Hersh: The unknown unknowns of the Abu Ghraib scandal

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Sat, 21 May 2005 06:12:12 -0700

Subject:[Zepps_News] Hersh: The unknown unknowns of the Abu Ghraib scandal

 

 

 

 

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1489199,00.html>

 

The unknown unknowns of the Abu Ghraib scandal

 

Seymour Hersh: The 10 inquiries into prisoner abuse have let Bush and Co

off the hook

 

Saturday May 21, 2005

The Guardian

 

It's been over a year since I published a series of articles in the New

Yorker outlining the abuses at Abu Ghraib. There have been at least 10

official military investigations since then - none of which has

challenged the official Bush administration line that there was no

high-level policy condoning or overlooking such abuse. The buck always

stops with the handful of enlisted army reservists from the 372nd

Military Police Company whose images fill the iconic Abu Ghraib photos

with their inappropriate smiles and sadistic posing of the prisoners.

 

It's a dreary pattern. The reports and the subsequent Senate proceedings

are sometimes criticised on editorial pages. There are calls for a truly

independent investigation by the Senate or House. Then, as months pass

with no official action, the issue withers away, until the next set of

revelations revives it.

 

There is much more to be learned. What do I know? A few things stand

out. I know of the continuing practice of American operatives seizing

suspected terrorists and taking them, without any meaningful legal

review, to interrogation centres in south-east Asia and elsewhere. I

know of the young special forces officer whose subordinates were

confronted with charges of prisoner abuse and torture at a secret

hearing after one of them emailed explicit photos back home. The officer

testified that, yes, his men had done what the photos depicted, but they

- and everybody in the command - understood such treatment was condoned

by higher-ups.

 

What else do I know? I know that the decision was made inside the

Pentagon in the first weeks of the Afghanistan war - which seemed " won "

by December 2001 - to indefinitely detain scores of prisoners who were

accumulating daily at American staging posts throughout the country. At

the time, according to a memo, in my possession, addressed to Donald

Rumsfeld, there were " 800-900 Pakistani boys 13-15 years of age in

custody " . I could not learn if some or all of them have been released,

or if some are still being held.

 

A Pentagon spokesman, when asked to comment, said that he had no

information to substantiate the number in the document, and that there

were currently about 100 juveniles being held in Iraq and Afghanistan;

he did not address detainees held elsewhere. He said they received some

special care, but added " age is not a determining factor in detention

.... As with all the detainees, their release is contingent upon the

determination that they are not a threat and that they are of no further

intelligence value. Unfortunately, we have found that ... age does not

necessarily diminish threat potential. "

 

The 10 official inquiries into Abu Ghraib are asking the wrong

questions, at least in terms of apportioning ultimate responsibility for

the treatment of prisoners. The question that never gets adequately

answered is this: what did the president do after being told about Abu

Ghraib? It is here that chronology becomes very important.

 

The US-led coalition forces swept to seeming immediate success in the

March 2003 invasion of Iraq, and by early April Baghdad had been taken.

Over the next few months, however, the resistance grew in scope,

persistence and skill. In August 2003 it became more aggressive. At this

point there was a decision to get tough with the thousands of prisoners

in Iraq, many of whom had been seized in random raids or at roadside

checkpoints. Major General Geoffrey D Miller, an army artillery officer

who, as commander at Guantánamo, had got tough with the prisoners there,

visited Baghdad to tutor the troops - to " Gitmo-ise " the Iraqi system.

 

By the beginning of October 2003 the reservists on the night shift at

Abu Ghraib had begun their abuse of prisoners. They were aware that some

of America's elite special forces units were also at work at the prison.

Those highly trained military men had been authorised by the Pentagon's

senior leadership to act far outside the normal rules of engagement.

There was no secret about the interrogation practices used throughout

that autumn and early winter, and few objections. In fact

representatives of one of the Pentagon's private contractors at Abu

Ghraib, who were involved in prisoner interrogation, were told that

Condoleezza Rice, then the president's national security adviser, had

praised their efforts. It's not clear why she would do so - there is

still no evidence that the American intelligence community has

accumulated any significant information about the operations of the

resistance, who continue to strike US soldiers and Iraqis. The night

shift's activities at Abu Ghraib came to an end on January 13 2004, when

specialist Joseph M Darby, one of the 372nd reservists, provided army

police authorities with a disk full of explicit images. By then, these

horrors had been taking place for nearly four months.

 

Three days later the army began an investigation. But it is what was not

done that is significant. There is no evidence that President Bush, upon

learning of the devastating conduct at Abu Ghraib, asked any hard

questions of Rumsfeld and his own aides in the White House; no evidence

that they took any significant steps, upon learning in mid-January of

the abuses, to review and modify the military's policy toward prisoners.

I was told by a high-level former intelligence official that within days

of the first reports the judicial system was programmed to begin

prosecuting the enlisted men and women in the photos and to go no

further up the chain of command.

 

In late April, after the CBS and New Yorker reports, a series of news

conferences and press briefings emphasised the White House's dismay over

the conduct of a few misguided soldiers at Abu Ghraib and the

president's repeated opposition to torture. Miller was introduced anew

to the American press corps in Baghdad and it was explained that the

general had been assigned to clean up the prison system and instil

respect for the Geneva conventions.

 

Despite Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo - not to mention Iraq and the failure

of intelligence - and the various roles they played in what went wrong,

Rumsfeld kept his job; Rice was promoted to secretary of state; Alberto

Gonzales, who commissioned the memos justifying torture, became attorney

general; deputy secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz was nominated to the

presidency of the World Bank; and Stephen Cambone, under-secretary of

defence for intelligence and one of those most directly involved in the

policies on prisoners, was still one of Rumsfeld's closest confidants.

President Bush, asked about accountability, told the Washington Post

before his second inauguration that the American people had supplied all

the accountability needed - by re-electing him. Only seven enlisted men

and women have been charged or pleaded guilty to offences relating to

Abu Ghraib. No officer is facing criminal proceedings.

 

Such action, or inaction, has special significance for me. In my years

of reporting, since covering My Lai in 1969, I have come to know the

human costs of such events - and to believe that soldiers who

participate can become victims as well.

 

Amid my frenetic reporting for the New Yorker on Abu Ghraib, I was

telephoned by a middle-aged woman. She told me that a family member, a

young woman, was among those members of the 320th Military Police

Battalion, to which the 372nd was attached, who had returned to the US

in March. She came back a different person - distraught, angry and

wanting nothing to do with her immediate family. At some point

afterward, the older woman remembered that she had lent the reservist a

portable computer with a DVD player to take to Iraq; on it she

discovered an extensive series of images of a naked Iraqi prisoner

flinching in fear before two snarling dogs. One of the images was

published in the New Yorker and then all over the world.

 

The war, the older woman told me, was not the war for democracy and

freedom that she thought her young family member had been sent to fight.

Others must know, she said. There was one other thing she wanted to

share with me. Since returning from Iraq, the young woman had been

getting large black tattoos all over her body. She seemed intent on

changing her skin.

 

· Extracted from The Chain of Command, published in paperback by Penguin

Press (£7.99)

 

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