent endorsement of proposals by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel has drawn sharp criticism from Palestinians who contend that American policy is tilted strongly in favor of Israel.
Over the past few days, Mr. Bush has sought to reassure Palestinians that he remains committed to a Palestinian state. But in remarks released by the White House on Friday and published Saturday in the Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram, he was quoted as saying that a 2005 target date was unlikely.
"I think the timetable of 2005 isn't as realistic as it was two years ago," Mr. Bush said. "Nevertheless, I do think we ought to push hard as fast as possible to get a state in place."
The peace plan was drafted at the end of 2002 and stalled shortly after it was formally introduced last June. There is no movement currently toward Palestinian statehood. But Mr. Arafat and his prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, both said they opposed abandoning the proposed date.
The 2005 time frame is "more than realistic," Mr. Arafat told reporters at his compound in Ramallah, on the West Bank. He noted that a 1993 interim deal with Israel sought to form a Palestinian state before the end of the 1990's.
Mr. Qurei said ignoring the 2005 target was "a contradiction to what President Bush declared."
"If we are delayed, that means we are giving in to the desire of the Israeli government to stretch out the negotiations and drag them out for another 10 or 15 years," Mr. Qurei said at his office in Abu Dis, a West Bank suburb just east of Jerusalem.
The road map, which is supported by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia, outlines a three-year process culminating with a Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty and a Palestinian state.
But neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis have met their initial commitments. In the first phase, Palestinians are to begin cracking down on violent factions, and Israel is to dismantle dozens of Jewish settlement outposts.
Mr. Sharon says he does not consider the current Palestinian leadership to be a reliable negotiating partner, and he is advocating unilateral Israeli steps. The Israeli leader has proposed withdrawing Israeli soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip, while seeking to strengthen Israel's hold on the larger West Bank settlements.
But Mr. Sharon's own rightist Likud Party voted against the measure in a May 2 referendum, throwing a wrench into his plans. Palestinians say they would welcome Israel's departure from Gaza, but contend that one-sided Israeli steps cannot substitute for negotiations.
Mr. Bush supports Mr. Sharon's proposed Gaza pullout as a way to revive the road map, and he is dispatching his envoys to make the case in the coming days.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell plans to be in Jordan next weekend to confer with Arab leaders, and shortly after that, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is expected to meet Mr. Qurei in Germany.
The Bush administration has shunned Mr. Arafat, and it has had only limited contact with Mr. Qurei.
--------
Sharon Cancels Visit to Washington
May 9, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon canceled Sunday a Washington visit in the wake of his party's rejection of a U.S.-endorsed Gaza pullout and told a divided cabinet he would have a new plan in three weeks.
``The prime minister has decided not to go to Washington. He will be having consultations here in Israel regarding the disengagement plan,'' his office said, referring to the initiative voted down by the right-wing Likud one week ago.
Sharon had been scheduled to address a policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israeli advocacy group on May 17, and aides said last week a meeting with President Bush was likely.
But with the fate of the Gaza plan still unclear and an Arab world seething over what it sees as Bush's pro-Israeli slant and U.S. abuse of prisoners in Iraq, the timing for talks with Sharon may not have been right.
``It will take me another three weeks to put the plan together and then I will present it to the government,'' a political source quoted Sharon as telling his bickering cabinet at its weekly meeting.
Sharon later held talks with his strongest Likud rival, Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose support for the proposed uprooting of all Jewish settlements in Gaza and four of the 120 in the West Bank has been lukewarm.
Israel Radio quoted Netanyahu as telling Sharon the Likud referendum was ``binding for all Likud members, including the prime minister.''
Sharon has vowed to press ahead with ``disengagement'' from the Palestinians, sending conflicting signals as to how close he would stick to the original blueprint.
The pullout, Sharon has said, would boost Israeli security after more than three years of violence. Opponents of the move, including pro-settler cabinet members, say leaving Gaza would only ``reward terror.''
Palestinians fear Sharon's plan is a ruse to annex large tracts of West Bank land they want for their state. Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war.
BUSH ANGERS ARABS
Bush last met Sharon at the White House on April 14, voicing strong support for the pullout plan.
The president enraged the Arab world by announcing at a news conference with Sharon that Israel could not be expected to vacate all its large West Bank settlements or re-admit Palestinian refugees under any final treaty.
Last week, in an effort to reassure Arab allies, he told Jordan's King Abdullah that Washington would do nothing to prejudice final-status talks between the Middle East foes.
Bush further riled Palestinian leaders Saturday by telling an Egyptian newspaper that a 2005 target date, set by an internationally backed peace ``road map,'' for the creation of a Palestinian state may no longer be realistic.
But he added the United States was committed to the road map and he would make this clear in a letter to Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie.
The road map charts reciprocal steps toward the establishment of a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2005.
Qurie is scheduled to meet Bush's top security adviser Condoleezza Rice in Germany in mid-May for his highest-level session with a U.S. official since taking office in late 2003.
Rejecting Bush's view, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said creation of a state by 2005 was ``more than realistic,'' while Qurie called for revived peace negotiations with Israel.
-------- prisoners of war
Pentagon Approved Tougher Interrogations
By Dana Priest and Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 9, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11017-2004May8?language=printer
In April 2003, the Defense Department approved interrogation techniques for use at the Guantanamo Bay prison that permit reversing the normal sleep patterns of detainees and exposing them to heat, cold and "sensory assault," including loud music and bright lights, according to defense officials.
The classified list of about 20 techniques was approved at the highest levels of the Pentagon and the Justice Department, and represents the first publicly known documentation of an official policy permitting interrogators to use physically and psychologically stressful methods during questioning.
The use of any of these techniques requires the approval of senior Pentagon officials -- and in some cases, of the defense secretary. Interrogators must justify that the harshest treatment is "militarily necessary," according to the document, as cited by one official. Once approved, the harsher treatment must be accompanied by "appropriate medical monitoring."
"We wanted to find a legal way to jack up the pressure," said one lawyer who helped write the guidelines. "We wanted a little more freedom than in a U.S. prison, but not torture."
Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said: "These procedures are tightly controlled, limited in duration and scope, used infrequently and approved on a case-by-case basis. These are people who are unlawful combatants, picked up on the battlefield and may contribute to our intelligence-gathering about events that killed 3,000 people."
Defense and intelligence officials said similar guidelines have been approved for use on "high-value detainees" in Iraq -- those suspected of terrorism or of having knowledge of insurgency operations. Separate CIA guidelines exist for agency-run detention centers.
It could not be learned whether similar guidelines were in effect at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, which has been the focus of controversy in recent days. But lawmakers have said they want to know whether the misconduct reported at Abu Ghraib -- which included sexual humiliation -- was an aberration or whether it reflected an aggressive policy taken to inhumane extremes.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. military and the CIA have detained thousands of foreign nationals at the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, as well as at facilities in Iraq and elsewhere, as part of an effort to crack down on suspected terrorists and to quell the insurgency in Iraq. The Pentagon guidelines for Guantanamo were designed to give interrogators the authority to prompt uncooperative detainees to provide information, though experts on interrogation say information submitted under such conditions is often unreliable.
The United States has stated publicly that it does not engage in torture or cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners. Defense officials said yesterday that the techniques on the list are consistent with international law and contain appropriate safeguards such as legal and medical monitoring. "The high-level approval is done with forethought by people in responsibility, and layers removed from the people actually doing these things, so you can have an objective approach," said one senior defense official familiar with the guidelines.
But Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said the tactics outlined in the U.S. document amount to cruel and inhumane treatment. "The courts have ruled most of these techniques illegal," he said. "If it's illegal here under the U.S. Constitution, it's illegal abroad. . . . This isn't even close."
According to two defense officials, prisoners could be made to disrobe for interrogation if they were are alone in their cells. But Col. David McWilliams, a spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command, said stripping prisoners was not part of the permitted interrogation techniques. "We have no protocol that allows us to disrobe a detainee whatsoever," he said. Prisoners may be disrobed in order to clean them and administer medical treatment, he said.
Several officials interviewed for this article, including two lawyers who helped formulate the guidelines, declined to be identified because the subject matter is so sensitive.
With the proper permission, the guidelines allow detainees to be subjected to psychological techniques meant to open them up, disorient or put them under stress. These include "invoking feelings of futility" and using female interrogators to question male detainees.
Some prisoners could be made to stand for four hours at a time. Questioning a prisoner without clothes is permitted if he is alone in his cell. Ruled out were techniques such as physical contact -- even poking a finger in the chest -- and the "washboard technique" of smothering a detainee with towels to threaten suffocation. Placing electrodes on detainees' bodies "wasn't even evaluated -- it was such a no-go," said one of the officials involved in drawing up the list.
During the Pentagon debates, one participant drew on his memory of a scene from the movie "The Untouchables," in which a police officer played by actor Sean Connery bent the rules to persuade mobsters that they should provide evidence against Mafia kingpin Al Capone. Much like the officer, the participant suggested, interrogators could shoot a dead body in front of a detainee, then suggest to him that is what they did to people who refused to talk.
Pentagon lawyers declared the technique out of bounds, and it was discarded.
The guidelines were the product of three months of discussion between military lawyers, medical personnel and psychologists, and followed several incidents of abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo.
In late 2002, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, until recently commander of the detention operation at Guantanamo Bay, asked the Pentagon for more explicit rules for interrogation, four people involved in the process said.
"They don't want to be in the situation where we are making things up as we go along," said one lawyer involved in the sessions.
"We wanted to outline under what circumstances we could make them feel uncomfortable, a little distressed," another lawyer involved said. During the discussions, "the political people [at the Pentagon] were inclined toward aggressive techniques," the official said. Military lawyers, in contrast, were more conservative in their approach, mindful of how they would want U.S. military personnel held as prisoners to be treated by foreign powers, the official said.
Mark Jacobson, a former Defense Department official who worked on detainee issues while at the Pentagon, said that at Guantanamo and the Bagram facility in Afghanistan, military interrogators have never used torture or extreme stress techniques. "It's the fear of being tortured that might get someone to talk, not the torture," Jacobson said. "We were so strict."
Interrogation teams routinely draw up detailed plans, which list all techniques they hope to use. These plans are passed to superior officers for discussion and pre-approval, Jacobson said.
"I actually think we are not aggressive enough" at times in interrogation techniques, he said. "I think we are too timid."
In a March 11 interview at his office at the Guantanamo Navy base -- one of his last interviews before leaving to take over detention facilities in Iraq -- Miller said that his interrogators treated prisoners humanely and that the operation had yielded important intelligence.
On Thursday, the U.S. military acknowledged that two Guantanamo Bay guards had been disciplined in cases involving the use of excessive force against detainees. Detainees released from the facility have given disparate accounts of their stay there, some praising the food and free schooling, others claiming that guards roughed them up.
Two Afghans died in U.S. custody in Afghanistan in December 2002. Both deaths were classified as homicides by the U.S. military. Another Afghan died in June 2003, at a detention site near Asadabad, in Kunar province.
--------
Rumsfeld Warns Not All Images Are Out
Secretary Regrets Detainees Abused
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 9, 2004; Page A1
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10351-2004May8?language=printer
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Friday took responsibility for the abuse of detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and expressed regret for failing to advise President Bush, Congress and the public of the mistreatment before disclosures by news media.
But Rumsfeld rejected Democratic appeals for his resignation, saying he could still be effective leading the Pentagon.
In highly charged hearings before the Senate and House Armed Services committees, he also warned that evidence of even worse mistreatment of Iraqi detainees could emerge as U.S. investigations proceed. Appearing to be grappling still with the enormity and gravity of the scandal, Rumsfeld said he had finally been able to view much of the photographic evidence Thursday evening.
"Be on notice," he said in a standing-room-only Senate hearing room. "There are a lot more photographs and videos that exist. If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse."
Thus far, no videotapes of abusive treatment have reached the public. But photographs of U.S. military guards physically and sexually humiliating detainees have ignited worldwide revulsion, inflaming anti-American sentiment abroad and sparking a political storm at home. Pentagon officials informed senators privately this week that some of the videotapes show U.S. military personnel standing with corpses of Iraqis who may have been slain in prison, according to a senior Republican Senate aide.
Rumsfeld's testimony marked a personal struggle to salvage his job and retain the confidence of a Congress upset that he neglected to give it advance notice of the photographs and an internal Army investigation before many of the pictures and findings were unearthed by news organizations. The Pentagon leader's dramatic appearance on Capitol Hill also came as part of a larger administration drive to quell the uproar.
In Iraq, anger over abuse of detainees surged through mosques Friday in several cities. Moqtada Sadr, the militant Shiite cleric, declared that U.S. soldiers guilty of torturing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners "must be punished in kind."
At home, Rumsfeld has kept the support of the public. A large majority of Americans believe he should not resign, although the public remains sharply divided over whether the administration moved quickly enough to investigate reports of abuse, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Flanked at the witness table by leading representatives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Central Command and the Army, Rumsfeld, who has a reputation for combativeness, immediately assumed a contrite tone in his opening remarks.
"These events occurred on my watch as secretary of defense. I am accountable for them. I take full responsibility," he said of the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison.
He acknowledged having erred by failing to grasp the significance of the allegations and informing President Bush and Congress about the graphic photographs before they became public.
With several military probes underway into conditions at military internment centers around the world, Rumsfeld announced the creation of a panel of retired officials to monitor the investigations and determine whether more inquiries are needed.
Offering his "deepest apology," he also promised "appropriate compensation" to detainees who suffered "grievous and brutal abuse and cruelty" at the hands of U.S. soldiers.
Leading congressional Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.) and Sen. John W. Warner (Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, applauded Rumsfeld's performance and reaffirmed their support for him. But Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.) joined several other prominent Democrats in calling for Rumsfeld to step down, and some of the most pointed expressions of concern during the day of back-to-back Senate and House hearings came from GOP lawmakers.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) worried that the spate of new investigations would hold up the release of further evidence of abusive behavior. He urged "immediate and full disclosure of all relevant information."
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) voiced dismay at the failure of Pentagon officials to get ahead of the story by disclosing the full extent of the problems at Abu Ghraib and announce corrective actions.
"It would have been far better if you, Mr. Secretary -- with all due respect -- had come forward and told the world about these pictures and of your personal determination -- a determination I know you have -- to set matters right and to hold those responsible accountable," she said.
"Well, Senator Collins, I wish I had done that," Rumsfeld replied.
Noting the calls for Rumsfeld's resignation, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) asked the Pentagon leader if he believed he could still carry out his duties "in a bipartisan manner."
"Well, it's a fair question," Rumsfeld replied, adding that he had given it "a lot of thought" lately.
"Needless to say, if I felt I could not be effective, I'd resign in a minute," he went on. "I would not resign simply because people try to make a political issue out of it."
Asked later whether his resignation might show the world how seriously the United States viewed the abuse, he replied: "It's possible."
Rumsfeld vigorously defended the speed with which military commanders investigated the abuses at Abu Ghraib when first tipped off to them by a soldier in January. And he assured lawmakers that the investigation would not end with the 14 low- and mid-ranking military police charged or reprimanded so far.
But Rumsfeld underscored the limit on what he and other senior officials can find out about criminal investigations while they are in progress without risking accusations of command interference.
"There's a pattern of not reaching down into those things, bringing them up and looking at all the evidence before it ever arrives," Rumsfeld said.
In the Abu Ghraib case, he said the photographs had been in the custody of Army criminal investigators, and no senior official at the Pentagon had seen them before they were publicized.
Appearing with Rumsfeld, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged trying to persuade CBS's "60 Minutes II" to stall broadcast of the photographs, even though he had not seen them at that point. He said he knew from descriptions by others that they contained images of mistreatment.
Based on Rumsfeld's testimony and the private warning delivered by the Pentagon earlier this week, lawmakers were bracing for the release of more devastating photographs and videotapes.
Classified annexes to the Army's internal investigation of conditions at Abu Ghraib, conducted by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, make reference to the videos and photographs, according to the senior GOP Senate aide. Rumsfeld displayed papers stacked more than two feet high next to the witness table that he identified as Taguba's report, but the annexes have not yet been shared with Congress despite repeated requests, another Senate aide said.
Pentagon officials also have told lawmakers that thousands of other damning photos, not yet publicized, may exist outside the Defense Department's control. Individual soldiers who took the photos have been "trading" them, and some may be negotiating to sell the videos to foreign television outlets, the officials said, according to the Senate aide.
Testifying with Rumsfeld, Les Brownlee, the Army's acting secretary, disclosed investigations underway into 42 potential cases of misconduct against civilians that occurred outside detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Previously, Army officials had reported criminal probes were underway into 10 prisoner deaths and 10 allegations of assault against prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
At Friday's hearings, several lawmakers endorsed the idea of demolishing the Abu Ghraib prison as a sign to the Iraqi people that the United States wants to do away with torture and suffering there. Rumsfeld told the House committee that such a decision should be left to the Iraqi people.
Staff writers William Branigin, Glenn Kessler, R. Jeffrey Smith and Josh White contributed to this report.
-------- russia / chechnya
Enemies catch up with Kadyrov
By Stephen Mulvey,
Sunday, 9 May, 2004
BBC News Online Russian affairs analyst
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3697987.stm
Kadyrov's allegiance with Putin made him a target for the rebels There have been many attempts to kill Akhmad Kadyrov. Few people who know Chechnya would have predicted that he would survive so long.
Bombers have come close in the past - this time they got a direct hit.
The attack was probably carried out by Chechen rebels, who view him as a traitor.
He was on their side in the first Chechen war of 1994-96, as a religious leader with his own armed detachment.
But later he switched sides, eventually becoming the Russian government's puppet president in what was widely seen as a rigged election.
Forced loyalty
Any member of the Russian-backed administration in Chechnya is a target for Chechen rebels, but Kadyrov was a target two or three times over.
One more recent grievance was the ruthless behaviour of a militia serving as his personal guard, which has been linked by some analysts to the regular "disappearance" of young men.
Reportedly, the men were given a chance to join Kadyrov's militia, and if they refused they disappeared.
If this is true - that rebel sympathisers were forced to serve Mr Kadyrov - it perhaps explains why people close to him might overlook a bomb placed under his viewing platform at a victory parade.
In a country with a tradition of blood revenge, the disappearances would also widen the group of people wanting Mr Kadyrov's head.
No natural replacement
For the Russian government, Mr Kadyrov is an immense loss. He is a strong-willed man of some standing inside Chechnya, who is on their side.
There are not many of them.
What is more none have been groomed as possible replacements - indeed, other strong candidates were prevented from running in the presidential election.
The huge reliance on Mr Kadyrov is perhaps the main weakness of Russia's plan to stabilise Chechnya.
Moscow rules out talking to the rebels, so it needs credible Chechen leaders from other parts of the community.
And now it has none.
Fears for future
Mr Kadyrov was not much loved by ordinary Chechens and will probably not be greatly missed.
However, there will be many who fear the Russian revenge - the prospect of security sweeps in which young Chechen men are routinely abused, or destructive attacks on mountain villages that rebels have been known to visit.
More generally, the assassination gives rise to uncertainty about the future.
Despite the continued presence of large numbers of Russian troops, and the occasionally deadly attacks orchestrated by the rebels, a degree of stability has returned to Chechnya in the last two years.
Large numbers of refugees have returned, some reconstruction has taken place, some people have found jobs, children have returned to school.
Everyone knows how important these changes are, and how easy it would be to slide back into anarchy.
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THE TRANSITION
U.S. Presses U.N. on Role in Iraq for Politicians
May 9, 2004
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/international/middleeast/09DIPL.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, May 8 - The Bush administration is pressing the United Nations envoy to change his proposal for a transitional Iraqi government once self-rule is returned on June 30, Iraqi and administration officials say.
Instead of a government that is nonpolitical, the administration is pushing for one that gives prominent roles to people with ties to political parties, the officials say.
The officials said the new thinking in Washington reflected doubts that a transitional government of technocrats would be strong enough.
Leading Kurdish and Shiite political figures, many of them members of the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, have pressed for the change, administration officials said. These figures are clamoring to hold on to power after the council is dissolved on June 30.
In particular, the administration is said to be wedded to a large role for Adnan Pachachi, the former foreign minister who has guided the process of writing Iraq's transitional constitution, and to figures tied to political groups loyal to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shiite cleric.
"The government is going to have to have both technocrats and people of political stature," said a senior administration official. "It's important to have both sides in the government."
In Iraq on Saturday, insurgents backing a rebel Shiite cleric took the offensive after several days of attacks by American troops by trying to seize government buildings and striking at convoys in two big cities in the south. The move signaled the opening of a possible new front in the American campaign to crush the cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, and his followers. [Page 12.]
Only two weeks ago, the administration embraced the proposal of Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy to Iraq, that the government consist of technocrats, though a top official cautioned then that some political presence could not be ruled out. Now the administration is insisting on such a presence, officials say.
The administration agrees with Mr. Brahimi that whoever joins the government should not make long-term commitments or reach any decisions that might benefit the parties they represent.
"The structure should allow political balance at the top," said one official, along with "competence and efficiency as the quality for the ministers who run things day to day."
This official said: "People generally think that anyone in the new government should not run for office later on."
American, European and United Nations officials say the establishment of a new government has become extremely difficult because of the mistreatment of some Iraqi prisoners and the continuing American military actions in Falluja, Najaf, Karbala and elsewhere.
"We're at a point where the more it looks like the new Iraqi government is led or directed by the United States, the less legitimate it will look," said a prominent European diplomat. "But if we give too much responsibility to the United Nations, the knives will be out for them, too."
The makeup of the new government is to be decided in the next week or two by Mr. Brahimi, in consultation with L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator in Iraq, and Robert D. Blackwill, a White House adviser serving as a special envoy of President Bush in Baghdad.
It was Mr. Brahimi, however, who first sketched out the idea that the new government would be as nonpolitical as possible. Several officials say that one possible candidate for prime minister he has put forward is Dr. Mahdi al-Hafidh, the current planning minister.
Dr. Hafidh is said still to be a possibility for that job, but other candidates are being put forward by Kurdish and Shiite leaders, with particular interest focused on another minister who is a prominent Shiite Islamist, Adel Abdul Mehdi.
Mr. Mehdi is described by some Iraqi officials as unacceptable to Sunni leaders, who are said to fear that he might try to impose Islamic law over family matters.
Iraqi officials who have been in close contact with Washington say the parties that will have to be represented in the caretaker government include the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which has close ties to Iran, and Dawa, another influential Shiite group. The Communist Party is also likely to be represented, they said.
It was not clear, however, whether Ahmad Chalabi, a Pentagon favorite who has accused Mr. Brahimi of trying to marginalize him and other former exiles, would be included in the government. Despite his mostly favorable standing at the Pentagon, administration officials say, the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, military commanders and Mr. Bremer all oppose a role for Mr. Chalabi in the government.
"The Shia and Chalabi have been running quite a campaign against Brahimi, and against any idea that the Iraqi Governing Council will be eclipsed," a Western diplomat said. "I don't think it will be eclipsed." As the diplomat put it, Mr. Brahimi had not yet figured out how to accommodate Shiite interests close to Ayatollah Sistani, which is considered essential to maintaining legitimacy, without angering restive Sunni.
The latest timetable for setting up a government is for Mr. Brahimi to pick the leaders by the end of this month and have them in place in early June, so they can begin to negotiate with the American occupation officials and others about several matters to take effect on June 30, including the exact role the Iraq government will play in its security.
The United Nations Security Council is expected to define that role, but disagreements have already emerged, with France and Germany suggesting that the Iraq government have at least some control over its own armed forces, and the United States suggesting that the Iraqis serve under American command.
The American plan is for the Security Council to declare that all forces in Iraq are part of a United Nations-mandated multinational security force under United States command. But it is not clear that Russia and other Security Council members will be ready to go that far, many diplomats say.
There are also questions about whether the United Nations, rather than the United States, will have the larger role in advising the new government on where to spend reconstruction money, and about such difficult matters as whether American military forces are to remain shielded from prosecution by Iraqi courts, and whether there should be an international role in running Iraqi prisons.
Diplomats say it will be very important to hear from Iraqi leaders themselves as the United Nations confronts a new Security Council resolution - another reason why jockeying is under way over whether the Iraqi government is political or technocratic in nature.
The government structure proposed by Mr. Brahimi, widely accepted by the United Sates and other countries, calls for a prime minister to serve as the main power, and a president and two vice presidents in ceremonial or advisory capacities, representing each of the three main groups - Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.
Mr. Brahimi has also pressed for a national conference of Iraqis after June 30, with 1,500 people choosing a smaller "consultative council" to serve as a kind of legislature - though with no legislative power - advising the government and ministers.
But Iraqi officials say that this idea is being resisted in many parts of Iraq, and that the Iraqi Governing Council, which Mr. Brahimi wants to dissolve, is still jockeying to stay on and serve as a legislative body after June 30.
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CHAIN OF COMMAND
How the Department of Defense mishandled the disaster at Abu Ghraib
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
New Yorker
Issue of 2004-05-17 Posted 2004-05-09
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040517fa_fact2
In his devastating report on conditions at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq, Major General Antonio M. Taguba singled out only three military men for praise. One of them, Master-at-Arms William J. Kimbro, a Navy dog handler, should be commended, Taguba wrote, because he "knew his duties and refused to participate in improper interrogations despite significant pressure from the MI"-military intelligence-"personnel at Abu Ghraib." Elsewhere in the report it became clear what Kimbro would not do: American soldiers, Taguba said, used "military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee."
Taguba's report was triggered by a soldier's decision to give Army investigators photographs of the sexual humiliation and abuse of prisoners. These images were first broadcast on "60 Minutes II" on April 28th. Seven enlisted members of the 372nd Military Police Company of the 320th Military Police Battalion, an Army reserve unit, are now facing prosecution, and six officers have been reprimanded. Last week, I was given another set of digital photographs, which had been in the possession of a member of the 320th. According to a time sequence embedded in the digital files, the photographs were taken by two different cameras over a twelve-minute period on the evening of December 12, 2003, two months after the military-police unit was assigned to Abu Ghraib. An Iraqi prisoner and American military dog handlers. Other photographs show the Iraqi on the ground, bleeding.
One of the new photographs shows a young soldier, wearing a dark jacket over his uniform and smiling into the camera, in the corridor of the jail. In the background are two Army dog handlers, in full camouflage combat gear, restraining two German shepherds. The dogs are barking at a man who is partly obscured from the camera's view by the smiling soldier. Another image shows that the man, an Iraqi prisoner, is naked. His hands are clasped behind his neck and he is leaning against the door to a cell, contorted with terror, as the dogs bark a few feet away. Other photographs show the dogs straining at their leashes and snarling at the prisoner. In another, taken a few minutes later, the Iraqi is lying on the ground, writhing in pain, with a soldier sitting on top of him, knee pressed to his back. Blood is streaming from the inmate's leg. Another photograph is a closeup of the naked prisoner, from his waist to his ankles, lying on the floor. On his right thigh is what appears to be a bite or a deep scratch. There is another, larger wound on his left leg, covered in blood.
There is at least one other report of violence involving American soldiers, an Army dog, and Iraqi citizens, but it was not in Abu Ghraib. Cliff Kindy, a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, a church-supported group that has been monitoring the situation in Iraq, told me that last November G.I.s unleashed a military dog on a group of civilians during a sweep in Ramadi, about thirty miles west of Fallujah. At first, Kindy told me, "the soldiers went house to house, and arrested thirty people." (One of them was Saad al-Khashab, an attorney with the Organization for Human Rights in Iraq, who told Kindy about the incident.) While the thirty detainees were being handcuffed and laid on the ground, a firefight broke out nearby; when it ended, the Iraqis were shoved into a house. Khashab told Kindy that the American soldiers then "turned the dog loose inside the house, and several people were bitten." (The Defense Department said that it was unable to comment about the incident before The New Yorker went to press.)
When I asked retired Major General Charles Hines, who was commandant of the Army's military-police school during a twenty-eight-year career in military law enforcement, about these reports, he reacted with dismay. "Turning a dog loose in a room of people? Loosing dogs on prisoners of war? I've never heard of it, and it would never have been tolerated," Hines said. He added that trained police dogs have long been a presence in Army prisons, where they are used for sniffing out narcotics and other contraband among the prisoners, and, occasionally, for riot control. But, he said, "I would never have authorized it for interrogating or coercing prisoners. If I had, I'd have been put in jail or kicked out of the Army."
The International Red Cross and human-rights groups have repeatedly complained during the past year about the American military's treatment of Iraqi prisoners, with little success. In one case, disclosed last month by the Denver Post, three Army soldiers from a military-intelligence battalion were accused of assaulting a female Iraqi inmate at Abu Ghraib. After an administrative review, the three were fined "at least five hundred dollars and demoted in rank," the newspaper said.
Army commanders had a different response when, on January 13th, a military policeman presented Army investigators with a computer disk containing graphic photographs. The images were being swapped from computer to computer throughout the 320th Battalion. The Army's senior commanders immediately understood they had a problem-a looming political and public-relations disaster that would taint America and damage the war effort.
One of the first soldiers to be questioned was Ivan Frederick, the M.P. sergeant who was in charge of a night shift at Abu Ghraib. Frederick, who has been ordered to face a court-martial in Iraq for his role in the abuse, kept a running diary that began with a knock on his door by agents of the Army's Criminal Investigations Division (C.I.D.) at two-thirty in the morning on January 14th. "I was escorted . . . to the front door of our building, out of sight from my room," Frederick wrote, "while . . . two unidentified males stayed in my room. 'Are they searching my room?'" He was told yes. Frederick later formally agreed to permit the agents to search for cameras, computers, and storage devices.
On January 16th, three days after the Army received the pictures, Central Command issued a blandly worded, five-sentence press release about an investigation into the mistreatment of prisoners. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said last week that it was then that he learned of the allegations. At some point soon afterward, Rumsfeld informed President Bush. On January 19th, Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the officer in charge of American forces in Iraq, ordered a secret investigation into Abu Ghraib. Two weeks later, General Taguba was ordered to conduct his inquiry. He submitted his report on February 26th. By then, according to testimony before the Senate last week by General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, people "inside our building" had discussed the photographs. Myers, by his own account, had still not read the Taguba report or seen the photographs, yet he knew enough about the abuses to persuade "60 Minutes II" to delay its story.
At a Pentagon news conference last week, Rumsfeld and Marine General Peter Pace, the Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, insisted that the investigation into Abu Ghraib had moved routinely through the chain of command. If the Army had been slow, it was because of built-in safeguards. Pace told the journalists, "It's important to know that as investigations are completed they come up the chain of command in a very systematic way. So that the individual who reports in writing [sends it] up to the next level commander. But he or she takes time, a week or two weeks, three weeks, whatever it takes, to read all of the documentation, get legal advice [and] make the decisions that are appropriate at his or her level. . . . That way everyone's rights are protected and we have the opportunity systematically to take a look at the entire process."
In interviews, however, retired and active-duty officers and Pentagon officials said that the system had not worked. Knowledge of the nature of the abuses-and especially the politically toxic photographs-had been severely, and unusually, restricted. "Everybody I've talked to said, 'We just didn't know'-not even in the J.C.S.," one well-informed former intelligence official told me, emphasizing that he was referring to senior officials with whom such allegations would normally be shared. "I haven't talked to anybody on the inside who knew-nowhere. It's got them scratching their heads." A senior Pentagon official said that many of the senior generals in the Army were similarly out of the loop on the Abu Ghraib allegations.
Within the Pentagon, there was a spate of fingerpointing last week. One top general complained to a colleague that the commanders in Iraq should have taken C4, a powerful explosive, and blown up Abu Ghraib last spring, with all of its "emotional baggage"-the prison was known for its brutality under Saddam Hussein-instead of turning it into an American facility. "This is beyond the pale in terms of lack of command attention," a retired major general told me, speaking of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. "Where were the flag officers? And I'm not just talking about a one-star," he added, referring to Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the commander at Abu Ghraib who was relieved of duty. "This was a huge leadership failure."
The Pentagon official told me that many senior generals believe that, along with the civilians in Rumsfeld's office, General Sanchez and General John Abizaid, who is in charge of the Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, had done their best to keep the issue quiet in the first months of the year. The official chain of command flows from General Sanchez, in Iraq, to Abizaid, and on to Rumsfeld and President Bush. "You've got to match action, or nonaction, with interests," the Pentagon official said. "What is the motive for not being forthcoming? They foresaw major diplomatic problems."
Secrecy and wishful thinking, the Pentagon official said, are defining characteristics of Rumsfeld's Pentagon, and shaped its response to the reports from Abu Ghraib. "They always want to delay the release of bad news-in the hope that something good will break," he said. The habit of procrastination in the face of bad news led to disconnects between Rumsfeld and the Army staff officers who were assigned to planning for troop requirements in Iraq. A year ago, the Pentagon official told me, when it became clear that the Army would have to call up more reserve units to deal with the insurgency, "we had call-up orders that languished for thirty or forty days in the office of the Secretary of Defense." Rumsfeld's staff always seemed to be waiting for something to turn up-for the problem to take care of itself, without any additional troops. The official explained, "They were hoping that they wouldn't have to make a decision." The delay meant that soldiers in some units about to be deployed had only a few days to prepare wills and deal with other family and financial issues.
The same deliberate indifference to bad news was evident in the past year, the Pentagon official said, when the Army conducted a series of elaborate war games. Planners would present best-case, moderate-case, and worst-case scenarios, in an effort to assess where the Iraq war was headed and to estimate future troop needs. In every case, the number of troops actually required exceeded the worst-case analysis. Nevertheless, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and civilian officials in the Pentagon continued to insist that future planning be based on the most optimistic scenario. "The optimistic estimate was that at this point in time"-mid-2004-"the U.S. Army would need only a handful of combat brigades in Iraq," the Pentagon official said. "There are nearly twenty now, with the international coalition drying up. They were wildly off the mark." The official added, "From the beginning, the Army community was saying that the projections and estimates were unrealistic." Now, he said, "we're struggling to maintain a hundred and thirty-five thousand troops while allowing soldiers enough time back home."
In his news conference last Tuesday, Rumsfeld, when asked whether he thought the photographs and stories from Abu Ghraib were a setback for American policy in Iraq, still seemed to be in denial. "Oh, I'm not one for instant history," he responded. By Friday, however, with some members of Congress and with editorials calling for his resignation, Rumsfeld testified at length before House and Senate committees and apologized for what he said was "fundamentally un-American" wrongdoing at Abu Ghraib. He also warned that more, and even uglier, disclosures were to come. Rumsfeld said that he had not actually looked at any of the Abu Ghraib photographs until some of them appeared in press accounts, and hadn't reviewed the Army's copies until the day before. When he did, they were "hard to believe," he said. "There are other photos that depict . . . acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman." Later, he said, "It's going to get still more terrible, I'm afraid." Rumsfeld added, "I failed to recognize how important it was."
NBC News later quoted U.S. military officials as saying that the unreleased photographs showed American soldiers "severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi prisoner, and 'acting inappropriately with a dead body.' The officials said there also was a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys."
No amount of apologetic testimony or political spin last week could mask the fact that, since the attacks of September 11th, President Bush and his top aides have seen themselves as engaged in a war against terrorism in which the old rules did not apply. In the privacy of his office, Rumsfeld chafed over what he saw as the reluctance of senior Pentagon generals and admirals to act aggressively. By mid-2002, he and his senior aides were exchanging secret memorandums on modifying the culture of the military leaders and finding ways to encourage them "to take greater risks." One memo spoke derisively of the generals in the Pentagon, and said, "Our prerequisite of perfection for 'actionable intelligence' has paralyzed us. We must accept that we may have to take action before every question can be answered." The Defense Secretary was told that he should "break the 'belt-and-suspenders' mindset within today's military . . . we 'over-plan' for every contingency. . . . We must be willing to accept the risks." With operations involving the death of foreign enemies, the memo went on, the planning should not be carried out in the Pentagon: "The result will be decision by committee."
The Pentagon's impatience with military protocol extended to questions about the treatment of prisoners caught in the course of its military operations. Soon after 9/11, as the war on terror got under way, Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly made public his disdain for the Geneva conventions. Complaints about America's treatment of prisoners, Rumsfeld said in early 2002, amounted to "isolated pockets of international hyperventilation."
The effort to determine what happened at Abu Ghraib has evolved into a sprawling set of related investigations, some of them hastily put together, including inquiries into twenty-five suspicious deaths. Investigators have become increasingly concerned with the role played not only by military and intelligence officials but also by C.I.A. agents and private-contract employees. In a statement, the C.I.A. acknowledged that its Inspector General had an investigation under way into abuses at Abu Ghraib, which extended to the death of a prisoner. A source familiar with one of the investigations told me that the victim was the man whose photograph, which shows his battered body packed in ice, has circulated around the world. A Justice Department prosecutor has been assigned to the case. The source also told me that an Army intelligence operative and a judge advocate general were seeking, through their lawyers, to negotiate immunity from prosecution in return for testimony.
The relationship between military policing and intelligence forces inside the Army prison system reached a turning point last fall in response to the insurgency against the Coalition Provisional Authority. "This is a fight for intelligence," Brigadier General Martin Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armored Division, told a reporter at a Baghdad press briefing in November. "Do I have enough soldiers? The answer is absolutely yes. The larger issue is, how do I use them and on what basis? And the answer to that is intelligence . . . to try to figure out how to take all this human intelligence as it comes in to us [and] turn it into something that's actionable." The Army prison system would now be asked to play its part.
Two months earlier, Major General Geoffrey Miller, the commander of the task force in charge of the prison at Guantánamo, had brought a team of experts to Iraq to review the Army program. His recommendation was radical: that Army prisons be geared, first and foremost, to interrogations and the gathering of information needed for the war effort. "Detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation . . . to provide a safe, secure and humane environment that supports the expeditious collection of intelligence," Miller wrote. The military police on guard duty at the prisons should make support of military intelligence a priority.
General Sanchez agreed, and on November 19th his headquarters issued an order formally giving the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade tactical control over the prison. General Taguba fearlessly took issue with the Sanchez orders, which, he wrote in his report, "effectively made an MI Officer, rather than an MP officer, responsible for the MP units conducting detainee operations at that facility. This is not doctrinally sound due to the different missions and agenda assigned to each of these respective specialties."
Taguba also criticized Miller's report, noting that "the intelligence value of detainees held at . . . Guantánamo is different than that of the detainees/internees held at Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities in Iraq. . . . There are a large number of Iraqi criminals held at Abu Ghraib. These are not believed to be international terrorists or members of Al Qaeda." Taguba noted that Miller's recommendations "appear to be in conflict" with other studies and with Army regulations that call for military-police units to have control of the prison system. By placing military-intelligence operatives in control instead, Miller's recommendations and Sanchez's change in policy undoubtedly played a role in the abuses at Abu Ghraib. General Taguba concluded that certain military-intelligence officers and civilian contractors at Abu Ghraib were "either directly or indirectly responsible" for the abuses, and urged that they be subjected to disciplinary action.
In late March, before the Abu Ghraib scandal became publicly known, Geoffrey Miller was transferred from Guantánamo and named head of prison operations in Iraq. "We have changed this-trust us," Miller told reporters in early May. "There were errors made. We have corrected those. We will make sure that they do not happen again."
Military-intelligence personnel assigned to Abu Ghraib repeatedly wore "sterile," or unmarked, uniforms or civilian clothes while on duty. "You couldn't tell them apart," the source familiar with the investigation said. The blurring of identities and organizations meant that it was impossible for the prisoners, or, significantly, the military policemen on duty, to know who was doing what to whom, and who had the authority to give orders. Civilian employees at the prison were not bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but they were bound by civilian law-though it is unclear whether American or Iraqi law would apply.
One of the employees involved in the interrogations at Abu Ghraib, according to the Taguba report, was Steven Stefanowicz, a civilian working for CACI International, a Virginia-based company. Private companies like CACI and Titan Corp. could pay salaries of well over a hundred thousand dollars for the dangerous work in Iraq, far more than the Army pays, and were permitted, as never before in U.S. military history, to handle sensitive jobs. (In a briefing last week, General Miller confirmed that Stefanowicz had been reassigned to administrative duties. A CACI spokeswoman declined to comment on any employee in Iraq, citing safety concerns, but said that the company still had not heard anything directly from the government about Stefanowicz.)
Stefanowicz and his colleagues conducted most, if not all, of their interrogations in the Abu Ghraib facilities known to the soldiers as the Wood Building and the Steel Building. The interrogation centers were rarely visited by the M.P.s, a source familiar with the investigation said. The most important prisoners-the suspected insurgency members deemed to be High Value Detainees-were housed at Camp Cropper, near the Baghdad airport, but the pressure on soldiers to accede to requests from military intelligence was felt throughout the system.
Not everybody went along. A company captain in a military-police unit in Baghdad told me last week that he was approached by a junior intelligence officer who requested that his M.P.s keep a group of detainees awake around the clock until they began talking. "I said, 'No, we will not do that,'" the captain said. "The M.I. commander comes to me and says, 'What is the problem? We're stressed, and all we are asking you to do is to keep them awake.' I ask, 'How? You've received training on that, but my soldiers don't know how to do it. And when you ask an eighteen-year-old kid to keep someone awake, and he doesn't know how to do it, he's going to get creative.'" The M.I. officer took the request to the captain's commander, but, the captain said, "he backed me up.
"It's all about people. The M.P.s at Abu Ghraib were failed by their commanders-both low-ranking and high," the captain said. "The system is broken-no doubt about it. But the Army is made up of people, and we've got to depend on them to do the right thing."
In his report, Taguba strongly suggested that there was a link between the interrogation process in Afghanistan and the abuses at Abu Ghraib. A few months after General Miller's report, Taguba wrote, General Sanchez, apparently troubled by reports of wrongdoing in Army jails in Iraq, asked Army Provost Marshal Donald Ryder, a major general, to carry out a study of military prisons. In the resulting study, which is still classified, Ryder identified a conflict between military policing and military intelligence dating back to the Afghan war. He wrote, "Recent intelligence collection in support of Operation Enduring Freedom posited a template whereby military police actively set favorable conditions for subsequent interviews."
One of the most prominent prisoners of the Afghan war was John Walker Lindh, the twenty-one-year-old Californian who was captured in December, 2001. Lindh was accused of training with Al Qaeda terrorists and conspiring to kill Americans. A few days after his arrest, according to a federal-court affidavit filed by his attorney, James Brosnahan, a group of armed American soldiers "blindfolded Mr. Lindh, and took several pictures of Mr. Lindh and themselves with Mr. Lindh. In one, the soldiers scrawled 'shithead' across Mr. Lindh's blindfold and posed with him. . . . Another told Mr. Lindh that he was 'going to hang' for his actions and that after he was dead, the soldiers would sell the photographs and give the money to a Christian organization." Some of the photographs later made their way to the American media. Lindh was later stripped naked, bound to a stretcher with duct tape, and placed in a windowless shipping container. Once again, the affidavit said, "military personnel photographed Mr. Lindh as he lay on the stretcher." On July 15, 2002, Lindh agreed to plead guilty to carrying a gun while serving in the Taliban and received a twenty-year jail term. During that process, Brosnahan told me, "the Department of Defense insisted that we state that there was 'no deliberate' mistreatment of John." His client agreed to do so, but, the attorney noted, "Against that, you have that photograph of a naked John on that stretcher."
The photographing of prisoners, both in Afghanistan and in Iraq, seems to have been not random but, rather, part of the dehumanizing interrogation process. The Times published an interview last week with Hayder Sabbar Abd, who claimed, convincingly, to be one of the mistreated Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib photographs. Abd told Ian Fisher, the Times reporter, that his ordeal had been recorded, almost constantly, by cameras, which added to his humiliation. He remembered how the camera flashed repeatedly as soldiers told to him to masturbate and beat him when he refused.
One lingering mystery is how Ryder could have conducted his review last fall, in the midst of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, without managing to catch it. (Ryder told a Pentagon press briefing last week that his trip to Iraq "was not an inspection or an investigation. . . . It was an assessment.") In his report to Sanchez, Ryder flatly declared that "there were no military police units purposely applying inappropriate confinement practices." Willie J. Rowell, who served for thirty-six years as an agent of the C.I.D., told me that Ryder was in a bureaucratic bind. The Army had revised its command structure last fall, and Ryder, as provost marshal, was now the commanding general of all military-police units as well as of the C.I.D. He was, in essence, being asked to investigate himself. "What Ryder should have done was set up a C.I.D. task force headed by an 0-6"-full colonel-"with fifteen agents, and begin interviewing everybody and taking sworn statements," Rowell said. "He had to answer questions about the prisons in September, when Sanchez asked for an assessment." At the time, Rowell added, the Army prison system was unprepared for the demands the insurgency placed on it. "Ryder was a man in a no-win situation," Rowell said. "As provost marshal, if he'd turned a C.I.D. task force loose, he could be in harm's way-because he's also boss of the military police. He was being eaten alive."
Ryder may have protected himself, but Taguba did not. "He's not regarded as a hero in some circles in the Pentagon," a retired Army major general said of Taguba. "He's the guy who blew the whistle, and the Army will pay the price for his integrity. The leadership does not like to have people make bad news public."
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Dissension Grows In Senior Ranks On War Strategy
U.S. May Be Winning Battles in Iraq But Losing the War, Some Officers Say
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 9, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11227-2004May8?language=printer
Deep divisions are emerging at the top of the U.S. military over the course of the occupation of Iraq, with some senior officers beginning to say that the United States faces the prospect of casualties for years without achieving its goal of establishing a free and democratic Iraq.
Their major worry is that the United States is prevailing militarily but failing to win the support of the Iraqi people. That view is far from universal, but it is spreading and being voiced publicly for the first time.
Army Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who spent much of the year in western Iraq, said he believes that at the tactical level at which fighting occurs, the U.S. military is still winning. But when asked whether he believes the United States is losing, he said, "I think strategically, we are."
Army Col. Paul Hughes, who last year was the first director of strategic planning for the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad, said he agrees with that view and noted that a pattern of winning battles while losing a war characterized the U.S. failure in Vietnam. "Unless we ensure that we have coherency in our policy, we will lose strategically," he said in an interview Friday.
"I lost my brother in Vietnam," added Hughes, a veteran Army strategist who is involved in formulating Iraq policy. "I promised myself, when I came on active duty, that I would do everything in my power to prevent that [sort of strategic loss] from happening again. Here I am, 30 years later, thinking we will win every fight and lose the war, because we don't understand the war we're in."
The emergence of sharp differences over U.S. strategy has set off a debate, a year after the United States ostensibly won a war in Iraq, about how to preserve that victory. The core question is how to end a festering insurrection that has stymied some reconstruction efforts, made many Iraqis feel less safe and created uncertainty about who actually will run the country after the scheduled turnover of sovereignty June 30.
Inside and outside the armed forces, experts generally argue that the U.S. military should remain there but should change its approach. Some argue for more troops, others for less, but they generally agree on revising the stated U.S. goals to make them less ambitious. They are worried by evidence that the United States is losing ground with the Iraqi public.
Some officers say the place to begin restructuring U.S. policy is by ousting Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, whom they see as responsible for a series of strategic and tactical blunders over the past year. Several of those interviewed said a profound anger is building within the Army at Rumsfeld and those around him.
A senior general at the Pentagon said he believes the United States is already on the road to defeat. "It is doubtful we can go on much longer like this," he said. "The American people may not stand for it -- and they should not."
Asked who was to blame, this general pointed directly at Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. "I do not believe we had a clearly defined war strategy, end state and exit strategy before we commenced our invasion," he said. "Had someone like Colin Powell been the chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff], he would not have agreed to send troops without a clear exit strategy. The current OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] refused to listen or adhere to military advice."
Like several other officers interviewed for this report, this general spoke only on the condition that his name not be used. One reason for this is that some of these officers deal frequently with the senior Pentagon civilian officials they are criticizing, and some remain dependent on top officials to approve their current efforts and future promotions. Also, some say they believe that Rumsfeld and other top civilians punish public dissent. Senior officers frequently cite what they believe was the vindictive treatment of then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki after he said early in 2003 that the administration was underestimating the number of U.S. troops that would be required to occupy postwar Iraq.
Wolfowitz, the Pentagon's No. 2 official, said he does not think the United States is losing in Iraq, and said no senior officer has expressed that thought to him, either. "I am sure that there are some out there" who think that, he said in an interview yesterday afternoon.
"There's no question that we're facing some difficulties," Wolfowitz said. "I don't mean to sound Pollyannaish -- we all know that we're facing a tough problem." But, he said, "I think the course we've set is the right one, which is moving as rapidly as possible to Iraqi self-government and Iraqi self-defense."
Wolfowitz, who is widely seen as the intellectual architect of the Bush administration's desire to create a free and democratic Iraq that will begin the transformation of the politics of the Middle East, also strongly rejected the idea of scaling back on that aim. "The goal has never been to win the Olympic high jump in democracy," he said. Moving toward democratization in Iraq will take time, he said. Yet, he continued, "I don't think the answer is to find some old Republican Guard generals and have them impose yet another dictatorship in an Arab country."
The top U.S. commander in the war also said he strongly disagrees with the view that the United States is heading toward defeat in Iraq. "We are not losing, militarily," Army Gen. John Abizaid said in an interview Friday. He said that the U.S. military is winning tactically. But he stopped short of being as positive about the overall trend. Rather, he said, "strategically, I think there are opportunities."
The prisoner abuse scandal and the continuing car bombings and U.S. casualties "create the image of a military that's not being effective in the counterinsurgency," he said. But in reality, "the truth of the matter is . . . there are some good signals out there."
Abizaid cited the resumption of economic reconstruction and the political progress made with Sunni Muslims in resolving the standoff around Fallujah, and increasing cooperation from Shiite Muslims in isolating radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr. "I'm looking at the situation, and I told the secretary of defense the other day I feel pretty comfortable with where we are," he said.
Even so, he said, "There's liable to be a lot of fighting in May and June," as the June 30 date for turning over sovereignty to an Iraqi government approaches.
Commanders on the ground in Iraq seconded that cautiously optimistic view.
"I am sure that the view from Washington is much worse than it appears on the ground here in Baqubah," said Army Col. Dana J.H. Pittard, commander of a 1st Infantry Division brigade based in that city about 40 miles north of Baghdad. "I do not think that we are losing, but we will lose if we are not careful." He said he is especially worried about maintaining political and economic progress in the provinces after the turnover of power.
Army Lt. Col. John Kem, a battalion commander in Baghdad, said that the events of the past two months -- first the eruption of a Shiite insurgency, followed by the detainee abuse scandal -- "certainly made things harder," but he said he doubted they would have much effect on the long-term future of Iraq.
But some say that behind those official positions lies deep concern.
One Pentagon consultant said that officials with whom he works on Iraq policy continue to put on a happy face publicly, but privately are grim about the situation in Baghdad. When it comes to discussions of the administration's Iraq policy, he said, "It's 'Dead Man Walking.' "
The worried generals and colonels are simply beginning to say what experts outside the military have been saying for weeks.
In mid-April, even before the prison detainee scandal, Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, wrote in the New York Review of Books that "patience with foreign occupation is running out, and violent opposition is spreading. Civil war and the breakup of Iraq are more likely outcomes than a successful transition to a pluralistic Western-style democracy." The New York Review of Books is not widely read in the U.S. military, but the article, titled "How to Get Out of Iraq," was carried online and began circulating among some military intellectuals.
Likewise, Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.), a former Marine who is one of most hawkish Democrats in Congress, said last week: "We cannot prevail in this war as it is going today," and said that the Bush administration should either boost its troop numbers or withdraw.
Larry Diamond, who until recently was a senior political adviser of the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq, argued that the United States is not losing the war but is in danger of doing so. "I think that we have fallen into a period of real political difficulty where we are no longer clearly winning the peace, and where the prospect of a successful transition to democracy is in doubt.
"Basically, it's up in the air now," Diamond continued. "That's what is at stake. . . . We can't keep making tactical and strategic mistakes."
He and others are recommending a series of related revisions to the U.S. approach.
Like many in the Special Forces, defense consultant Michael Vickers advocates radically trimming the U.S. presence in Iraq, making it much more like the one in Afghanistan, where there are 20,000 troops and almost none in the capital, Kabul. The U.S. military has a small presence in the daily life of Afghans. Basically, it ignores them and focuses its attention on fighting pockets of Taliban and al Qaeda holdouts. Nor has it tried to disarm the militias that control much of the country.
In addition to trimming the U.S. troop presence, a young Army general said, the United States also should curtail its ambitions in Iraq. "That strategic objective, of a free, democratic, de-Baathified Iraq, is grandiose and unattainable," he said. "It's just a matter of time before we revise downward . . . and abandon these ridiculous objectives."
Instead, he predicted that if the Bush administration wins reelection, it simply will settle for a stable Iraq, probably run by former Iraqi generals. This is more or less, he said, what the Marines Corps did in Fallujah -- which he described as a glimpse of future U.S. policy.
Wolfowitz sharply rejected that conclusion about Fallujah. "Let's be clear, Fallujah has always been an outlier since the liberation of Baghdad," he said in the interview. "It's where the trouble began. . . . It really isn't a model for anything for the rest of the country."
But a senior military intelligence officer experienced in Middle Eastern affairs said he thinks the administration needs to rethink its approach to Iraq and to the region. "The idea that Iraq can be miraculously and quickly turned into a shining example of democracy that will 'transform' the Middle East requires way too much fairy dust and cultural arrogance to believe," he said.
Finally, some are calling for the United States to stop fighting separatist trends among Iraq's three major groups, the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds, and instead embrace them. "The best hope for holding Iraq together -- and thereby avoiding civil war -- is to let each of its major constituent communities have, to the extent possible, the system each wants," Galbraith wrote last month.
Even if adjustments in troop presence and goals help the United States prevail, it will not happen soon, several of those interviewed said. The United States is likely to be fighting in Iraq for at least another five years, said an Army officer who served there. "We'll be taking casualties," he warned, during that entire time.
A long-term problem for any administration is that it may be difficult for the American public to tell whether the United States is winning or losing, and the prospect of continued casualties may prompt some to ask of how long the public will tolerate the fighting.
"Iraq might have been worth doing at some price," Vickers said. "But it isn't worth doing at any price. And the price has gone very high."
The other key factor in the war is Iraqi public opinion. A recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll found that a majority of Iraqis want the United States to leave immediately. "In Iraq, we are rapidly losing the support of the middle, which will enable the insurgency to persist practically indefinitely until our national resolve is worn down," the senior U.S. military intelligence officer said.
Tolerance of the situation in Iraq also appears to be declining within the U.S. military. Especially among career Army officers, an extraordinary anger is building at Rumsfeld and his top advisers.
"Like a lot of senior Army guys, I'm quite angry" with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush administration, the young general said. He listed two reasons. "One is, I think they are going to break the Army." But what really incites him, he said, is, "I don't think they care."
Jeff Smith, a former general counsel of the CIA who has close ties to many senior officers, said, "Some of my friends in the military are exceedingly angry." In the Army, he said, "It's pretty bitter."
Retired Army Col. Robert Killebrew, a frequent Pentagon consultant, said, "The people in the military are mad as hell." He said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, should be fired. A spokesman for Myers declined to comment.
A Special Forces officer aimed higher, saying that "Rumsfeld needs to go, as does Wolfowitz."
Asked about such antagonism, Wolfowitz said, "I wish they'd have the -- whatever it takes -- to come tell me to my face."
He said that by contrast, he had been "struck at how many fairly senior officers have come to me" to tell him that he and Rumsfeld have made the right decisions concerning the Army.
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THE MILITARY
In Abuse, a Picture of G.I.'s Ill Prepared and Overwhelmed
May 9, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/international/middleeast/09PRIS.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, May 8 - The orders that sent most of the 320th Military Police Battalion to Iraq came on Feb. 5, 2003, as part of the tide of two-week-a-year soldiers being called up from the National Guard and the Army Reserve in preparation for war.
In theory, the battalion's specialty was guarding enemy prisoners of war, a task that was expected to be a major logistical problem. In fact, an Army report said few of the 1,000 reservists of the 320th had been trained to do that, and fewer still knew how to run a prison. They were deployed so quickly from the mid-Atlantic region that there was no time to get new lessons.
"You're a person who works at McDonald's one day; the next day you're standing in front of hundreds of prisoners, and half are saying they're sick and half are saying they're hungry," remembered Sgt. First Class Paul Shaffer, 35, a metalworker from Pennsylvania. "We were hit with so much so fast, I don't think we were prepared."
The battalion - including insurance agents, checkout clerks, sales people and others - ultimately would follow a grim trajectory into the episodes of prisoner abuse that have shocked the nation. The soldiers found themselves in charge of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq at a time when the increasing rage of the anti-American insurgency, along with the desperation of American commanders to glean intelligence, magnified the pressures on the unit. This account of the troubled battalion is based on interviews with soldiers, their relatives, military commanders and Army reports.
Within days of the American invasion of Iraq, the 320th was in Kuwait, and the unit moved swiftly into southern Iraq, first to a prisoner of war camp overseen by British troops and then to a sprawling barbed-wire American camp in the desert. Known as Camp Bucca, the American camp was home to a legion of Iraqi prisoners.
"We were supposed to be the experts on this, but all we knew is what we learned in our summer camp," said Scott McKenzie, 38, of Clearwater, Pa., a sergeant first class who has since been discharged from the service. "We never learned how to deal with a riot, what to do when we were being assaulted."
On May 12, Mr. McKenzie, who worked in civilian life as a guard in a boot-camp style detention center, was escorting some Iraqi prisoners at Camp Bucca when just such a riot broke out, in what became the first incident of prisoner abuse involving the unit. At least one detainee was held down while Mr. McKenzie and two other soldiers badly beat and kicked him, according to testimony presented in a court-martial. This was done at the urging of a superior, Master Sgt. Lisa Girman, according to the testimony.
"We called it just another night in the desert," Mr. McKenzie recalled last week. He insisted that he had used no more than "the minimum force necessary to regain control of the prisoners" and that the event was "no big deal."
Mr. McKenzie, Ms. Girman and another soldier were found guilty of mistreating Iraqi detainees, and they accepted a less-than-honorable discharge in a plea bargain. A fourth soldier in the unit also was granted a less-than-honorable discharge separately.
But the incident prompted no effort by the soldiers' commanders to make sure the abuse was not repeated, according to an Army investigation by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba into the maltreatment of prisoners. The inaction was a lapse in leadership that reflected the eventual near total-breakdown of discipline in the unit.
Many members of the 320th had expected their mission to wind down once Iraqi prisoners were freed, after the declaration on May 1, 2003, that major combat operations had ended. Instead, to their considerable disappointment, the soldiers learned that they would be sent on to longer missions.
Some elements of the battalion were still coming in, including the 372nd Military Police Company, based in Cresaptown, Md., which arrived in May 2003. At first the 180-member company was assigned to work with marines in the southern town of Hilla. With a specialty in law enforcement, the company was ordered to help train a reconstituted Iraqi police force in Hilla.
Under Lt. Col. Jerry L. Phillabaum, most of the battalion was directed to a different destination.
With the P.O.W. facilities at Camp Bucca, the Baghdad airport and other sites still crowded, and the processing of prisoners taking time, the Army was looking for more permanent detention quarters.
Just as the occupation authorities turned to Saddam Hussein's old palaces to house the new Coalition Provisional Authority and other American headquarters around the country, they chose as the new American prison Mr. Hussein's old one at Abu Ghraib, even though it had a history of executions and torture that made the prison one of the most feared symbols of the old government.
Mr. Hussein had emptied Abu Ghraib of its occupants in October 2002, in a gesture aimed at winning popular support and possibly at stirring trouble for any American occupation. As late as June 2003, its gates were still adorned with his portrait.
Once the Army decided to reopen the 280-acre site, it did so swiftly, renovating cells, painting the walls and sweeping up broken glass and other debris left from months of looting.
In July, much of the 320th Battalion was sent to Abu Ghraib. The reservists were turned into wardens of what was to become the world's largest prison run by the United States Army.
The New Wardens
A Rebellion Begins, And a Prison Reopens
At the outset of the American occupation, Abu Ghraib held only about 2,000 Iraqi prisoners, most housed in tents erected under the scorching summer sun outside the prison itself.
The inmate population grew quickly, as prisoners arrested after the war emerged as a far bigger challenge than those taken in the war.
"We were real short-handed," said Sergeant Shaffer, the metal worker from Pennsylvania, who described cases in which no more than six guards on a single shift would be in charge of 700 Iraqi prisoners. "On my compound, we were doing 16-hour days. It was a very high-stress environment."
There were also clear clashes of culture, as soldiers who had little knowledge of the Middle East found themselves frustrated by the poor conditions, the prospect of a yearlong deployment and a lack of compliance among the Iraqi prisoners.
"They don't want to listen," Sergeant Shaffer said. "We'd say we want you to line up at 9 o'clock; they'd say, `If you want us to line up at 9 o'clock, we want something in return.' It doesn't work that way."
Among the prison's new inmates, many were criminals, some of the same ones freed by Mr. Hussein. When they joined in the looting, lawlessness and other crimes, the Americans rearrested them.
But a more worrisome category of prisoners emerged from the widening insurgency in Iraq, as played out in the shootings, bombings and other attacks against American soldiers. More and more of those prisoners were filling the makeshift jails.
In addition to Abu Ghraib, they included Camp Bucca in the south; Camp Cropper, a high-value prisoner center near the Baghdad airport; and Camp Ashraf, a former camp for the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen Khalq, which was being used to detain its members. The facilities were overseen by the 800th Military Police Brigade, with headquarters in Uniondale, N.Y., the 320th Battalion and the much smaller 372nd Military Police Company from Maryland.
Various Army divisions and other military units also maintained detention facilities around the country where they could hold prisoners for as long as 14 days before transferring them to other sites.
At Abu Ghraib, the prison was divided into three main subcamps. One, Camp Ganci, consisted of eight blocks of tents, each sealed off with razor wire and containing about 400 inmates in rows and rows of Army-issue canvas tents. Each tent held 25 inmates or more.
Camp Vigilant, another tent camp, was divided into four units with about 100 inmates each and was set aside for prisoners believed to have the most intelligence value.
Finally, there was the "hard site," the old prison itself, divided into seven blocks. Eventually, six were run by the Coalition Provisional Authority, for the detention of Iraqi prisoners to be tried in Iraqi courts. The seventh cellblock under American control, was divided into two parts, 1-A, set aside for "high risk" prisoners, and 1-B, on the second floor, for female prisoners.
Together, the two parts had 103 cells, running down each wall, with a long corridor down the middle. Each cell - about 6 by 10 feet - had a bunk bed and a hole in the floor for a toilet. The cells were designed to hold 206 people.
From the initial 2,000 prisoners, the population skyrocketed toward 7,000 prisoners by September as thousands more "security detainees" were rounded up by soldiers on suspicion of involvement in attacks on American troops.
In Baghdad, a three-person team headed by Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, the top American intelligence officer in Iraq, was in charge of reviewing the status of the security detainees as a prelude to their release. But far more Iraqis were being arrested than freed; the average stay in the prison was approaching four to six months. The 320th Battalion was stretched thin; working in temperatures that regularly exceeded 120 degrees only added to the strain.
Meanwhile, security conditions around the prison were worsening, with small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar fire coming into the compound almost every night. Colonel Phillabaum, the battalion commander, said that he and other officers dubbed the neighborhood around the prison "Little Mogadishu," after the Somali capital that in 1993 become a death trap for American soldiers. "The people just hated us," he said.
A Troubled Unit
Overcrowding And Prison Riots
By late in the summer of 2003, concerns about overcrowding, disciplinary problems and disturbances at American-run prisons in Iraq had reached the highest level of the military's headquarters in Baghdad. At Abu Ghraib in June, a riot broke out and eight detainees were shot, leaving one dead. Similar incidents occurred elsewhere.
But even more concern was focused on the mounting insurgency, and how little American intelligence had been gathered about it, even though thousands of Iraqis had been taken into custody.
Mr. Hussein's two sons, Uday and Qusay, were dead, killed by American soldiers in July, but the former Iraqi leader was still on the run. Major bombings in August of the United Nations headquarters and at other sites added to the level of anxiety.
While military police were in charge of American prisons in Iraq, military intelligence units were in charge of interrogations. But changes were in the works.
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, a business consultant and longtime reservist who had arrived in Iraq in late June to take over the 800th Military Police Brigade. "The numbers were increasing at rapid rates," she recalled in one of several television interviews this week.
"They were tagged as security detainees and they could not simply be released," she said. "They had to be interrogated, held, reviewed, and then ultimately released. I know that the interrogation, the interrogators, were under tremendous pressure."
In mid-August, a team of civilian interrogators led by Steven Stefanowicz, a former Navy petty officer and an employee of a Virginia company called CACI, began work at Abu Ghraib under a classified one-year military contract. The contract was part of a broader effort by the military to enlist Arabic linguists and other civilians in the work of questioning Iraqi detainees. CACI sent 27 interrogators to Abu Ghraib, Pentagon officials have said. Their job was to conduct interrogations in conjunction with military police and military intelligence units, according to a company memorandum.
Later that month, at the behest of senior Pentagon officials, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the two-star Army general overseeing the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was dispatched to Iraq. He was to review the American-led effort "to rapidly exploit internees for actionable intelligence," according to the Army report by General Taguba.
Among General Miller's classified recommendations, submitted after a tour that ended Sept. 9, were that the guards at Abu Ghraib and other facilities "be actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees," according to General Taguba's report.
At the end of September, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top American officer in Iraq, sent his inspector general to Abu Ghraib. According to Colonel Phillabaum, the visiting officer told him, "You guys are the forgotten."
Isolated and without amenities like gyms and barbershops that were available to other troops in Iraq, morale in the 320th plummeted. Many reservists who had been sent home when their tours were complete had not been replaced, adding to the burden of the remaining guards even as the number of prisoners continued to rise.
Army doctrine calls for a military police brigade to handle about 4,000 prisoners. But a single battalion - about a third the size of a brigade - was handling 6,000 to 7,000 prisoners at Abu Ghraib. When battalion commanders sought to release hundreds of detainees deemed to be no threat to allied forces, they were blocked from doing so by officers in Baghdad, they have complained.
At the end of October, Colonel Phillabaum briefed General Sanchez on the deteriorating, dysfunctional conditions at Abu Ghraib. "It was a real heart-to-heart," Colonel Phillabaum said in an interview. "I told it the way it was."
Rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire were "a constant threat," General Karpinski said.
"Abu Ghraib was in the middle of a hostile fire zone," she said, adding that the unit was "mortared every night, practically." Within days of the briefing to General Sanchez, General Karpinski sent Colonel Phillabaum to Kuwait for two weeks "to give him some relief from the pressure" at the camp, General Taguba's inquiry found.
Colonel Phillabaum contends that General Karpinski was angry because his briefing reflected poorly on her command, so she began a process to reassign him to her headquarters. Colonel Phillabaum, however, returned to his post.
According to General Taguba, Colonel Phillabaum and his chain of command were part of the problem, rarely supervising their troops and failing to set basic soldiering standards for them or make them aware of the protections afforded to prisoners under the Geneva Conventions.
"Despite his proven deficiencies, as both a commander and leader," General Taguba concluded, General Karpinski allowed Colonel Phillabaum "to remain in command of her most troubled battalion guarding, by far, the largest number of detainees in the 800th M.P. Brigade."
In October 2003, the 372nd Military Police Company joined Colonel Phillabaum's battalion at Abu Ghraib.
In Hilla, they had seen little combat; in Abu Ghraib the soldiers suddenly found themselves under attack virtually every night from insurgents outside the prison.
In Hilla, the 372nd had been focusing on law enforcement. Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick, one of the soldiers from western Maryland, for one, had spent six months working in operations, "manning radio's, mission board etc.," according to a journal entry he made on Jan. 24.
In Abu Ghraib, however, unit members were assigned as prison guards, with responsibilities that included the so-called Tier 1 cellblock of the prison.
A few weeks later, on Nov. 19, 2003, General Sanchez made a surprising decision: he transferred formal command of Abu Ghraib to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade under Colonel Thomas M. Pappas, a 32-year military veteran whose unit, based in Wiesbaden, Germany, had been assigned to the prison as the chief interrogators since it opened.
Working with Colonel Pappas was Lt. Col. Steve Jordan, who headed the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at the prison.
General Karpinski, Colonel Phillabaum and the military police in the battalion contend that the military intelligence officers had, even before Nov. 19, essentially taken control of the prisoners in the Tier 1 cellblock and had encouraged their mistreatment. General Taguba concluded that the 372nd "was directed to change facility procedures to `set the conditions' " for interrogations.
"It was like they were in charge now; it's a military intelligence unit now," said a member of the 32Oth Battalion, Sgt. John Lamela, of Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
The intelligence officers' practice of wearing uniforms without insignia made it difficult for soldiers to identify the officers or even to determine which of them were military and which belonged to other agencies, including the C.I.A., whose officers periodically visited Abu Ghraib prison to participate in interrogations.
"They were in charge; it was almost like whatever his battalion wanted, his battalion got," Sergeant Lamela said of one senior intelligence officer at the prison. "He moved people out of their units so his personnel could live in their units. His personnel could walk around without proper uniforms; we as M.P.'s were not to correct them; he would say, `Let it slide.' "
Sgt. First Class Joseph Mood of Benton, Pa., had a similar view of the intelligence officers' influence. "They took over the whole base; it was their show," he said. "That was their wording. `This is our show now.' They would try to get us to keep prisoners up all night, make them stand outside, have them stand up all the time - sometimes they asked the guards to do something that was totally against what you believed in doing."
An Open Secret
Reports of Abuse Trickle Out
During the summer and fall human rights groups in Iraq say they heard repeated complaints of prisoners being roughed up or abused by their American jailers. Those were not the only breakdowns of discipline in that period.
On three days, Nov. 5, 7 and 8, detainees escaped from the prison and Camp Ganci, according to the results of military investigations that have been made public. Then, in what appears to have been the worst of the incidents, a riot broke out on Nov. 24 in Camp Ganci in which 12 detainees were shot, and 3 of them killed, after members of the military police battalion opened fire. For reasons that have not been explained, nonlethal and lethal rounds were mixed in their chambers, according to the investigation.
Also at Abu Ghraib that month, an Iraqi detainee died as he was being questioned by a C.I.A. officer and a linguist who was working as a contract employee with the agency, in an investigation still under review by the agency's inspector general. Through December and January, there were more shootings, riots and escapes.
The worst abuses at Abu Ghraib took place on or around Nov. 8, according to the details of the military investigation made public so far, and principally in Cellblock 1-A, the group of cells set aside for high risk prisoners.
It was largely in that cellblock that some guards from the 372nd are accused of committing abuses that General Taguba called "sadistic, blatant and wanton" criminal acts. Prisoners were punched, slapped and kicked and forced to strip naked and form human pyramids. Some were ordered to simulate sexual acts. In some of the photographs of the abuse that have surfaced in recent days, the M.P.'s are grinning.
Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr. is shown with his arms folded as he stands behind a pile of naked Iraqi prisoners; an unidentified Iraqi prisoner is seen hooded and standing on a small box, with wires attached to his body; and Pfc. Lynndie England is seen glaring down at a naked Iraqi prisoner, whom she is holding by a leash.
So far, seven enlisted soldiers from the western Maryland company face criminal charges, all from the incidents in Tier 1. But several inquiries are still under way, and the question of who was primarily responsible has still not been answered.
The report by General Taguba, though limited to the conduct of the military police, said that the general suspected much of the fault, either directly or indirectly, should be attributed to military intelligence units under Colonel Pappas and Colonel Jordan. Through a spokesman, Colonel Pappas declined to comment, and Army officials would not even say which unit Colonel Jordan is currently assigned to. General Tabuga also blamed Mr. Stefanowicz and another contractor, John Israel, neither of whom could be reached for comment.
General Taguba's inquiry also criticized commanders, including Colonel Phillabaum, for failing to supervise his troops and allowing a climate of abuse to take hold.
Colonel Phillabaum said he felt he was being made a scapegoat for the Army. "I have suffered shame and humiliation for doing the best job that anyone could have done given the resources I had to work with," he said.
Colonel Phillabaum pinned the bulk of the blame on two of of the 372nd's soldiers, Sergeant Frederick and Specialist Graner, who are both corrections officers in civilian life. Neither of the two have spoken publicly about the episode.
"These two people were really the ringleaders of this whole thing," Colonel Phillabaum said. "Everybody else followed."
They were the natural leaders in the military police company, he said, since they spoke of their work experiences.
"Taking these prisoners out of their cells and staging bizarre acts were the thoughts of a couple of demented M.P.'s who in civilian life are prison correction officers who well know such acts are prohibited," Colonel Phillabaum said.
He said the abuses that were photographed only occurred between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., times that Sergeant Frederick and Specialist Graner knew no commissioned officers would be checking in. He said the digital photos are all time-coded, and they are all taken over a couple of weeks in this brief window.
"If they thought these acts were condoned, then why were they only done a few nights between 0200 and 0400 instead of during any time between 0600 and 2400 when there were many others around?" Colonel Phillabaum asked.
Sergeant Frederick's uncle, William Lawson, said his nephew had told him the soldiers were photographing the Iraqi prisoners at the direction of military intelligence officers as an interrogation tool.
"Somebody photographed the Iraqis with the intent of using those photographs to show new prisoners that came in, `This is what can happen to you,' to loosen them up psychologically," Mr. Lawson said.
In a letter to his family last year, Sergeant Frederick wrote that military intelligence officers encouraged mistreatment like confining naked inmates for three consecutive days without toilets in damp, unventilated cells with floors 3 feet by 3 feet. Inmates were also handcuffed to cell doors and forced to wear female underpants.
"We have a very high rate with our style of getting them to break," Sergeant Frederick wrote to a relative, Mimi Frederick, in an e-mail message on Dec. 18, 2003, according to a copy of the communication. "They usually end up breaking within hours."
General Karpinski has also said that she believed the military police were "coached" in their abusive actions by military intelligence officers. Neal Puckett, General Karpinski's lawyer, said the military police "took all their instructions from military intelligence interrogators, who instructed them to bring the prisoners to and away from these interrogation facilities, and sometimes perhaps to soften them up."
He suggested that the interrogators had instructed the guards to "bring them back naked this time, leave them naked tonight, don't give them any clothes. We think that escalated over a period of time until it ended up in what we see in the pictures."
General Karpinski has complained that the initial investigation ordered by General Sanchez was limited to the conduct of her military police brigade and did not examine in any detail the role played by military intelligence and private contractors.
Not until General Sanchez received a preliminary briefing on General Taguba's findings on March 12, which identified the intelligence officers and contractors as having possibly been primarily to blame, did he order a similar review of any wrongdoing by military intelligence officers at the prison. For reasons that remain unclear, that inquiry did not begin until April 23.
"I'd like to know who was the one that was giving instructions to the military intelligence personnel to turn up the heat?" General Karpinski asked.
Nearly a year ago, when her troops assumed their prison duty at Abu Ghraib, the Army made a promise. When it reopened Abu Ghraib last June, soldiers hung a sign at the gate that proclaimed: "America is a friend of all the Iraqi people."
Thom Shanker in Washington, Kate Zernike and Michael Moss in New York, Dexter Filkins and Ian Fisher in Baghdad and Patrick E. Tyler in Wiesbaden, Germany, contributed reporting for this article.
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A Prison on the Brink Usual Military Checks and Balances Went Missing
By Scott Higham, Josh White and Christian Davenport
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 9, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11413-2004May8?language=printer
First of three articles
For U.S. military police officers in Baghdad, the Abu Ghraib prison was particularly hellish. Insurgents were firing mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades over the walls. The prisoners were prone to riot. There was no PX, no mess hall, no recreation facilities to escape the heat and dust. About 450 MPs were supervising close to 7,000 inmates, many of them crowded into cells, many more kept in tents hastily arranged on dirt fields within the razor-wired walls of the compound. Around the perimeter, GIs kept wary eyes on Iraqi guards of questionable loyalty.
Precisely how many prisoners were being held at Abu Ghraib was anyone's guess. Roll calls were spotty. Escapes were commonplace. Prison logs were replete with flippant and unprofessional remarks. MPs were occasionally out of uniform, and some were out of control. Discipline was breaking down. So was the chain of command.
Abu Ghraib was on the brink.
"Most of the time, I felt like my life was in danger," said Sgt. William Savage Jr., a Florida corrections officer sent to Abu Ghraib as a reservist with a military police company. "I always thought something was going to happen."
Few could imagine what was about to happen at Abu Ghraib. The photographs featuring piles of naked Iraqis seem as though they were taken from a pornographic magazine, not from the digital cameras carried by American servicemen and women. But an examination of military investigative reports and interviews with soldiers and officers in Iraq at the time reveal that there were early warnings, and that a combination of conditions inside Abu Ghraib produced a culture of licentious behavior and abuse. Confusion was high. Morale was low. The checks and balances established to hold soldiers accountable during the vagaries of war were virtually non-existent.
By the fall of 2003, rumors of abuse began to circulate. Sgt. Blas Hidalgo heard them while working the guard towers of Abu Ghraib. He dismissed the talk as made-up military gossip.
"It sounded too crazy," he told The Washington Post in a recent interview.
'Unnerving as Hell'
The problems at Abu Ghraib, which have unleashed an international scandal and shaken the Bush administration, were foreshadowed by experiences at two earlier prison camps set up by U.S. forces after the invasion in March 2003.
As U.S. troops marched north, Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, near Basra, quickly became the largest facility for Iraqi prisoners. For two months, military commanders sent thousands of prisoners to the makeshift camp. Soon the camp held more than 7,000 prisoners.
At Bucca, there were troubling signs in a military police unit that would later be at the center of what took place at Abu Ghraib.
On May 12, four soldiers from the 320th Military Police Battalion, based in Ashley, Pa., were charged with beating prisoners after transporting them to Camp Bucca. MPs from a different unit reported the incident, saying the legs of prisoners were held apart while soldiers kicked them in the groin.
Around that time, President Bush had announced the end of major combat operations, and spirits in many military police units were high. It appeared that many MP units would be headed home. By the end of May, the several thousand members of the 800th Military Police Brigade, which included the 320th Battalion, were told that they would instead be managing the Iraqi prison system.
For many of the MPs, it was a crushing blow.
"Morale suffered, and over the next few months there did not appear to have been any attempt by the Command to mitigate this morale problem," Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba would later conclude in his 53-page report examining the abuses at Abu Ghraib.
Located on the outskirts of Baghdad, Abu Ghraib, a symbol of torture and repression under Saddam Hussein, had been looted. It was decrepit and falling apart. While renovations were underway, the military came up with a temporary alternative: Camp Cropper, a collection of tents and small buildings at the Baghdad airport.
Cropper was originally designed to hold 200 captives. But with street crime on the rise and the insurgency in Baghdad becoming bolder, Cropper was teeming with prisoners by the summer of 2003. On some days, more than 1,000 prisoners were in the camp.
It became a dangerous place that smelled of sewage and sweat. Flies infested the camp. Those who have been there describe it as an outdoor cesspool where detainees stockpiled their feces to throw at MPs. The prisoners also turned the dust beneath their feet into weapons by pouring their water rations and fashioning hardened dirt clods.
"It was worse than you can imagine on days when there was no breeze," said one MP assigned to the camp who requested anonymity because he signed a "nondisclosure" agreement before leaving Iraq. "If there was a hell, I can imagine that's what it smelled like."
The poor conditions had consequences.
"Abu wasn't running, none of the satellite prisons were running, so we had nowhere to send these guys," said one military officer assigned to the camp who has been ordered not to discuss Cropper. ". . . Anytime it got real hot, there were riots."
The uprisings rattled even the most seasoned of soldiers. Detainees would cut themselves on the concertina wire that surrounded the camp and try to smear their blood on MPs. They rushed the wire and threw rocks they had stored up.
"It was unnerving as hell," the officer said.
On June 9, the detainees rioted after one of the prisoners hit an MP. The prisoner was subdued, and one of the MPs took off his camouflage shirt and "flexed his muscles to the detainees, which further escalated the riot," according to the military report.
Rocks started to fly. One soldier was hit in the head. Another was struck by a tent pole. A prisoner pulled an MP through the concertina wire.
"This thing was out of control," the officer said.
The MPs were overwhelmed, and guards opened fire. Five prisoners were wounded. An investigation into the incident concluded that the shooting was justified, and no soldiers were punished. Still, the incident symbolized a severe lack of training, said another officer familiar with the incident.
Officers said they complained about the conditions at Camp Cropper, but no one seemed to listen. They said they were told that the military was preparing to open Abu Ghraib as quickly as possible.
"The challenge was trying to find a place to take them," one officer said.
Setting the Conditions
For 18 months, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller had run the detainee operation at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. On Aug. 31, he and a team of inspectors arrived in Baghdad to examine prison operations in Iraq. They visited Camp Cropper and the refurbished Abu Ghraib prison, which had opened Aug. 4.
Miller recommended that Cropper be closed. He made another recommendation: that MPs and military intelligence officers work closely to gather information from the prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
At Guantanamo, where suspected al Qaeda terrorists and Taliban fighters are kept and interrogated, Miller said, he found that separating MPs, who serve as jailers, from intelligence officers, who conduct interrogations, was counterproductive. He viewed MPs as key players in the process because they could serve as the ears and eyes of military intelligence officers on the cellblocks. Miller recommended that the new commander in charge of the 800th MP Brigade, Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, consolidate the two functions, permitting MPs to set "conditions for the successful interrogation and exploitation" of the prisoners.
One month after Miller's team left Iraq on Sept. 9, another inspection team arrived in Iraq. This one was headed by Maj. Gen. Donald J. Ryder, the provost marshal in charge of Army military police. Ryder arrived in Baghdad on Oct. 13, two weeks after Camp Cropper was closed.
Ryder conducted a "comprehensive review of the entire detainee and corrections system in Iraq." He found flawed operating procedures, improper restraint techniques, a lack of training, an inadequate prisoner classification system, understrength units and a ratio of guards to prisoners designed for "compliant" prisoners of war and not criminals or high-risk-security detainees.
But Ryder also found "there were no military police units purposely applying inappropriate confinement practices."
At Abu Ghraib, the guard-to-prisoner ratio was about one to 15, with one battalion guarding 7,000. Army doctrine calls for one battalion per 4,000 enemy soldiers. In civilian prisons, one guard per three inmates is considered ideal.
In his report submitted on Nov. 6, Ryder recommended that military police not "participate in military intelligence supervised interrogation sessions." He concluded that allowing MPs to "actively set favorable conditions for subsequent interviews runs counter to the smooth operation of a detention facility."
But even as Ryder was writing his report, Abu Ghraib was descending into chaos and worse.
Taguba's report detailed numerous lapses:
Standard operating procedures and copies of the Geneva Conventions were not distributed to the guards handling the prisoners. No one knew for sure how many prisoners were being kept at Abu Ghraib. It took MPs four days to document transfers of detainees within the prison, making it nearly impossible to determine who was where at any given time. Roll calls were supposed to be conducted twice a day. Instead, they were conducted twice a week.
When MPs did count prisoners, there was no standard method. Sometimes MPs lined up detainees in rows of 10 and counted them in bulk. Other times, the soldiers moved prisoners to one end of a cellblock, ordered them to walk and counted them as they passed by.
Sometimes, "Other Government Agencies," a common expression for the CIA, would bring prisoners to Abu Ghraib. MPs were kept in the dark about the prisoners' identities and the reasons behind their captures. On at least one occasion, MPs moved these captives around the Abu Ghraib complex to keep them away from inspectors with the International Committee of the Red Cross. MPs called the prisoners "ghost detainees." Military investigators called that practice an apparent "violation of international law."
Prisoners learned to exploit the chaos. Military investigators said they discovered one report that documented at least 27 escapes from the facility. Karpinski said 32 had escaped. No one knew for sure because oversight was so poor.
"It is highly likely that there were several more unreported cases of escape that were probably 'written off' as administrative errors or otherwise undocumented," military investigators later wrote.
After escapes, follow-up and accountability were lacking. Investigations into escapes were "rubber-stamped" and approved by Karpinski, but there was no evidence that any of the general's orders for changes were followed, Taguba found.
If the recommendations had been followed, investigators concluded, "many of the subsequent escapes, accountability lapses and cases of abuse may have been prevented."
Not Trained to Be Guards
The real trouble started after Oct. 15, when the 372nd Military Police Company, a segment of the 320th Battalion based in Cresaptown, Md., took over Abu Ghraib from a military police company based in Henderson, Nev. The 372nd soldiers, reservists from small-town America, were not trained to be prison guards. An MP officer from another unit at Abu Ghraib said he was struck by their unprofessionalism.
"It was lots of things, from the way they wore the uniforms to the way they interacted with each other," said the officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ". . . They didn't carry themselves like soldiers."
And their ranks were thinly stretched. Savage, the Florida corrections officer, said soldiers were far outnumbered by the prisoners, most of whom were common criminals. For the guards, the sense of a siege was ongoing. At night, the soldiers on the towers squeezed off hundreds of rounds into the darkness in response to the incoming mortar and small-arms fire.
The 372nd company commander was Donald J. Reese, 39, a salesman from New Stanton, Pa. His unit was given perhaps the most sensitive mission: control of Tier 1A, where "high priority" detainees were held for interrogation by civilian and military intelligence officers. The 203 cells of Tiers 1A and 1B were in a two-story cinderblock building known as the "hard site" at Abu Ghraib, so called to distinguish it from the many tent compounds on the prison grounds. 1B held "high risk" or trouble-making detainees.
With little experience in corrections to fall back on, the unit deferred to MPs who had civilian prison backgrounds.
"Detainee care appears to have been made up as the operations developed with reliance on, and guidance from, junior members of the unit who had civilian corrections experience," Taguba later found.
Those members included Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II, 37, who had worked as a correctional officer at Buckingham Correctional Center in Virginia, and Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr., 35, a divorced father of two who worked as a prison guard in Greene County, Pa. Frederick was the top enlisted man in charge of 1A, where he and Graner worked closely with intelligence officers, their colleagues said.
The officer in charge of the prison was Lt. Col. Jerry L. Phillabaum, a reservist who commanded the 320th Military Police Battalion. Taguba found that Phillabaum was "an extremely ineffective commander and leader" who did little after the Camp Bucca beating incident five months earlier to put his soldiers on notice about proper detainee treatment.
Phillabaum's boss was Karpinski, the reservist general in charge of the 800th Military Police Brigade. She rarely visited Abu Ghraib, Taguba's report found. Karpinski was based at the Baghdad airport.
Karpinski, a corporate management consultant from Hilton Head, S.C., was called to active duty in June. She said she tried to regularly visit each of the detention facilities under her command. But she scaled back as the insurgency stepped up attacks. She was responsible for 3,400 soldiers at 16 facilities, including Abu Ghraib.
Soon after the 372nd arrived at Abu Ghraib, it became clear that there was a problem at the top of the prison's chain of command: Karpinski sent Phillabaum, a 1976 West Point graduate, to Kuwait for two weeks to "give him some relief from the pressure he was experiencing," the report states. Phillabaum later told The Post he was gone from Oct. 18 to Oct. 31.
Also during this period, military intelligence made a focused push on interrogations in Tiers 1A and 1B, Karpinski would later say.
"The MI said -- they specifically came to me in the September-October time frame, and said, 'Man, could you talk to those prison guys and ask if we could have those cells?' " she later told The Post. "They explained why. I said, 'I will go down and campaign for you because I understand.' "
Taguba's report and interview with MPs and their attorneys reveal what happened next.
Spec. Sabrina D. Harman, 26, of Alexandria told Taguba's investigators that Graner and Frederick were responsible for getting "these people to talk." She told The Post that military intelligence officers "made the rules as they went."
Sgt. Javal S. Davis, 26, also with the 372nd, supported that account.
"In Wing 1A we were told that they had different rules," Davis, a college dropout from New Jersey, told investigators. He said intelligence officers frequently said things such as "loosen this guy up" and "make sure he has a bad night." Davis said he was told: "Good job. They're breaking down real fast."
Davis said Graner told him agents and military intelligence personnel "would ask him to do things, but nothing was ever in writing," the report states.
The methods moved from the unorthodox to the perverse.
They "handcuffed their hands together and their legs with shackles and started to stack them on top of each other by insuring that the bottom guys penis will touch the guy on tops butt," Adel L. Nakhla, a U.S. civilian contract translator, told military investigators.
The Post obtained a series of digital photographs that were taken by MPs. Scattered among the hundreds of travelogue images of Iraq were some depicting prisoner abuse, most of them stamped with dates. The earliest of the abuse pictures, stamped Oct. 17, shows a naked man handcuffed to a cell door. A photograph of a naked man handcuffed to a cot with women's underwear stretched over his head was stamped Oct. 18. A photograph of Pfc. Lynndie R. England holding a chain or strap that is wrapped around the neck of a naked man outside a cell was stamped Oct. 24. A picture of a pile of naked men was stamped Oct. 25.
England, 21, who grew up in a West Virginia coal town, worked as a processing clerk in the cellblock and is reportedly engaged to Graner. Military investigators said prisoners endured many other forms of abuse at Abu Ghraib. Soldiers kept some detainees naked for days and forced others to masturbate in front of female soldiers. They attached wires to the fingers and genitals of a man and threatened him with electrocution. One male MP had sex with female detainees. In one case, a detainee was severely injured during a dog attack. MPs broke chemical lights and poured the phosphoric liquid on detainees. One prisoner was sodomized with a chemical light.
Karpinski later said she was unaware of the abuse and blamed much of it on military intelligence personnel, who she said gave the MPs "ideas" that led to the abuse.
The Taguba report found that command of the prison was placed under military intelligence on Nov. 19, well after the abuses began. But Karpinski says that order formalized changes made earlier. The report also says that although there was not a clear order that the MPs were to "set conditions" for military intelligence interrogations, "it is obvious . . . that this was done at lower levels."
Phillabaum also said he did not know what was going on and blamed it on a few rogue soldiers, particularly Frederick.
"I have been made the scapegoat in this event," Phillabaum wrote in an e-mail to The Post. "Frederick was the NCO [noncommissioned officer] in charge of that wing of the prison. No one higher in his chain of command, starting with his platoon sergeant, knew what was occurring. If he thought that his actions were condoned, then why were they only conducted between 0200-0400 hours for a few days in late October and early November?"
Phillabaum added, "The acts of a couple of demented Reserve MP guards who are prison corrections officers at home were their own idea."
The soldiers' attorneys and relatives have said the MPs were following orders.
"It is clear that the intelligence community dictated that these photographs be taken," said Guy L. Womack, a Houston lawyer representing Graner, who has since been charged in the case.
The father of another charged soldier, Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits, 24, a mechanic from Hyndman, Pa., also said his son did the bidding of others. "He did what he was told," Daniel Sivits told The Post.
It is unclear when the abuses ended, though Taguba said in his report, it "is important to point out that almost every witness testified that the serious criminal abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib . . . occurred in late October and early November 2003."
On Jan. 13, a soldier in the battalion, identified by the New Yorker magazine as Spec. Joseph M. Darby, placed an anonymous note describing the photographs under the door of an Army criminal investigator.
The next day, an Army Criminal Investigation Division team set to work.
"On 14 Jan 2004 at approximately 0230 hours there was a knock at the door to my room," Frederick wrote in a statement sent to his family. "Cpt. Reese opened the door and said, 'Freddy, CID is here and they want to talk to you.' "
Frederick was told to dress and surrender his weapons. He wrote in his statement that he "questioned some of the things that I saw." But "the answer I got was this is how Military Intelligence (MI) wants it done."
Over the next three weeks, investigators would interview 50 people, including several 372nd MPs and 13 detainees.
Harman and Davis gave statements to investigators. They, along with five other MPs -- Frederick, Graner, Sivits, England and Spec. Megan M. Ambuhl, 29 -- were eventually charged in the abuse incidents and face courts-martial.
The military told the media that about the investigation in a one-paragraph news release on Jan. 16. But no details were provided -- and the release attracted little attention.
On Jan. 31, Taguba was assigned to investigate the officers involved. In March, he recommended that Karpinski and Phillabaum be relieved of their commands and given reprimands for various command failures. He recommended the same for Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade and his liaison officer, Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan.
Taguba said Reese, the commander of the 372nd soldiers, should also be relieved and reprimanded. In all, administrative actions were recommended against seven officers, three sergeants and two employees of a private contractor, CACI International. Steven Stephanowicz, an interrogator, and translator John Israel both worked with military intelligence officers. The contractors are receiving intense scrutiny on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers learned last week that 37 civilian interrogators worked with the military in Iraq.
Six of the seven criminally charged soldiers are now stationed in Camp Victory, a U.S. base near the Baghdad airport, where they are awaiting their fate.
Back in Washington, top officials are trying to minimize the damage to their careers. On Thursday, President Bush issued an apology from the Rose Garden. The next day, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld appeared before legislators and apologized.
He told the lawmakers to brace themselves for more photographs, videos and disclosures of abuse.
"It's not a pretty picture," Rumsfeld said.
Staff writer Jackie Spinner, correspondent Sewell Chan in Baghdad and research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.
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Reservist to Face Court-Martial for Prisoner Abuse
May 9, 2004
By CHRISTINE HAUSER and KIRK SEMPLE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/international/europe/09CND-IRAQ.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 9 - A reservist member of the American military police will be the first person to face a court-martial in connection with a widening scandal involving the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, the United States Army said in a statement today.
Also today, American and British troops fought for a second day in the southern town of Amara against rebels under the command of the radical Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, who has led an insurgency against coalition troops in southern Iraq.
Specialist Jeremy Sivits, a member of the 372nd Military Police Company, a reserve unit, faces three charges in the court-martial, including the maltreatment of detainees at the prison, conspiracy to maltreat detainees and negligently failing to protect detainees from abuse and cruelty, the Army statement said. If convicted of all charges, Specialist Sivits could face a combination of penalties including as much as a year in prison, reduction in rank to private, forfeiture of two-thirds of his pay for a year, a fine and a bad conduct discharge, military officials said.
The court-martial will begin on May 19 in Baghdad and will be open to the media, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, an American military spokesman, said today. ``We try to make these types of proceedings as transparent as possible,'' he said. ``It is not our intention to hide anything.''
Specialist Sivits is from Hyndman, Pa., and is thought by military officials to have taken many of the widely published photographs that depict prisoners being abused and humiliated at Abu Ghraib prison. According to his father, Daniel, Specialist Sivits was trained as a truck mechanic, not as a prison guard, The Associated Press reported.
The photographs are the most graphic evidence that has been publicly released from the investigation into accusations that members of several Army units, including the 372nd Military Police Company, systematically mistreated Iraqi detainees in the prison. The scandal has embarrassed the Bush administration and impaired its goals to establish democratic reform in Iraq and the Islamic world; stoked anti-American anger in the Arab world and provoked calls for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Mr. Rumsfeld, in testimony Friday on Capitol Hill, warned that investigators had more photographs, and even videos, of a ``sadistic, cruel and inhuman'' nature. One photograph, depicting a naked detainee being harassed by uniformed guards handling dogs, was obtained by The New Yorker magazine and published on its Web site today.
In addition to Specialist Sivits, at least five other soldiers from the 372nd, which is based in Cumberland, Md., are expected to face courts-martial. Six military officers have been issued career-ending reprimands.
The government of Prime Minister Tony Blair has also been grappling with its own prisoner abuse scandal, and the government said today that it would make a detailed statement in Parliament on Monday about investigations into abuses by British forces in Iraq. The announcement followed the government's disclosure that it was put on notice last February by the International Committee of the Red Cross that American and British troops were abusing prisoners, but withheld the information from Parliament.
In Amara today, Mr. Sadr's militia fired mortar shells at the governor's office and other British positions, a British official and residents told The Associated Press. No British casualties were reported in that attack.
The fighting was a continuation of clashes that began on Saturday when Mr. Sadr's militia, known as the Mahdi Army, went on the offensive and struck at British positions in Amara and Basra.
American troops have been putting pressure on Mr. Sadr's strongholds in the cities of Najaf, Kufa and Karbala, but the militia's attacks further to the south, in Amara and Basra, have complicated the American vow to kill or capture Mr. Sadr and suppress his resistance.
Also today, American and Mahdi Army rebels engaged in clashes in Najaf, news services reported. In Baghdad's Shiite enclave Sadr City, the cleric's militia burned tires in the streets to try to keep American troops from entering the area, news services said.
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New Head Of Prisons Defends Advice Guards Were to Be 'Actively Engaged'
By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 9, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11163-2004May8?language=printer
BAGHDAD, May 8 -- The new U.S. commander in charge of the military's prisons in Iraq on Saturday defended a recommendation he made last summer that prison guards become "actively engaged" in helping to gather intelligence from detainees at the Abu Ghraib detention center.
The commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, said that military police and military intelligence units at Abu Ghraib should be better integrated, with MPs helping to prepare prisoners for questioning. At that time, Miller was commander of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and military commanders in Iraq had sought his expertise on improving interrogations here.
Several months after Miller made his recommendation, about 20 prisoners were physically and sexually abused at Abu Ghraib. The military has launched six investigations into the abuse, filed criminal charges against seven soldiers and moved to issue administrative sanctions against seven officers and sergeants.
In early March, a wide-ranging internal Army investigation questioned Miller's recommendation that military police guards play a greater role in the intelligence-gathering effort. The investigation was completed March 3. One of its major conclusions was that military police were directed to "set the conditions" for interrogations by military intelligence operatives.
According to a report of the investigation, which was led by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, Miller urged U.S. commanders in Iraq to create and train a dedicated guard force that "sets the conditions for the successful interrogation and exploitation of internees/detainees."
In his report, Taguba found that Miller's recommendations "would appear to be in conflict" with Army regulations, dating to 1997, that state that military police do not participate in supervised interrogation sessions.
On March 22, the military announced that Miller would be transferred to Iraq to oversee 14 Army-run prisons as deputy commander for detainee operations.
Miller began his new assignment April 15, about two weeks before images of the abuse were broadcast on television. The details of the Taguba investigation were made public only in the past week.
In recent days, Miller has tried to assuage Iraqis' anger over the abuse. He announced twice-monthly family visits for detainees and an accelerated effort to release prisoners who are not deemed dangerous.
But Miller has also been questioned repeatedly about his role in establishing policies at Abu Ghraib when he led a 30-member team on a visit to Iraq from Aug. 31 to Sept. 9. The visit focused on improving the gathering of intelligence from detainees suspected of contributing to violent resistance against the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.
Miller said Tuesday that the team recommended "having the guard force passively involved in the ability to interrogate rapidly and effectively."
At a news conference Saturday, Miller also said he had provided Abu Ghraib commanders with a copy of the standard operating procedures used at Guantanamo Bay, which he said limit the role of prison guards in interrogations there.
"It says in that S.O.P. the military police are never involved in active interrogation," Miller said. "And so this is a clarifying point for the Taguba investigation -- done very well, but this point did not come out."
He added, "There was no recommendation ever by this team -- the team that I had here in August and September -- that recommended that the MPs become actively involved in interrogation, in the interrogation booth."
Miller has also been asked frequently about his recommendation, as the Taguba report summarized it, to "consolidate both detention and strategic interrogation operations" at Abu Ghraib.
On Nov. 19, the U.S. military command in Iraq, headed by Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, formally placed Abu Ghraib under the command of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, which oversaw interrogations at the prison.
A separate unit, the 800th Military Police Brigade, continued to have responsibility for guarding the detainees.
The Taguba report faulted the November order, saying it fragmented the command structure and blurred the lines between interrogators and guards.
On Wednesday, after leading journalists on a tour of Abu Ghraib, Miller insisted that he was not responsible for the November decision. "The recommendation was that someone -- one organization -- be in charge of the operations at Abu Ghraib," he said. "We did not make a recommendation on who it would be."
Miller said Saturday that although he had recommended that guards help prepare prisoners for interrogation, he was not responsible for the apparent breakdown in coordination between the military police and intelligence units.
"I certainly wouldn't speculate about the understanding of the leadership of the 800th or the 205th," he said. "Those recommendations were explained in a very detailed manner."
The commander of the 800th, Army Reserve Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, said recently that military intelligence soldiers dictated the treatment of the prisoners who were abused. The commander of the 205th, Col. Thomas M. Pappas, has declined requests for comment.
A new pair of units -- the 16th Military Police Brigade and the 504th Military Intelligence Brigade -- now has responsibility for the prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Miller said he changed the chain of command this month, so that both units now report directly to him.
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THE WARDEN
Prison Chief Defends Using M.P.'s to Help Interrogators
May 9, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/international/middleeast/09ABUS.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 8 - The head of Abu Ghraib prison on Saturday defended his strategy to have prison guards help prepare detainees for interrogation, a recommendation he made just before the worst abuses of prisoners occurred.
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the chief of interrogations and detentions in Iraq, said a series of recommendations he made after a tour of the prison last summer had played no role in the later abuse and humiliation of prisoners by American guards.
"The guidance and recommendations provided by that team and the one that I made were absolutely correct," he said Saturday at a news conference in Baghdad. He added that the ideas were in "keeping with how America does its operations."
General Miller and a team of experts visited the prison in August and September, at a time when the prison population was expanding and the guerrilla insurgency was intensifying. Military officials were frustrated by the lack of information about the insurgents.
One of General Miller's recommendations was that the American military police, serving as guards at Abu Ghraib, become "actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of internees," according to an internal investigation by an Army major general.
Two months after General Miller made his recommendations, some of the guards at the prison began systematically abusing and humiliating Iraqi detainees. Some guards have said they had been asked by intelligence officers to rough up the prisoners to help along the interrogations.
An internal Army report into the abuses left unanswered whether General Miller's recommendation about the prison guards had been officially adopted, but it said the guards had begun to prepare prisoners for interrogations.
The report, by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, criticized General Miller's recommendations, saying that allowing guards to "set the conditions" for the interrogations would "clearly run counter to the smooth operation of a detention facility."
General Miller, who took over Abu Ghraib a month ago, appeared before reporters on Saturday after a week in which American commanders here were bombarded with questions about the events that led to the abuse of the Iraqi detainees, and about the series of photographs that have been shown around the world.
"The recommendations that the team and I made was about how you could improve the interrogation process and the development and collection of intelligence," General Miller said. "Those recommendations that were made were based on the system that provided humane detention and excellent interrogation."
"I stand by those recommendations, and many of those are in process of being implemented today," he said.
General Miller, who at the time of his prison tour was in charge of the American prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, said he had never recommended that the guards at Abu Ghraib be involved in actual questioning of prisoners. But he said there was much they could do to help the interrogators, by observing the detainees, studying their behavior, and watching their daily habits.
He called the practice "passive intelligence collection."
"That means that they observe the detainees on a 24-hour-a-day basis," he said. "They are there in the cell blocks, they are there in the areas, and they understand what in the detainees life is ongoing, who they spoke with, whatever information may occur, what their mental attitude was."
General Miller had also recommended that the two principle functions at Abu Ghraib, detention and interrogation, be integrated under a single command. Some weeks later, American commanders appointed a military intelligence officer to take command of Abu Ghraib, placing him in charge of the military police.
A senior Defense Department official said Saturday that the Pentagon last year approved a series of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at the prison at Guantánamo Bay. But the official said he was not aware that interrogators had ever actually employed the tactics, or that similar techniques had ever been authorized for use at prisons in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib.
The official said the classified list of approved techniques included disrupting prisoners' sleep routines and requiring them to disrobe entirely for questioning, but not to be paraded through a cellblock, as some of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib were.
A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said Saturday night that "Interrogation techniques are tightly controlled, they're limited in duration and scope, and used infrequently. They must be approved on a case-by-case basis."
The harsher techniques, which were first reported in the Sunday issue of The Washington Post, required approval in advance by senior Defense Department officials and, if deemed necessary, the presence of medical personnel, the official said.
Some military police officers who served as guards at Abu Ghraib said they had been encouraged by members of the military intelligence brigade to rough up Iraqi detainees before they were interrogated.
In an interview earlier this week, General Miller said he had never recommended that military intelligence take over Abu Ghraib.
"The recommendation was that someone, one organization, be in charge of the operations at Abu Ghraib," he said. "We did not make the recommendation on exactly who it would be."
The deputy commander of American forces in the Middle East, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, told a House hearing on Friday that Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the ground commander in Iraq, signed a directive in November putting the military police at Abu Ghraib under intelligence officers.
General Miller suggested that while his recommendations were sound, they might have been carried out improperly.
"What I can tell you with absolute certainty is that those recommendations were explained in a very detailed manner," he said. "Their implementation was a command authority, and how it was done - obviously they made different decisions from that."
President Bush spoke of the abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in his weekly radio address, broadcast Saturday, promising a "thorough review" of all prison operations to ensure that similar "disgraceful incidents" would not occur again.
"Such practices do not reflect our values," he said. "They are a stain on our country's honor and reputation."
He blamed a "small number" of American servicemen and women for the abuse.
"This has been a difficult few weeks," Mr. Bush said. "We will learn all the facts and determine the full extent of these abuses. Those involved will be identified; they will answer for their actions."
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
--------
Military Abuse Is As American As Apple Pie
By Kirsten Anderberg http://kirstenanderberg.com
May 9, 2004,
http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=146&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
United States Senators and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld are declaring the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American military personnel "un-American." But when I look back upon U.S. history, it seems this type of dehumanizing behavior by soldiers upon the perceived enemy is common, if not an integral part, of the lure to participate, as a soldier, in war. In the systematic education of paid killers, the dehumanization of the opponent not only serves as a reason to kill the enemy, but also enables a person to detach from the humanity of another, and kill on command, like a robot, without thinking. We see this type of insulated, authoritarian thinking exhibited in the military, in police, and in the criminal (in)justice system in America. Anyone who has ever been dehumanized by a cop on the street, by guards in jail, or has been shredded through the U.S. criminal (in)justice system understands unwilling humiliation by a government authority figure, right here in America, land o' the free. It is as American as apple pie. My theory is that part of the spoils of being in war is abusing prisoners of war, whether we are talking about cops breaking in doors and brutalizing people in the "war on drugs" on the TV show "Cops," or riot police acting like robots with brutality against unarmed anti-war protesters in the "war on terror," or prisoners of war being humiliated to titillate American soldiers in Iraq.
Philip Caputo, in his classic book, "A Rumor Of War," says men he knew joined the Marines as a way to escape being an ordinary guy, and as a way to get out of living in their parents' basement, as well as a means to prove something. I grew up during the Vietnam War era, and I honestly hated all soldiers who had any part in that war throughout most of my teens and 20's. I thought they needed to NOT PARTICIPATE by any means necessary. I had more compassion on drafted soldiers, but even then thought they should have chosen jail over fighting the war. But then I took a university graduate seminar on the Vietnam War. I studied that war I had lived through as a kid, for months. I grew to see the soldiers themselves as victims of deception by the U.S. Government (and I am seeing something that looks and smells really similar right now in Iraq). I began to realize that Vietnam Vets Against the War, and I, were on the EXACT same side. And these vets had BEEN to war, so their arguments outweighed anything I have to say about it. I began to understand why Vietnam Vets were mad, and felt used, by the American government. I see a cousin to that anger now, as people who did support this Iraq war now turn against it, angry they were lied to by their own government, about why we are in this war to begin with.
Caputo talks about the "methodology" of war, and how they were brainwashed as soldiers to talk and think in twisted terms. Maps of Vietnam were blocked off and numbered so they referred to what number they were bombing on the map, rather than village names. They used words like "aggressive defense," for an assault. The indoctrination of the military, with its patriotic fervor, chanting in unison, "pray for war" was a source of excitement for Caputo, as a young soldier. He was happy when he finally got to "see some action" during 1965-66 in Vietnam, and felt he was helping to rid the world of Communism. But that broke down, once in the height of war. He said once in war, the reason soldiers fought changed. When one's buddy was killed in action, a soldier wanted to take revenge on all Vietnamese due to American racism. He said General Westmoreland had said that the more Viet Cong dead, the better, basically, and saw war as arithmetic of who lost more people. Thus killing more of "them" was "good" and meant we were "winning" the war. Caputo said soldiers also killed because they got into an odd survivalist mindset, brought on by a sort of culture shock, and exacerbated by the reality that they were only rewarded for killing. As Caputo puts it, "There was nothing familiar out where we were, no churches, no police, no laws, no newspapers, or any of the restraining influences." He comments on many experiences that are horrific and numbing in war, including seeing wild pigs eating napalm-charred corpses, and him thinking how odd to see a pig eating roasted people, as well as soldiers who saved pieces of Viet Cong fighters they killed, as savage prizes, they would display to one another. Everything is foreign in the war experience and disorienting, he explains. He goes on to say "Out there, lacking restraints, sanctioned to kill, confronted by a hostile country, and a relentless enemy, we sank into a brutish state."
In the Vietnam War, the U.S. soldiers could not tell ordinary Vietnamese citizens from "the enemy," mirroring our experiences in the Middle East right now. So they shot farmers as well as guerilla fighters. This caused an outcry, so the military told soldiers only to shoot Vietnamese people "if they were running." When that system failed also, the policy often became, if they were dead and Vietnamese, they were just considered Viet Cong (or the enemy). Caputo knew much of what he was experiencing in Vietnam was criminal activity, against humanity itself, but he also was honest enough to admit he liked the power he got from war. When Caputo returned from Vietnam, back to his parents' basement, he longed to return to Vietnam where he could command fighter jets to bomb a village over a radio. He felt guilty about this desire to return to something as sick as war. He also now felt alienated from his home in America due to the war experience, which also made him want to go back to war where people understood his mindset he had grown into. You cannot just pull people out of military actions like we had in Vietnam, and expect them to reintegrate immediately into society, in my opinion. Thus when soldiers returned from active duty overseas recently, and killed wife after wife, at military bases in Washington state, I thought about this assimilation challenge. We brainwash soldiers to become killing machines, but we do not seem to invest the same time and effort into brainwashing them back to NOT be soldiers with guns aimed to kill once we send them back out into everyday society! The huge rates of homeless vets testifies to the need for better assimilation processes for more productive transitions. Caputo said he could not do basic auto maintenance, but he could assemble an M 14 rifle blindfolded. Often vets return with skills you can only use in a war, bombing villages is not usually in an ordinary job description.
We see examples of how power corrupts in the fabric of American life daily. And I think that the desire to have power over people is a driving force behind many who join the military, whether they desire to control U.S. soldiers as management, or enemy soldiers as prisoners of war. Prisons, jails, the criminal (in)justice system, and police departments, all over America are dealing with this issue of abuse by the authority in charge. It is not just happening in Iraqi prisons, it is also happening in American prisons. Dehumanizing behavior from cops, jail guards, and prosecutors, is often the first red flag a U.S. citizen gets that their rights are about to be trampled upon by the state. It is not that hard to imagine American soldiers torturing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners of war, if you have ever seen the brutality of American police in the poorer neighborhoods, or on minority citizens. Anyone who has been abused by cops or jail guards is not "shocked" by the abuse of prisoners in Iraq by American soldiers. It is as American as apple pie.
I thought it was telling that Defense SECRETary Rumsfeld was asked in hearings today by a U.S. Senator if perhaps the recent abuse of prisoners in Iraq was "used to soften them up for interrogation." An outrageous statement, yes, but abuse of people is justified as normal interrogation technique all the time by police and criminal prosecutors. Very often the police justify the end result of a plea bargained confession (or bullied trade of a confession for their life, such as in Gary Ridgway's case) and disregard the means used in interrogation such as sleep deprivation, lying about evidence, charges and witnesses, yelling, violence, threats, etc., things I would consider abuse under normal instances. Caputo details Marine training abuses, saying the first goal of that abuse was to simply eliminate the weak. Then he says those abuse techniques are used to destroy each man's sense of self worth. Which is why this dehumanization abuse is also employed by police, jails and prosecutors, in my opinion. I do not find it a big leap to find evidence of U.S. soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners of war. That is why we sent them there, in many ways. That is how we trained the soldiers themselves, through yelling and humiliation and all kinds of strange degradation, to become soldiers. Abusing prisoners of war is what we trained those soldiers to do, in many ways, no matter what dainty words we use to give it a pretty package. There are probably racists in America who feel that the Iraqi prisoners should have NO rights, and they are "getting off easy" with degradation, as opposed to death. These same Americans feel the only prisoners of war who need to be treated as the Geneva Convention outlines are WHITE people. The U.S. female soldier pictured with an Iraqi prisoner on a leash, in her hands, with the prisoner forced to act as a dog, has supposedly said she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I have to wonder if she is referring to her behavior in the picture, or her getting caught?
Read Kirsten Anderberg's articles at http://www.kirstenanderberg.com.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
WORD FOR WORD
The Supreme Court Asks: Who Will Guard the Guardians?
May 9, 2004
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/weekinreview/09word.html
ON April 28, hours before CBS broadcast the photographs of Americans abusing Iraqi prisoners, the United States deputy solicitor general, Paul D. Clement, stood before the Supreme Court arguing the case of Rumsfeld v. Padilla. He was defending the administration's open-ended military detention of Jose Padilla, an American arrested two years ago on suspicion of conspiring with Al Qaeda to detonate a "dirty bomb" in the United States. Another American citizen, Yaser Esam Hamdi, was captured in Afghanistan and like Mr. Padilla has been labeled an enemy combatant; his case is also before the court.
The justices, clearly engaged, tossed many hypothetical questions Mr. Clement's way. One colloquy, in particular - on the question of whether the courts must give the executive branch a free hand on how to treat detainees, up to and including torture - takes on a different, even chilling, tone now that it appears not so hypothetical. Excerpts follow.
•JUSTICE ANTHONY M. KENNEDY: What rights does Padilla have, if any, in your view, that a belligerent who is apprehended on the battlefield does not have? Is Padilla just the same as somebody you catch in Afghanistan?
MR. CLEMENT: I think for purposes of the question before this court, the authority question, he is just the same.
Q. Can we punish him?
A. Could we punish him. Certainly we could punish him if we decided to change the nature of our processing of him.
Q. Would you shoot him when he got off the plane?
A. No, I don't think we could, for good and sufficient reasons --
Q. I assume that you could shoot someone that you had captured on the field of battle.
A. Not after we captured them and brought them to safety. And I think in every case, there are rules of engagement, there are rules for the appropriate force that should be used. And I don't know that there are any --
JUSTICE KENNEDY: If they're an unlawful belligerent?
A. Yes, even if they're an unlawful belligerent. Once they're - I mean, we couldn't take somebody like Hamdi, for example, now that he's been removed from the battlefield and is completely - poses no threat unless he's released, and use that kind of force on him.
JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG: But if the law is what the executive says it is, whatever is "necessary and appropriate'' in the executive's judgment, as the resolution you gave us that Congress passed, it leads you up to the executive, unchecked by the judiciary. So what is it that would be a check against torture?
A. Well, first of all, there are treaty obligations. But the primary check is that just as in every other war, if a U.S. military person commits a war crime by creating some atrocity on a harmless, you know, detained enemy combatant or a prisoner of war, that violates our own conception of what's a war crime. And we'll put that U.S. military officer on trial in a court martial. So I think there are plenty of internal reasons --
Q. Suppose the executive says, "Mild torture, we think, will help get this information?" It's not a soldier who does something against the code of military justice, but it's an executive command. Some systems do that to get information.
A. Well, our executive doesn't, and I think - I mean.
Q. What's constraining? That's the point. Is it just up to the good will of the executive? Is there any judicial check?
A. This is a situation where there is jurisdiction in the habeas courts. So if necessary, they remain open. But I think it's very important - I mean, the court in Ludecke v. Watkins made clear that the fact that executive discretion in a war situation can be abused is not a good and sufficient reason for judicial micromanagement and overseeing of that authority.
You have to recognize that in situations where there is a war - where the government is on a war footing - that you have to trust the executive to make the kind of quintessential military judgments that are involved in things like that.
-------- justice
'Patriot' games
Mend it or end it? A better question is why Bush wants to make the Patriot Act an election issue.
By ALAN BOCK Senior editorial writer, abock@ocregister.com
The Orange County Register
Sunday, May 9, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/ocregister/patriot-games.html
You feel like pinching yourself, but it's true enough. On April 6, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging one of the provisions of the "USA Patriot" Act, passed in haste by Congress after 9/11. Under provisions of that same act, the ACLU was not allowed to make its lawsuit public.
Three weeks later, after intense negotiations with the government, the ACLU was able to announce its lawsuit. But it could only release a redacted version; some pages had more than half the lines blacked out.
Even as the United States calls for other countries to be more open if they want to be good treaty and trading partners, the Patriot Act is increasing the range of U.S. government activities that can be kept secret from the public.
Now the cleverly named (but not precisely descriptive) Patriot Act is in play again, although in some ways it's a little curious. President Bush has gone out of his way to mention the act at recent campaign stops and administration people at the 9/11 hearings made a point of contending that the Patriot Act was the key to tearing down barriers between the FBI and the CIA and other agencies of domestic law enforcement and foreign intelligence so that different parts of the government could communicate with one another.
Does it really make much difference whether the Patriot Act is made permanent or not? In a word, yes: The fallout of it becoming permanent would include long- term deleterious effects on your freedom and mine. That's why it's important to understand the most dangerous provisions and the political campaign now underway to keep it in place.
Robert Levy, a constitutional scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, finds the administration push just now rather strange. "The 'sunsetting' [out of existence] of certain provisions of the act isn't scheduled until the end of 2005," he said. "None of the reform proposals is going anywhere in an election year, especially with a veto promise from the president. Why raise it as an issue now, unless he has polling data none of the rest of us knows about?"
Tim Lynch, who heads the criminal justice division of Cato, thinks he has a partial answer: "The Patriot Act is at something of a legislative standstill. Reformers don't have the votes to change the act just now, but the administration doesn't have the votes to make the provisions of the act that are scheduled to sunset in 2005 permanent either.
"The administration may be hoping that a presidential-level campaign on behalf of renewing the act will drum up enough votes so they can have their way."
Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, doesn't think this is a sound calculation. "Why make the Patriot Act an election issue," he asks, "especially when much of the president's conservative base considers it problematic? I just don't think the atmosphere of compliance that existed right after 9/11 is there today, and I don't think they can drum it up again. It just doesn't make sense to me."
Whether it makes sense or not, the Patriot Act is in play. Here are some of the key provisions that are either now unnecessary, having been overtaken by other events and practices, or are downright harmful to individual liberties.
FISA COURT ALREADY IN PLACE
The case made by administration officials before the 9/11 commission is that part of the reason 9/11 might have happened is that domestic law enforcement and foreign intelligence agencies, principally the FBI and the CIA, didn't communicate with one another and that the Patriot Act fixes the problem. There's some truth in this, but subsequent developments might have made it superfluous.
The Patriot Act did put the CIA back into the business of spying on Americans. It gives the CIA director the power to identify domestic intelligence requirements and urges foreign intelligence agencies to share information with law enforcement agencies. It also lowers the barriers that have deterred domestic police agencies from sharing information with intelligence agencies.
The point now might be moot, however.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, passed in 1978, created an exception to the fairly strict Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure requirements for wiretaps or searches, and established a special court to administer requests to do surveillance on suspected foreign agents. That court never had turned down a request until 2002, when it rejected an administration request for surveillance authorization, citing it was too broad and based partly on false and misleading information.
Attorney General John Ashcroft appealed that decision and an appeals court ruled that the FISA court had misinterpreted the statute and that the surveillance requested was to be authorized. That decision accomplished, for those who believe the government needs broader surveillance powers post-9/11, much of what the Patriot Act did. It isn't exactly what civil liberties advocates had in mind, but it does open the argument that in its wake the Patriot Act is superfluous.
There's also a strong argument that much of the non-communication between the CIA and the FBI had more to do with competing cultures and turf jealousy than with legal limitations. Passing a new law won't automatically make the two agencies any more likely to be buddy-buddy. Conversely, if the terrorist attacks have induced a new attitude of cooperation, statutes may not be necessary.
RIGHT TO DEMAND CUSTOMER RECORDS
The case the ACLU brought and couldn't publicize highlights another potential danger in the Patriot Act. The act gives the FBI virtually unchecked authority to issue "National Security Letters" (NSLs), which can demand sensitive customer records from Internet service providers and other businesses regarding people under investigation - and forbid the business from notifying the customer that the records have been searched. This kind of gag order trespasses on First Amendment free speech rights, and the NSL power is chilling in itself. Furthermore, while the Patriot Act was sold as a way to increase the effectiveness of government actions against terrorist threats, its provisions increasingly have been used in ordinary criminal cases. Recently, for example, it was used to gather evidence about a Las Vegas strip-club owner accused of bribing municipal officials. Not exactly the stuff of terrorism.
EXPANDED DEFINITION OF TERRORIST THREAT
So far the act has not been used against political groups, but its expanded definition of terrorism carries the danger. It could transform protesters into terrorists if their activities "involve acts dangerous to human life" to "influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion." Could that someday include mass demonstrations?
"Conservatives remember that the RICO Act was supposed to be used against the Mafia, but it ended up being used against pro-life demonstrators," Norquist told me. "They also remember the asset-forfeiture laws were supposed to be used against Colombian drug lords but were used to take property from people living near national forests. It's hard to know in advance when and how such powers will be abused, but it's fairly certain that they will be eventually."
Cato's Lynch thinks when Patriot Act renewal becomes an issue, those with reservations should insist on considering each provision separately.
WHEN WILL A VOTE OCCUR?
The best estimate is that the Bush administration will push to make the Patriot Act permanent - preferably on a single, up-or-down vote - when it believes it is most likely to succeed and most politically advantageous to do so. This could be before the November election, when Republicans in Congress will be most inclined to support whatever the White House asks for.
But reservations, from perhaps unexpected sources, are rampant.
In March the city council of Richmond, Va., became the 62nd governing body in the country to pass a resolution asking Congress to pass the "Safe and Free" reform legislation. That legislation is co-sponsored by Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig - who just might be the most conservative member of the Senate - and moderate Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois.
Critics of the Patriot Act include not only the predictable ACLU and American Library Association, but the National Rifle Association and American Conservative Union. This coalition just might give the administration pause - depending on what tracking polls report - and deservedly so.
CONTACT US: abock@ocregister.com or (714) 796-7821
-------- POLITICS
-------- propaganda wars
Forget Rumsfeld's fate; give us facts
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testified before the House Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill on Friday
DENNIS COOK,
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sunday, May 9, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/ocregister/rummy-fate.html
Epitomizing the seriousness of the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was as dour and professional as we've ever seen him, as he gave a presentation and answered questions before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Friday.
"These events occurred on my watch as secretary of Defense," he said. "I am accountable for them. I take full responsibility. ... I feel terrible about what happened to these Iraqi detainees. They are human beings. They were in U.S. custody. Our country had an obligation to treat them right."
We appreciated the straight talk and the straightforward answers by leading military members who testified alongside the Defense secretary. They dispelled the excuse that this was a training issue. It was an issue of character, values and decency, they admitted.
That's a good sign, especially after the excuse-making that some soldiers, including the Army general who was in charge of the prison, engaged in after the explosive photographs of abuse were printed and broadcast across the United States and around the world.
We're still a little stunned by the tendency of some administration supporters - though no one we've seen in the administration itself - who have downplayed the seriousness of the crimes.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman pointed out, accurately, that more is at stake than the success of the Iraq War. "We are in danger of losing America as an instrument of moral authority and inspiration in the world," he wrote, in a Thursday column calling for Mr. Rumsfeld to resign.
We're agnostic on the issue of Mr. Rumsfeld's political fate. The secretary of Defense serves at the pleasure of the president and can be removed for any reason at all, ranging from changing White House policy and personnel preferences to major transgressions. We don't see any reason he shouldn't continue in his job, becoming a key force in cleaning up the prison-abuse mess. Then again, we wouldn't mourn his firing or resignation, given how this scandal has played out.
Senate Democrats were right to be angry that Mr. Rumsfeld did not tell them about the abuse in meetings on Capitol Hill just hours before the explosive "60 Minutes II" report aired. Mr. Rumsfeld has insisted that he only learned of the horrific nature of the abuses after watching that news report, which first telegraphed the photos of abuse. The president has dressed down Mr. Rumsfeld for not telling him about the matter sooner.
We're disturbed also by reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross. As the Financial Times reported on Friday, the ICRC said "it had last year repeatedly asked U.S. prison authorities in Iraq to address serious and systematic ill-treatment of detainees, casting doubt on claims by the U.S. administration that they only became aware of abuses in the Abu Ghraib prison in January when a U.S. soldier came forward with photographic evidence."
We're also troubled that the U.S. military tried to pressure "60 Minutes II" to postpone the airing of the abuse photographs. The U.S. military should not try to suppress such information, even in light of the heated conflict in Fallujah at the time - a point made persuasively by U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minnesota.
There are still a lot of troubling questions that deserve better answers as Americans wait for a deeper understanding of the scope, causes and responsibility. As Mr. Rumsfeld himself put it on Friday, the actions were "a horror in the eyes of the world."
----
Rice Says She and Bush 'Strongly' Support Rumsfeld
May 9, 2004
New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/international/09rice.html
WASHINGTON, May 8 - Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld retains "the strongest possible support" from President Bush and the White House, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said Saturday, a day after Mr. Rumsfeld testified for six hours in Congress about the abuse by Americans of Iraqi prisoners.
"The president strongly supports Donald Rumsfeld and so do his colleagues, and I strongly support him," Ms. Rice said in an interview. "He's doing a good job as secretary of defense in one of the most challenging periods in American history."
Separately on Saturday, Vice President Dick Cheney said through his spokesman, Kevin Kellems, that "Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defense the United States has ever had. People ought to let him do his job." The remarks, which Mr. Kellems offered to The New York Times, were Mr. Cheney's first public words of support for Mr. Rumsfeld, one of his oldest friends. Asked about the calls for Mr. Rumsfeld's resignation, Ms. Rice said that "what the president expects, and what the secretary's doing, is getting to the bottom of what's happened. This is an awful situation." She added that Mr. Rumsfeld was making changes "to fix the problem."
The administration's communications offensive for the beleaguered Mr. Rumsfeld came as Democrats continued to call for his resignation and speculation raced through Washington about whether Mr. Rumsfeld would survive in his job. Mr. Rumsfeld himself fed the storm on Friday when he said in his hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee that "if I felt I could not be effective, I'd resign in a minute," and that it was "possible" that his stepping down would lessen the damage to America's image overseas.
Ms. Rice appeared intent on showing that Mr. Rumsfeld still had the backing of Mr. Bush. She took issue with a report in The New York Times on Saturday that quoted a person close to her as speculating that she might not be unhappy if Mr. Rumsfeld resigned.
Ms. Rice, who has had a history of tension with Mr. Rumsfeld over Iraq and the occupation, said in the interview on Saturday that the responsibility for the occupation, which has been marred by continued bloodshed and political unrest, lay not just with the Pentagon and Mr. Rumsfeld, but with the president's entire national security team. Last October, Ms. Rice assumed the lead role in the reconstruction and occupation of Iraq as head of a newly created Iraq Stabilization Group.
"This is a shared responsibility in what's going on in Iraq with all of us," Ms. Rice said. "There's the good and the bad. It's a difficult time, everybody knows it's a difficult time."
Ms. Rice also countered the argument of many Democrats that a resignation by Mr. Rumsfeld, or his dismissal by the president, would send a strong signal overseas about how seriously the United States takes the prison abuse scandal.
"The way to send a signal, and to show the world that we take this seriously, is to act, and to have our actions be commensurate with the very grievous nature of this," Ms. Rice said. "We know the seriousness of this. But the way you deal with this, the way you send a signal, is that you show how strong democracies react when something like this happens."
Ms. Rice said that the actions of the United States - investigations into the scandal, the public interrogation of Mr. Rumsfeld, and a military environment that permitted a soldier to come forward with evidence of the abuse - distinguished America from some other parts of the world. "The response has demonstrated how democracies handle situations like these differently," she said. "You don't have in dictatorships young soldiers who come forward to their superiors to expose behavior they believe to be wrong. You don't have a Congress to ask tough questions of the administration. You don't have investigations."
Mr. Bush chastised Mr. Rumsfeld in the Oval Office on Wednesday for not informing him about the graphic pictures of the abuse, which the president had first seen on the CBS program "Sixty Minutes II" the week before. The president's dressing-down was first made public by White House officials, who were authorized by Mr. Bush to tell reporters.
Although the president's words set off a furor of debate in Washington about whether Mr. Bush meant to diminish his powerful defense secretary to the extent that he would have to resign, Mr. Bush since then has voiced increasing support for Mr. Rumsfeld. On Monday, Mr. Bush is to make a rare visit to the Pentagon for a briefing on Iraq, and is expected to make a strong show of support for Mr. Rumsfeld there.
A White House official said that Mr. Bush had not extensively discussed Mr. Rumsfeld's case at Camp David on Saturday. The official, asked if Mr. Bush would ever accept Mr. Rumsfeld's resignation, replied, "It's just not even a viable question."
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The War's Lost Weekend
May 9, 2004
FRANK RICH
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/arts/09RICH.html?pagewanted=all&position=
JUST when you've persuaded yourself yet again that this isn't Vietnam, you are hit by another acid flashback. Last weekend that flashback was to 1969. It was in June 1969 that Life magazine ran its cover story "The Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week's Toll," the acknowledged prototype for Ted Koppel's photographic roll-call of the American dead in Iraq on "Nightline." It was in November 1969 that a little-known reporter, Seymour Hersh, broke the story of the 1968 massacre at My Lai, the horrific scoop that has now found its match 35 years later in Mr. Hersh's New Yorker revelation of a 53-page Army report detailing "numerous instances of `sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses' at Abu Ghraib." No doubt some future edition of the Pentagon Papers will explain just why we restored Saddam Hussein's hellhole to its original use, torture rooms included, even as we allowed Baghdad's National Library, a repository of Mesopotamia's glorious pre-Baath history, to be looted and burned.
The Vietnam parallels are, as always, not quite exact. We didn't "withdraw" for another four years after 1969 and didn't flee Saigon for another two years after that. We're on a faster track this time. News travels at a higher velocity now than it did then and saturates the culture more completely; the stray, silent images from the TV set at the gym or the p.c. on someone else's desk lodge in our brains even when we are trying to tune them out. Last weekend, the first anniversary of the end of the war's "major combat operations," was a Perfect Storm of such inescapable images. The dense 48-hour cloud of bad news marked the beginning of the real, involuntary end of America's major combat operations in Iraq, come hell or June 30.
The first sign was the uproar over "Nightline" from the war's cheerleaders. You have to wonder: if this country is so firm in its support of this war, by what logic would photographs of its selfless soldiers, either their faces or their flag-draped coffins, undermine public opinion? The practical effect of all the clamor was only to increase hunger for "Nightline" - its ratings went up as much as 30 percent - and ensure that the fallen's faces would be seen on many more channels as well. Those faces then bled into the pictures from Abu Ghraib, which, after their original display on "60 Minutes II," metastasized by the hour on other networks and Web sites: graphic intimations of rape, with Americans cast as the rapists and Iraqis as the victims, that needed no commentary to be understood in any culture. (The word "reprimand" - the punishment we first doled out for these crimes - may lose something in translation to the Arabic, however.)
Then there were the pictures of marines retreating from Fallujah and of that city's citizens dancing in the streets to celebrate their victory over the American liberators they were supposed to be welcoming with flowers. And perhaps most bizarre of all, there was the image that negated the war's one unambiguous accomplishment, the toppling of Saddam. Now, less than 13 months after that victory, we could see a man in Republican Guard gear take command in Fallujah. He could have been one of those Saddam doubles we kept hearing about before "Shock and Awe." But instead of toppling this Saddam stand-in we were resurrecting him and returning him to power.
Through a cruel accident of timing, each of these images was in turn cross-cut with a retread of a golden oldie: President Bush standing under the "Mission Accomplished" banner of a year ago. "I wish the banner was not up there," Karl Rove had told a newspaper editorial board in the swing state of Ohio in mid-April. Not "I wish that we had planned for the dangers of post-Saddam Iraq before recklessly throwing underprepared and underprotected Americans into harm's way." No, Mr. Rove has his eye on what's most important: better political image management through better set design. In prewar America, presidential backdrops reading "Strengthening Medicare" and "Strengthening Our Economy" had worked just fine. If only that one on the U.S.S. Lincoln had said "Strengthening Iraq," everything would be hunky-dory now.
Not having any positive pictures of its own to counter last weekend's ugly ones, the administration tried gamely to alter the images' meaning through words instead. Little could be done to neutralize the mortal calculus of "Nightline" - though Paul Wolfowitz trivialized the whole idea of a casualty count by publicly underestimating the actual death toll by some 200. But back in Iraq, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt went for broke. "This is not a withdrawal, it's not a retreat," he said, even as news video showed an American tank literally going in reverse while pulling away from Fallujah. To counter the image of the Saddam clone, the Pentagon initially told reporters that he was not a member of the Republican Guard, even as we saw him strutting about in the familiar olive-green uniform and beret. (Later the truth emerged, and the Saddam clone in question, Jasim Muhammad Saleh, was yanked off-camera.)
As for Abu Ghraib, a State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said "I'm not too concerned" about the fallout of these snapshots on American credibility in the Arab world. Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, took to three Sunday morning talk shows to say that only "a handful" of Americans had engaged in such heinous activities - even though that low estimate was contradicted by the two-month-old internal Army report uncovered by Mr. Hersh and available to everyone in the world, it seemed, except the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and his civilian counterpart, Donald Rumsfeld.
The general blamed the public's grim interpretation of the news from Iraq on "inaccurate reporting" that he found nearly everywhere, from CNN to "the morning papers." He and the administration no doubt prefer the hard-hitting journalism over at Fox. "I end up spending a lot of time watching Fox News," Dick Cheney explained last month, "because they're more accurate in my experience, in those events that I'm personally involved in, than many of the other outlets."
It was instructive, then, to see how Fox covered the images of last weekend - in part by disparaging the idea of showing them at all. Fox's (if not America's) most self-infatuated newsman, the host of "The O'Reilly Factor," worried on air that "Nightline" might undermine morale if it tried to "exploit casualties in a time of war." He somehow forgot that just five nights earlier he had used his own show to exploit a casualty, the N.F.L. player Pat Tillman - a segment, Mr. O'Reilly confided with delight, "very highly rated by billoreilly.com premium members." (Lesson to families who lose sons and daughters in Iraq: if you want them to be exploited on "The Factor," let alone applauded by Web site "premium members" who pay its host $49.95 a year, be sure they become celebrities before they enlist.)
Soon Mr. O'Reilly was announcing that he was "not going to use the pictures" of Abu Ghraib either and suggested that "60 Minutes II" should have followed his example. Lest anyone be tempted to take a peek by switching channels, a former Army interrogation instructor, Tony Robinson, showed up on another Fox show, "Hannity & Colmes," to assert that the prison photos did not show torture. "Frat hazing is worse than this," the self-styled expert said.
Perhaps no one exemplified the principles of Cheney-favored journalism more eloquently than the Sinclair Broadcast Group, the large station owner (and Republican contributor) that refused to broadcast "Nightline" on its ABC outlets. A spokesman, Mark Hyman, explained: "Someone who died 13 months ago - why is that news?" Been there, done that, I guess.
The administration has been coddled by this kind of coverage since 9/11, until fairly recently, and it didn't all come from Fox and Sinclair. Last Sunday, Michael Getler, the ombudsman at The Washington Post, wrote that "almost everything we were told before the war, other than that Saddam Hussein is bad, has turned out, so far, not to be the case: the weapons of mass destruction, the imagery of nuclear mushroom clouds, the links between al Qaeda and Hussein, the welcome, the resistance, the costs, the numbers of troops needed." He was arguing that, as good as much of the war reportage has been, "it is prewar coverage that counts the most."
If that coverage had been sharper, and more skeptical of administration propaganda, more of the fictions that sent us to war would have been punctured before we signed on. Perhaps a majority of the country would not have been conned into accepting as fact (as it still does, according to an April poll) that Iraq still had weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam was in league with al Qaeda. As fate would have it, last weekend was also when C-Span broadcast live coverage of the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner, many of whose attendees were responsible for the journalistic shortfall described by Mr. Getler. The revelers joined the president in pausing to mourn Michael Kelly and David Bloom, two of the 25 journalists killed so far in the line of duty in Iraq. Then it was back to Washington at its merriest, as the assembled journalists could return to drooling over such fading or faded stars as Ben Affleck, Morgan Fairchild and Wayne Newton.
That was an image, too - as ludicrous in its way as those second-rung Playboy bunnies turning up in "Apocalypse Now" - but not as powerful as those from the front lines. Mr. Koppel's salute to the fallen was heartbreaking, no matter what you think about the war; one young soldier could be seen cradling his infant child, others were still wearing the cap and gown of high school and college graduations. The Abu Ghraib images shocked us into remembering that real obscenity is distinct from the revelation of Janet Jackson's right breast, the cynical obsession of some of the Washington politicians also seen partying at the correspondents' dinner.
As we know from "Mission Accomplished" and Colin Powell's aerial reconnaissance shots displayed as evidence to the United Nations, pictures can be made to lie - easily. But over time credible pictures, because they have a true story to tell, can trump the phonies. Try as politicians might to alter their meaning with spin, eventually there comes a point when the old Marx Brothers gag comes into play: "Who are you going to believe - me or your own eyes?" Last weekend was a time when many, if not most, of us had little choice but to believe our own eyes.
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POLITICAL POINTS
Sorry's Such a Hard Word
May 9, 2004
By JOHN TIERNEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/politics/campaign/09POIN.html?pagewanted=all&position=
SHOULD the president of the United States have apologized for the Iraq prison scandal? The answer may seem obvious to many people horrified by the pictures, but presidential apologies are never simple, especially in a campaign. Just ask Senator John Kerry or President Bush.
Mr. Kerry declared at a news conference on Wednesday that "the world needs to hear from the president that the United States of America regrets any kind of abuse of this kind," but he promptly ducked when asked whether as president he would apologize on behalf of the military. "I'd want to get the facts," he replied. "And when I'd get the facts, I'd hold the people accountable and I'd make appropriate statements." When reporters persisted in asking if an apology was in order, he said he preferred to discuss the economy.
Mr. Bush was just as reticent in his interviews on Arab television. After he spoke of being "appalled" but did not make a direct apology, one was issued on his behalf. "The president is sorry for what occurred and the pain that it has caused," said Scott McClellan, his spokesman. But did a secondhand apology count? Or the indirect regrets Mr. Bush tried the next day, when he reported on a private conversation with King Abdullah II of Jordan?
"I told him I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families," Mr. Bush said. That was described in many newspapers as an apology for the soldiers' behavior. But some refrained from using the A-word on the grounds that Mr. Bush was sorry not for his mistakes or his subordinates' behavior but for the humiliation of Iraqis: a version of the "I'm sorry if I offended anyone" line that politicians use when they want to express regret without admitting they did anything wrong.
By contrast, consider the act of contrition by Donald H. Rumsfeld in front of senators and a worldwide television audience Friday. He started out by taking responsibility for the soldiers' mistakes and then said, "So to those Iraqis who were mistreated by members of the U.S. armed forces, I offer my deepest apology." How very unpresidential.
The Politics of Firehouses
ON Thursday morning, Republicans opened an assault on one of Mr. Kerry's strongholds. They took a camera into a firehouse.
The International Association of Firefighters became a kingmaker of this campaign by being the only union to back Mr. Kerry in his dark days last year. With their yellow "Firefighters for Kerry" T-shirts and banners, firefighters were a fixture at his speeches, and the campaign's signature photo opportunities in Iowa ad New Hampshire were Mr. Kerry ladling out chili dinners at firehouses.
Now a conservative group, Citizens United, is striking back with a television commercial scheduled to start running this week in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Shot Thursday in front of a ladder truck at the firehouse in Burtonsville, Md., it features praise for President Bush from James Boyle, a former president of the New York City firefighters' union and the father of Michael Boyle, a firefighter killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center.
"I'm a liberal Democrat and have never voted for a Republican president my whole life, but we're in a different world after Sept. 11," Mr. Boyle said during an off-camera moment at the firehouse. "Bush declared war on terrorism, and I'm going to stay with him. He's a leader." He said he decided to go public with his support after seeing Mr. Bush's use of images from Sept. 11 criticized by other people who lost relatives in the attacks.
The Bush campaign has also received support from Thomas Von Essen, the former New York City fire commissioner, and Republicans say there are plenty of other potential supporters in firehouses. The national firefighters' union's polling shows that 44 percent of the members call themselves Republicans, slightly more than the 40 percent who call themselves Democrats.
The union's general president, Harold Schaitberger, said his group had supported many Republicans at the local level, including the president's brother, Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida. But the leadership settled on Mr. Kerry early on, he said, both because of his policies supporting firefighters and because of his military record in Vietnam.
"Firefighters relate to John Kerry as someone who served with honor and led with courage," Mr. Schaitberger said. "Some of our members will vote for Bush, but I think a majority will vote for Kerry." Mr. Boyle, not surprisingly, had a different prediction.
The Politics of Firehouses (II)
IT'S easy to see the benefits a presidential candidate gets from firefighters, since they are heroic figures in the fight on terror without any of the controversy linked to soldiers overseas. But what does their new status as campaign icons mean for the firefighters themselves - and for the public?
As you might guess, the answer involves money. Firefighting was traditionally considered primarily a local concern, but both presidential candidates sound eager to make it their business in Washington. The Bush campaign, promoting the $500 million in grants it has budgeted for firefighters and another $3.5 billion that goes to firefighters and other first responders, says that it has vastly increased spending above the levels of the Clinton administration.
But that is not enough to please many firefighters, who accuse Mr. Bush of cutting back on what Congress wants to appropriate. The national union praises Mr. Kerry for supporting higher spending and a new federal program to pay for hiring local firefighters. In campaigning, he called for hiring 100,000 firefighters and frequently got cheers by saying, "We should not be opening firehouses in Baghdad and closing them down in New York City."
Some experts, though, say that Baghdad may need the firehouses more. Thanks to safety improvements, over the past quarter century the annual number of fires across America has been halved, and the drop has been even steeper in New York City. Firefighters say they are more vital than ever now because they are dealing with emergencies beyond fires, but some fiscal watchdogs question Washington's current enthusiasm for men in bunker gear.
"We don't need more firefighters in New York," said Diana Fortuna, the president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan group that supported Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's proposal last year to close eight firehouses. The mayor eventually closed six, but it took a political fight of the sort you will not be seeing in the presidential campaign.
Brian Wingfield contributed reporting for this column.
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White House to Discuss Stem Cells With House
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 9, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11166-2004May8.html
Members of Congress who have been lobbying the White House to loosen restrictions on research with human embryonic stem cells have been promised a meeting with a White House representative next week. Several Hill-watchers said it would be the first face-to-face meeting between lawmakers and the White House on the issue in more than two years.
In a letter sent to President Bush 10 days ago, 206 representatives said that the current rules, promulgated by Bush in August 2001, have slowed potentially lifesaving research. Leaders of the signature drive, including Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and Michael N. Castle (R-Del.), will be granted a chance to make their case in person to Kristin Lee Silverberg, special assistant to the president with responsibility for stem cells, at a meeting on Capitol Hill, White House and Hill sources said.
The meeting comes as pressure is growing on several fronts to allow federal funding of research on embryos slated for disposal at fertility clinics. A letter similar to the House version is being circulated in the Senate. And Nancy Reagan is to appear at a California event this weekend to support stem cell research. Some scientists believe the cells can form the basis of cures for Alzheimer's disease, which has long afflicted former president Ronald Reagan, as well as a number of other ailments.
"People on both sides of the aisle are realizing that the policy is not working," DeGette said. If the White House is not responsive, she added, she is confident that a "solid majority" of the House would legislate a change.
The meeting should not be taken to suggest that the White House is reconsidering its stance, said spokesman Trent Duffy, who added that House members can expect to receive a response to their letter soon. Research opponents have argued that it is wrong to destroy embryos for any purpose .
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