By Andrew Hammond
DUBAI (Reuters) - His apology was late and the damage done, said Arab and European commentators on Saturday, reacting to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"While he (Rumsfeld) has been in charge, murder, torture and humiliation were heaped on Iraqi detainees almost as a matter of course," the Saudi daily Arab News commented.
"Rumsfeld's apology came too late," said Jordanian analyst Hani Hourani. "I believe Rumsfeld should resign because the torture reflected a widespread policy adopted by the U.S. army in Iraq and maybe Afghanistan as well."
Rumsfeld took responsibility on Friday for abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops and offered his "deepest apology" to victims during U.S. Senate hearings broadcast live in the Arab world as well as the United States.
But Rumsfeld said he would not resign just to satisfy his political enemies.
Many Arabs and Europeans, however, said he should quit.
Reinhard Buetikofer, chairman of Germany's Green Party, a junior partner in the government, said: "The minister who is responsible for such things must resign: Mr. Rumsfeld."
VISIONS OF SADDAM
And Kuwait, a close U.S. ally in the Gulf, said the abuses by American soldiers recalled the brutality of Saddam Hussein's regime.
"For us in Kuwait these (abuses) mean a lot of things, and recall the brutal acts by Saddam Hussein's regime in the same prison, Abu Ghraib, which held many Kuwaiti detainees," Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Salem al-Sabah was quoted as saying.
Arabic newspapers, from Egypt's opposition al-Wafd to Saudi Arabia's semi-official Okaz, showed pictures of Rumsfeld looking troubled with his hands over his face.
The Arab News dismissed Rumsfeld's order for a review of the case.
"Rumsfeld's suggestion that an independent inquiry be set up into what happened is a waste of time, and Iraqis simply do not have time to waste," it said.
"If he resigns without fuss, perhaps he may begin to redeem himself by making a tiny contribution to the restoration of America's good name in the world."
Underscoring emotions in the Arab world, al-Wafd had a picture of a dead Iraqi child with the caption: "The new Mongols massacre the children of Iraq before the eyes of the world."
Of 60,000 respondents to a poll on the Web site of leading Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera, some 87 percent said the United States would be unable to improve its image among Arabs and Muslims.
"I used to agree with the American campaign in Iraq, now I'm very reluctant, I don't know if they are fulfilling the purpose they are meant to fulfil anymore," said Suliman Buhaimed of the American University of Kuwait.
Rumsfeld failed to impress ordinary Iraqis, who suffered three-decades of brutal Saddam rule before insurgents locked horns with U.S.-led occupying forces after last year's invasion. "Apology is not enough. What they have committed against the Iraqis won't be erased from our memory," Taha Duraib Hussein, 41, a shopowner in Baghdad, said.
BROKEN TRUST
"By committing these atrocities, the Americans have broken the trust between them and the Iraqis and it's very difficult to build it again," Salah Wadie, 30, said.
President Bush, seeking re-election in November, sought to repair the U.S. image by pledging on Arab television last week that Americans behind the prisoner abuse and killings of detainees would be punished.
A number of European newspapers said the scandal signaled the failure of Bush's Iraq policy.
"If Rumsfeld takes responsibility for what happened in Iraqi prisons, as he declared yesterday in the Senate, his only possibility...is to resign," leading Spanish daily El Pais said.
French left-wing daily Liberation said: "The torture was not the work of a handful of corrupt criminals ... They were really the disciplined cogs of a system ignorant of the Geneva Convention (on treatment of prisoners)."
(Additional reporting by Baghdad, Cairo, Amman, Madrid, Paris, Kuwait)
By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Pentagon officials rejected an Army plan last year to send an experienced military lawyer — who is also a Republican member of Congress — to help oversee the unit blamed for prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib complex outside Baghdad.
That left the prison complex, which holds up to 7,000 Iraqis, without an onsite lawyer to guide interrogations and treatment of prisoners.
The top lawyer for the 800th Military Police Brigade, the Army unit in charge of detainees at Abu Ghraib, later came under fire in an Army report about the abuse for being ineffective and "unwilling to accept responsibility for any of his actions."
The rejected lawyer, Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., and other experts say having had a lawyer at the prison might have prevented or at least mitigated the beatings, sexual humiliation and other abuse detailed in photographs and the Army probe.
"It's always good to have a lawyer around so you've got a conscience for the command and an opportunity to vet questions," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, who commanded an armored brigade during the 1991 Gulf War.
Pentagon officials confirmed there was no onsite lawyer at Abu Ghraib, but spokesmen for Army Secretary Les Brownlee and Pentagon personnel officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment Friday. Bryan Whitman, a spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, referred questions to the Army.
Buyer, a strong supporter of the Iraq war and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves, had volunteered to go to Iraq shortly after the invasion in March 2003.
In a telephone interview Friday with The Associated Press, Buyer said military officials all the way up to the Joint Chiefs of Staff had approved his assignment to the 800th Military Police Brigade, which has handled Iraqi prisoners of war since the beginning of the conflict.
Pentagon personnel officials and Brownlee rejected the assignment, saying the Army could fill the requirement another way. Brownlee also wrote to Buyer that his high-profile status could bring danger to the troops around him.
Buyer said he objected to David Chu, the Pentagon's personnel chief, and Charles Abell, Chu's deputy.
"I expressed the importance of having a (lawyer) at the camp," Buyer said. "You have to ask, when you had a qualified officer, and the civilian leaders, Dr. Chu and the secretary of the Army, said no, who did you send in his place?"
Soldiers from the 800th MP Brigade have been accused not only of abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib but also detainees at the Camp Bucca POW facility near Basra in southern Iraq. The military also is investigating a dozen prisoner deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, some of them in facilities run by the 800th Brigade.
Buyer served as a lawyer at a prisoner of war camp run by the 800th Brigade during the first Gulf War. His duties, Buyer said, included helping the International Committee of the Red Cross monitor conditions and ensuring guards followed international law such as the Geneva Conventions. He said he also questioned some Iraqis suspected of war crimes.
"The 800th MP Brigade performed exemplary service in the Gulf War," Buyer said. "There was no hint of any mistreatment or maltreatment of prisoners. It never happened. They had excellent leadership."
The investigation of Abu Ghraib by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba found serious problems with the brigade's leadership, including its commander, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski.
Taguba wrote that even after the abuse at Camp Bucca in May 2003, Karpinski did not give the unit proper training.
"I could find no evidence that BG Karpinski ever directed corrective training for her soldiers or ensured that MP soldiers throughout Iraq clearly understood the requirements of the Geneva Conventions relating to the treatment of detainees," Taguba wrote.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the classified report this week.