Posted on 08/26/2004 5:20:32 PM PDT by OESY
WASHINGTON While blaming sadistic night shift workers in a prison ill-equipped to deal with a massive influx of detainees, an independent Pentagon report also took civilian leaders to task Tuesday for “indirect responsibility” in prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
“You had this 'Animal House' mentality that occurred on the night shift,” James Schlesinger, chairman of the Independent Panel to Review Department of Defense Detention Operations, told a press conference following the report's release. “There was chaos at Abu Ghraib.”
The prison and those running it were not prepared to deal with the range of detainees pulled together in the confusion that followed the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, Schlesinger said, adding that military police arrived at the facility undertrained and with equipment missing.
Since the situation was widely known, blame does go up the chain of command, Schlesinger added.
“There was indirect responsibility at higher levels,” Schlesinger said. “The weaknesses at Abu Ghraib were well known.”
Such problems did not, however, rise to the level of explicit use of torture in interrogation.
“There was no policy of abuse,” Schlesinger said. “Quite the contrary.”
All the panel members individually took turns at the news conference to say that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should not offer his resignation, with Schlesinger, a former defense secretary himself, saying that any resignation of high-ranking officials “would be a boon for all of America's enemies.”
Another member of the panel, Harold Brown, declared that Rumsfeld had "handled it extremely well.”
Responding to the release of the report, Rumsfeld issued a statement praising the investigators' thoroughness and declaring that the Department of Defense remained open to policy changes.
“The Defense Department has an obligation to evaluate what happened and make changes,” Rumsfeld's statement said. “The independent panel's contribution will be of great help to us.”
In addition to members of the night shift at Abu Ghraib, the report had harsh words for Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander in charge of operations in Iraq.
“Sanchez should have taken stronger action in November when he realized the extent of the problem in Abu Ghraib,” the report said.
It added that Sanchez had not done enough to ensure oversight of Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the reservist who was in charge of the prison.
“His attempt to mentor Brigadier General Karpinski, though well intentioned, was insufficient in a combat zone in the midst of a serious and growing insurgency.”
The report went on to take Sanchez to task for failure to provide proper oversight both of detention and interrogation operations.
As for the widely disseminated photographs of prisoners being abused, Schlesinger attributed them solely to deviant action by the prison's night shift.
“The photos did not come from authorized interrogations,” Schlesinger said. “They were freelance activities of the night shift of Abu Ghraib.”
Responding to further questions on the issue, Schlesinger dismissed any notion that the photographs could have been part of interrogation techniques.
“None of the people in the picture was an intelligence target,” Schlesinger said. “Most of the people you see in the stack of prisoners in the picture were criminals.”
Abuses on the nightshift arose in an atmosphere of postwar chaos that Schlesinger said went to the core of the prison operation.
Not only was the facility under constant shelling, but Iraqi policemen were slipping arms to prisoners who were under detention for a wide array of reasons.
“Some were simple criminals, some were indeed a security risk,” Schlesinger said. “Some were innocents who happened to be picked up because their neighbors thought they had a connection to the insurgency.”
In addition to these circumstances, Schlesinger contrasted the one-to-one ratio of detainees to military police at Guantânamo Bay - which he described as “ideal" - with the ratio of one military policeman to 75 detainees at Abu Ghraib.
Even as he attributed the problems to Abu Ghraib, the report pointed to a total of 300 allegations of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. As of mid-August 2004, 155 investigations into the allegations have been completed, resulting in 66 substantiated cases, the report said.
About one-third of the cases occurred at the point of capture or tactical collection point, frequently under uncertain, dangerous and violent circumstances, the report added.
To avoid such situations in future, the panel gave 14 recommendations that included a further defining of the status of all detainees in all operations and theaters of action.
In giving a hint to the contents of another report on prisoner abuse scheduled for release on Wednesday, the panel also laid blame on medical personnel.
“The panel notes that the Fay investigation cited some medical personnel for failure to report detainee abuse,” the report said. “Training should include the obligation to report any detainee abuse.”
The report also recommended tighter reporting methods for getting information quickly up the chain of command.
“The secretary of defense should ensure the effective functioning of rapid reporting channels for communicating bad news to senior Department of Defense leadership without prejudice to any criminal or disciplinary action underway,” the report said, adding that such methods could be adopted from the special notification process used by the U.S. Air Force.
The nature of war has changed, the report said, prompting the necessity for the United States to update its approach to international humanitarian law.
“In doing so, the United States should emphasize the standard of reciprocity,” the report said. “And the preservation of United States societal values and international image that flows from an adherence to recognized humanitarian standards.”
While encouraging the Department of Defense to foster a stronger operational relationship with the International Committee of the Red Cross, the panel said the Geneva-based organization must also adapt to new realities very different from those conflicts from which the Geneva conventions were drawn.
The New York Times
"Aw jeeze...not this shit again!"
FMCDH(BITS)
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