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Saturday, May 8, 2004 12:38 p.m. EDT
Getting a Grip on the Iraqi Prison Scandal

America's self-destructive hysteria over the Iraqi prison abuse scandal reached a fevered pitch on Friday with two finger-pointing sets of hearings on Capitol Hill.

But rather than calm the waters, the White House has only made matters worse. President Bush's orgy of apologies and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's offer to pay reparations to injured Iraqis is likely to increase, not minimize, contempt for America in Arab capitals.

Particularly offensive was the president's personal apology to Jordan's King Abdullah, whose government only days before managed to extract confessions from several al-Qaida terrorists who had planned to kill 80,000 people with a chemical bomb attack.

No one knows the precise methods the Jordanians used to obtain those confessions, but it's a fair bet they didn't treat their terrorist suspects to a reading of the Geneva Convention.

Needless to say, the specter of American leaders groveling before feckless allies and even despots has brought delight to the likes of Al Jazeera and its terrorist-sympathizing readers throughout the Middle East. Not to mention delivering a gut-punch to the morale of U.S. troops currently risking their lives in Iraq, which is precisely what America's enemies at home and abroad were hoping for.

It's long past time for the U.S. to get a grip - and realize that we're in the fight of our lives with people who viciously murdered 3,000 of our neighbors in the heart of America's cultural and financial capital.

If the U.S. is serious about winning, it can't collapse into a convulsion of self-doubt and recrimination every time a probable terrorist claims he was mistreated by his U.S. captors.

Instead of apologizing for the actions of troops who have been dispatched to a Middle Eastern hellhole half a world away to keep the wolf from our door, the Bush administration should get off the defensive and begin to put this over-hyped episode in perspective.

A few points should be emphasized:

The overwhelming majority of inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison were suspected of having participated in or having knowledge of attacks against U.S. soldiers. Very few of the prisoners were common street criminals.

The photographs of prisoners being abused were taken at a cell block known as "The Hard Site," where the worst and most dangerous were being detained.

To date, there's no evidence whatsoever that any of the prisoners depicted in humiliating photos suffered anything more than embarrassment.

At least two of the abused prisoners have embarked on a whirlwind tour of media interviews. And one even says he'd like to come to live in the homeland of his "torturers," the good old USA.

None of the photos released to the media so far show anything like what has been alleged in anti-Bush-administration media reports, which have ballyhooed allegations of forcible sodomy and even murder with little evidence to back the claims up.

The murder charges: Two allegations of murder have been reported so far. The first is apparently based on an incident detailed in the Taguba report, which chronicles a prison riot during which suspected terrorists hurled rocks at U.S. military guards.
One soldier drew his weapon and fired in what appears to have been an act of self-defense, killing a suspected terrorist inmate. The soldier was charged with using excessive force and was dismissed with what was described in press accounts as "a less than honorable discharge."

The other charge of murder refers to an Iraqi detainee who reportedly died after being grilled by a CIA interrogator. No further details of this case have been made public, including what type of intelligence the suspect was believed to be withholding or whether there was any provocation.

The Taguba report also details several prison uprisings by suspected terrorists, some of whom had obtained weapons from Iraqi guards recruited by U.S. authorities. U.S. guards were repeatedly injured in these altercations, with at least one shootout in a jail cell reported. [Under these circumstances, humiliation and intimidation tactics might have been employed to keep suspected terrorist inmates too disoriented and demoralized to mount more prison attacks.]

It's worth reminding Americans about the case of Col. Alan West, who foiled a terrorist attack against his unit by extracting critical intelligence from an Iraqi detainee when he fired his weapon into the air during an interrogation. Because Col. West exercised the good judgment to bend the rules of the Geneva Convention, countless U.S. soldiers in his unit - not to mention the Iraqi detainee - are alive today.

It's also worth reminding Americans about the circumstances of the death of CIA interrogator Johnny 'Mike' Spann, the first casualty in the U.S.'s counterattack in the war on terror. Spann was killed when al-Qaida prisoners jumped him and his partner during an interrogation session in Afghanistan.

The only rape reported in any detail so far was allegedly committed by an Iraqi jail guard at Abu Ghraib who was recruited as part of the "Iraqicization" of the occupation. According to NBC's Jim Miklaszewski, this Iraqi guard may have raped several female prisoners and perhaps even a young male detainee.

The Taguba report includes an allegation of sodomy with a broomstick. This, along with most of the rest of the more lurid allegations being touted as gospel by the big media, is in fact based on the account of a suspected terrorist detainee. To date, no photographs have emerged to substantiate the charge, no eyewitnesses have gone public to corroborate the charge and no U.S. soldiers have confessed to committing the crime.
One wonders what prison inmates in America - or anywhere else, for that matter - would say about their jailers if asked if they'd been abused.

For some of the more partisan Democrats currently calling for Rumsfeld's head, the Bush administration would do well to remind the country that more innocents died at Waco than at Abu Ghraib - and nobody from the Clinton administration resigned back then. In fact, there was hardly any outrage whatsoever over what remains the worst law enforcement debacle in U.S. history.
The most problematic allegation by far is that GIs charged with committing the abuse were ordered to do so by military intelligence to "soften up" detainees in advance of interrogations.

Senior U.S. officials have so far characterized the abuse as the errant actions of a few miscreant GIs - and no less a military booster than Col. Oliver North said Friday that he'd be "shocked" if military intelligence countenanced, let alone ordered, the abuse. Nevertheless, there are too many sources for this charge to dismiss it out of hand.

And if the abuse was indeed committed as part of a "softening-up" intelligence-gathering process, the White House needs to confirm the facts and get the truth out as soon as possible.

Any delay will only fuel later charges of cover-up. Credible allegations that higher-ups were trying to pin blame for the scandal on grunts like Lynndie England and Charles Graner could ultimately cost President Bush critical support within the military's rank and file.

And, in fact, if prisoners were mistreated in a way that left no lasting physical injury in a bid to gain crucial intelligence and save American lives, President Bush, the military and America as a whole owe no one any apologies.

If explained properly, it's a fair bet that most Americans would accept the proposition that after 9/11, a new set of rules apply. If humiliating and intimidating suspected terrorists is what it takes to limit the number of military families who have to suffer through the horrifying news that their son or daughter has been killed in action, then so be it.

No one is countenancing a rerun of the Bataan Death March - nor, it should be noted - anything close to the way Saddam Hussein ran Abu Ghraib. In fact, most of those who now pretend to be horrified over the Iraqi prison scandal expressed not one whit of outrage over Saddam's genocide.

Meanwhile, Americans need to understand that they will not win the war on terror by playing pattycake with those who know what the terrorists' next move is.

In fact, the real atrocity would be if U.S. soldiers who have put their own lives on the line are placed at even greater risk in the name of guaranteeing the human rights of folks whose stated aim is to kill tens of thousands of American civilians by any means possible.

If the American people are not prepared to do everything possible to foil future attacks against our soldiers in the field, then the troops should be withdrawn as quickly as possible.

Then, having abandoned the war on terror abroad, Americans can prepare to face the consequences - the inevitable next 9/11 attack right here in our own backyard.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/5/8/124033.shtml