Invite U.N. to review prisoner complaints

At the risk of seeming to be piling on, we, too, add our voice to the
chorus of outrage over the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees by U.S.
military personnel.

Even though it might be argued that all war is an atrocity, the
mistreatment of those in detention violates the human rights principles
for which this country was supposedly fighting in Iraq. Once basic human
dignity is violated, what’s left to fight for?

Although the Pentagon says those violators will be punished, so far their
words speak louder than actions. Seven guards at the Abu Ghraib have been
issued reprimands, and several of those have been reassigned. They also
reportedly face criminal charges of assault and mistreatment.

But it’s hard to believe that low-level military police performed such
degrading acts on their own. Analysts say the humiliation of prisoners is
a tool used by interrogators to extract information. If true, that means
military intelligence officers or others higher up the chain of command
likely encouraged or even ordered such acts by the guards.

The fact that the guards posed for photos while humiliating the prisoners
makes it clear that they believed they would not be punished. Why allow
an illegal act to be documented unless you are either unaware it is
illegal or you don’t fear being held accountable for the evidence?

Although it is possible that untrained reservists might not have
understood the offensive nature in Arab culture of naked men being
paraded before women, surely they knew intuitively that humiliating
prisoners, even if not torture, cannot be tolerated in a just society.

And surely, President Bush must understand that Arabs will not accept
simply an expression of disgust and the prosecution of low-level guards.
If the shoe were on the other foot and Americans were being abused in a
foreign military jail, it’s hard to imagine the president demanding
anything less than an outside investigation and court-martials high up
the military chain of command.

That, of course is precisely what several world leaders have suggested in
the Abu Ghraib cases, while Iraqis are demanding the right to run the
jails themselves, or at least in concert with the Americans. Given the
severe damage done by the Abu Ghraib revelations to the credibility of
the U.S. mission in Iraq, some power-sharing in the prisons would seem a
mild concession to make.

What the mistreatment appears to signify is the failure of U.S. military
intelligence to gain useful information about insurgents and terrorists
by legal means. That’s a serious indictment by itself of the military’s
unpreparedness for an extended occupation that was bound to be met with
resistance. But to think that such a failure would be compensated for by
prisoner mistreatment goes beyond the pale.

We hope, as Pentagon officials believe, that prisoner mistreatment is not
widespread in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the fact that a high-level
investigative report prepared two months ago had not been read by top
military brass nor even been summarized for the president does not give
us confidence that an internal review will be adequate. At the least, the
United States should invite the United Nations to investigate prisoner
complaints and, if necessary, assume control of the prisons. If that
means that access by U.S. military intelligence operatives to prisoners
is cut off or reduced, so be it. So far, it appears that the U.S.
military has betrayed its right to such access.

http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=86685