The public can be forgiven for overlooking news of a just-released report on prisoner abuse

Report’s findings enough to warrant independent into prisoner abuse

The public can be forgiven for overlooking news of a just-released report on the abuse scandal of U.S. detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s because it came out the same day as the report on Sept. 11 intelligence failures.

Unfortunately, in terms of candor and thoroughness, the detainee abuse report pales in comparison.

The 300-page document was written by Army inspector general Lt. Gen. Paul Mikolashek after a five-month inquiry. It was reviewed Thursday by the Senate Armed Services Committee, at a meeting that was hastily convened before a congressional recess.

The report increases to 90 the official count of confirmed or suspected abuses cases, including at those at Abu Ghraib prison. There also have been 20 prisoner deaths overall.

The report asserts the abuses were not the result of systematic failures, but rather of a few low-level soldiers run amok.

"These abuses, while regrettable, are aberrations," Les Brownlee, acting Army secretary, told the senators. "The Army is responsible for their acts. As the senior civilian leader in the Army, I accept this responsibility."

While finding no fault with the top brass, the report said military intelligence and military police had conflicting instructions, which might "create settings in which unsanctioned behavior, including detainee abuse, could occur."

The new conclusions seem implausible in light of the findings of the International Red Cross, which repeatedly warned top officials of the abuses starting in May 2003 --- a year before the scandal came to light.

Further, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the committee’s ranking Democrat, said the new findings are contradicted by the committee’s own investigations.

"It is difficult to believe that there were not systemic problems with our detention and interrogation operations," he said.

Levin pointed to White House and Justice Department memos from 2001 and 2002 that spelled out new rules of engagement for the impending war in Afghanistan. The DoJ’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that as enemy combatants, prisoners at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are exempt from the protections set out in the Geneva Conventions.

The lawyers told President Bush he had the authority to order torture. To his credit, the president refused to sign off on torture, according to a memo that surfaced in May.

But mistreatment took hold in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Incredibly, the new report found no widespread use of unmuzzled dogs spelled out in an earlier internal report by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. It also did not investigate the "ghost detainees" described in Taguba’s report --- on individuals kept incommunicado in apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions.

"If you didn’t look at the gross and egregious violations, what else didn’t you investigate?" committee member Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., asked.

Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, is concerned about the implications of the investigations.

"We’ve got to be darn sure that we are not overreacting in a way that is removing lawful tools or setting conditions that would cause people to be hesitant and to second-guess and to think we would not stand behind them if they’re acting in good faith to do what is proper in this situation," Schoomaker said.

That’s an excellent point. In spelling out new interrogation tactics, officials must guard against tying soldiers’ hands in ways that endanger U.S. forces or the public.

But buried in his report, the Army inspector confirms that military officials ordered "high-risk" interrogation methods without sufficient safeguards or training.

That alone --- taken with the ignored warnings --- suggests a serious breakdown in leadership at the least.

If anything, the new report underscores the need for an independent investigation that can be respected by the American people and the world

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2984013a8153,00.html