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Post by RPankn on May 2, 2004 5:20:58 GMT -5
American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?
Issue of 2004-05-10 Posted 2004-04-30
In the era of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world’s most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly executions, and vile living conditions. As many as fifty thousand men and women—no accurate count is possible—were jammed into Abu Ghraib at one time, in twelve-by-twelve-foot cells that were little more than human holding pits.
In the looting that followed the regime’s collapse, last April, the huge prison complex, by then deserted, was stripped of everything that could be removed, including doors, windows, and bricks. The coalition authorities had the floors tiled, cells cleaned and repaired, and toilets, showers, and a new medical center added. Abu Ghraib was now a U.S. military prison. Most of the prisoners, however—by the fall there were several thousand, including women and teen-agers—were civilians, many of whom had been picked up in random military sweeps and at highway checkpoints. They fell into three loosely defined categories: common criminals; security detainees suspected of “crimes against the coalition”; and a small number of suspected “high-value” leaders of the insurgency against the coalition forces.
Last June, Janis Karpinski, an Army reserve brigadier general, was named commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade and put in charge of military prisons in Iraq. General Karpinski, the only female commander in the war zone, was an experienced operations and intelligence officer who had served with the Special Forces and in the 1991 Gulf War, but she had never run a prison system. Now she was in charge of three large jails, eight battalions, and thirty-four hundred Army reservists, most of whom, like her, had no training in handling prisoners.
General Karpinski, who had wanted to be a soldier since she was five, is a business consultant in civilian life, and was enthusiastic about her new job. In an interview last December with the St. Petersburg Times, she said that, for many of the Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib, “living conditions now are better in prison than at home. At one point we were concerned that they wouldn’t want to leave.”
A month later, General Karpinski was formally admonished and quietly suspended, and a major investigation into the Army’s prison system, authorized by Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, was under way. A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community. (The 372nd was attached to the 320th M.P. Battalion, which reported to Karpinski’s brigade headquarters.) Taguba’s report listed some of the wrongdoing:
Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.
There was stunning evidence to support the allegations, Taguba added—“detailed witness statements and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence.” Photographs and videos taken by the soldiers as the abuses were happening were not included in his report, Taguba said, because of their “extremely sensitive nature.”
The photographs—several of which were broadcast on CBS’s “60 Minutes 2” last week—show leering G.I.s taunting naked Iraqi prisoners who are forced to assume humiliating poses. Six suspects—Staff Sergeant Ivan L. Frederick II, known as Chip, who was the senior enlisted man; Specialist Charles A. Graner; Sergeant Javal Davis; Specialist Megan Ambuhl; Specialist Sabrina Harman; and Private Jeremy Sivits—are now facing prosecution in Iraq, on charges that include conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty toward prisoners, maltreatment, assault, and indecent acts. A seventh suspect, Private Lynndie England, was reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, after becoming pregnant.
The photographs tell it all. In one, Private England, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates. Three other hooded and naked Iraqi prisoners are shown, hands reflexively crossed over their genitals. A fifth prisoner has his hands at his sides. In another, England stands arm in arm with Specialist Graner; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up behind a cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other in a pyramid. There is another photograph of a cluster of naked prisoners, again piled in a pyramid. Near them stands Graner, smiling, his arms crossed; a woman soldier stands in front of him, bending over, and she, too, is smiling. Then, there is another cluster of hooded bodies, with a female soldier standing in front, taking photographs. Yet another photograph shows a kneeling, naked, unhooded male prisoner, head momentarily turned away from the camera, posed to make it appear that he is performing oral sex on another male prisoner, who is naked and hooded.
Such dehumanization is unacceptable in any culture, but it is especially so in the Arab world. Homosexual acts are against Islamic law and it is humiliating for men to be naked in front of other men, Bernard Haykel, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at New York University, explained. “Being put on top of each other and forced to masturbate, being naked in front of each other—it’s all a form of torture,” Haykel said.
Two Iraqi faces that do appear in the photographs are those of dead men. There is the battered face of prisoner No. 153399, and the bloodied body of another prisoner, wrapped in cellophane and packed in ice. There is a photograph of an empty room, splattered with blood.
The 372nd’s abuse of prisoners seemed almost routine—a fact of Army life that the soldiers felt no need to hide. On April 9th, at an Article 32 hearing (the military equivalent of a grand jury) in the case against Sergeant Frederick, at Camp Victory, near Baghdad, one of the witnesses, Specialist Matthew Wisdom, an M.P., told the courtroom what happened when he and other soldiers delivered seven prisoners, hooded and bound, to the so-called “hard site” at Abu Ghraib—seven tiers of cells where the inmates who were considered the most dangerous were housed. The men had been accused of starting a riot in another section of the prison. Wisdom said:
SFC Snider grabbed my prisoner and threw him into a pile. . . . I do not think it was right to put them in a pile. I saw SSG Frederic, SGT Davis and CPL Graner walking around the pile hitting the prisoners. I remember SSG Frederick hitting one prisoner in the side of its [sic] ribcage. The prisoner was no danger to SSG Frederick. . . . I left after that.
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Post by RPankn on May 2, 2004 5:31:51 GMT -5
When he returned later, Wisdom testified:
I saw two naked detainees, one masturbating to another kneeling with its mouth open. I thought I should just get out of there. I didn’t think it was right . . . I saw SSG Frederick walking towards me, and he said, “Look what these animals do when you leave them alone for two seconds.” I heard PFC England shout out, “He’s getting hard.”
Wisdom testified that he told his superiors what had happened, and assumed that “the issue was taken care of.” He said, “I just didn’t want to be part of anything that looked criminal.”
The abuses became public because of the outrage of Specialist Joseph M. Darby, an M.P. whose role emerged during the Article 32 hearing against Chip Frederick. A government witness, Special Agent Scott Bobeck, who is a member of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, or C.I.D., told the court, according to an abridged transcript made available to me, “The investigation started after SPC Darby . . . got a CD from CPL Graner. . . . He came across pictures of naked detainees.” Bobeck said that Darby had “initially put an anonymous letter under our door, then he later came forward and gave a sworn statement. He felt very bad about it and thought it was very wrong.”
Questioned further, the Army investigator said that Frederick and his colleagues had not been given any “training guidelines” that he was aware of. The M.P.s in the 372nd had been assigned to routine traffic and police duties upon their arrival in Iraq, in the spring of 2003. In October of 2003, the 372nd was ordered to prison-guard duty at Abu Ghraib. Frederick, at thirty-seven, was far older than his colleagues, and was a natural leader; he had also worked for six years as a guard for the Virginia Department of Corrections. Bobeck explained:
What I got is that SSG Frederick and CPL Graner were road M.P.s and were put in charge because they were civilian prison guards and had knowledge of how things were supposed to be run.
Bobeck also testified that witnesses had said that Frederick, on one occasion, “had punched a detainee in the chest so hard that the detainee almost went into cardiac arrest.”
At the Article 32 hearing, the Army informed Frederick and his attorneys, Captain Robert Shuck, an Army lawyer, and Gary Myers, a civilian, that two dozen witnesses they had sought, including General Karpinski and all of Frederick’s co-defendants, would not appear. Some had been excused after exercising their Fifth Amendment right; others were deemed to be too far away from the courtroom. “The purpose of an Article 32 hearing is for us to engage witnesses and discover facts,” Gary Myers told me. “We ended up with a c.i.d. agent and no alleged victims to examine.” After the hearing, the presiding investigative officer ruled that there was sufficient evidence to convene a court-martial against Frederick.
Myers, who was one of the military defense attorneys in the My Lai prosecutions of the nineteen-seventies, told me that his client’s defense will be that he was carrying out the orders of his superiors and, in particular, the directions of military intelligence. He said, “Do you really think a group of kids from rural Virginia decided to do this on their own? Decided that the best way to embarrass Arabs and make them talk was to have them walk around nude?”
In letters and e-mails to family members, Frederick repeatedly noted that the military-intelligence teams, which included C.I.A. officers and linguists and interrogation specialists from private defense contractors, were the dominant force inside Abu Ghraib. In a letter written in January, he said:
I questioned some of the things that I saw . . . such things as leaving inmates in their cell with no clothes or in female underpants, handcuffing them to the door of their cell—and the answer I got was, “This is how military intelligence (MI) wants it done.” . . . . MI has also instructed us to place a prisoner in an isolation cell with little or no clothes, no toilet or running water, no ventilation or window, for as much as three days.
The military-intelligence officers have “encouraged and told us, ‘Great job,’ they were now getting positive results and information,” Frederick wrote. “CID has been present when the military working dogs were used to intimidate prisoners at MI’s request.” At one point, Frederick told his family, he pulled aside his superior officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Phillabaum, the commander of the 320th M.P. Battalion, and asked about the mistreatment of prisoners. “His reply was ‘Don’t worry about it.’”
In November, Frederick wrote, an Iraqi prisoner under the control of what the Abu Ghraib guards called “O.G.A.,” or other government agencies—that is, the C.I.A. and its paramilitary employees—was brought to his unit for questioning. “They stressed him out so bad that the man passed away. They put his body in a body bag and packed him in ice for approximately twenty-four hours in the shower. . . . The next day the medics came and put his body on a stretcher, placed a fake IV in his arm and took him away.” The dead Iraqi was never entered into the prison’s inmate-control system, Frederick recounted, “and therefore never had a number.”
Frederick’s defense is, of course, highly self-serving. But the complaints in his letters and e-mails home were reinforced by two internal Army reports—Taguba’s and one by the Army’s chief law-enforcement officer, Provost Marshal Donald Ryder, a major general.
Last fall, General Sanchez ordered Ryder to review the prison system in Iraq and recommend ways to improve it. Ryder’s report, filed on November 5th, concluded that there were potential human-rights, training, and manpower issues, system-wide, that needed immediate attention. It also discussed serious concerns about the tension between the missions of the military police assigned to guard the prisoners and the intelligence teams who wanted to interrogate them. Army regulations limit intelligence activity by the M.P.s to passive collection. But something had gone wrong at Abu Ghraib.
There was evidence dating back to the Afghanistan war, the Ryder report said, that M.P.s had worked with intelligence operatives to “set favorable conditions for subsequent interviews”—a euphemism for breaking the will of prisoners. “Such actions generally run counter to the smooth operation of a detention facility, attempting to maintain its population in a compliant and docile state.” General Karpinski’s brigade, Ryder reported, “has not been directed to change its facility procedures to set the conditions for MI interrogations, nor participate in those interrogations.” Ryder called for the establishment of procedures to “define the role of military police soldiers . . .clearly separating the actions of the guards from those of the military intelligence personnel.” The officers running the war in Iraq were put on notice.
Ryder undercut his warning, however, by concluding that the situation had not yet reached a crisis point. Though some procedures were flawed, he said, he found “no military police units purposely applying inappropriate confinement practices.” His investigation was at best a failure and at worst a coverup.
Taguba, in his report, was polite but direct in refuting his fellow-general. “Unfortunately, many of the systemic problems that surfaced during [Ryder’s] assessment are the very same issues that are the subject of this investigation,” he wrote. “In fact, many of the abuses suffered by detainees occurred during, or near to, the time of that assessment.” The report continued, “Contrary to the findings of MG Ryder’s report, I find that personnel assigned to the 372nd MP Company, 800th MP Brigade were directed to change facility procedures to ‘set the conditions’ for MI interrogations.” Army intelligence officers, C.I.A. agents, and private contractors “actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses.”
Taguba backed up his assertion by citing evidence from sworn statements to Army C.I.D. investigators. Specialist Sabrina Harman, one of the accused M.P.s, testified that it was her job to keep detainees awake, including one hooded prisoner who was placed on a box with wires attached to his fingers, toes, and thingy. She stated, “MI wanted to get them to talk. It is Graner and Frederick’s job to do things for MI and OGA to get these people to talk.”
Another witness, Sergeant Javal Davis, who is also one of the accused, told C.I.D. investigators, “I witnessed prisoners in the MI hold section . . . being made to do various things that I would question morally. . . . We were told that they had different rules.” Taguba wrote, “Davis also stated that he had heard MI insinuate to the guards to abuse the inmates. When asked what MI said he stated: ‘Loosen this guy up for us.’‘Make sure he has a bad night.’‘Make sure he gets the treatment.’” Military intelligence made these comments to Graner and Frederick, Davis said. “The MI staffs to my understanding have been giving Graner compliments . . . statements like, ‘Good job, they’re breaking down real fast. They answer every question. They’re giving out good information.’”
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Post by RPankn on May 2, 2004 5:39:57 GMT -5
When asked why he did not inform his chain of command about the abuse, Sergeant Davis answered, “Because I assumed that if they were doing things out of the ordinary or outside the guidelines, someone would have said something. Also the wing”—where the abuse took place—“belongs to MI and it appeared MI personnel approved of the abuse.” Another witness, Specialist Jason Kennel, who was not accused of wrongdoing, said, “I saw them nude, but MI would tell us to take away their mattresses, sheets, and clothes.” (It was his view, he added, that if M.I. wanted him to do this “they needed to give me paperwork.”) Taguba also cited an interview with Adel L. Nakhla, a translator who was an employee of Titan, a civilian contractor. He told of one night when a “bunch of people from MI” watched as a group of handcuffed and shackled inmates were subjected to abuse by Graner and Frederick. General Taguba saved his harshest words for the military-intelligence officers and private contractors. He recommended that Colonel Thomas Pappas, the commander of one of the M.I. brigades, be reprimanded and receive non-judicial punishment, and that Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan, the former director of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, be relieved of duty and reprimanded. He further urged that a civilian contractor, Steven Stephanowicz, of CACI International, be fired from his Army job, reprimanded, and denied his security clearances for lying to the investigating team and allowing or ordering military policemen “who were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations by ‘setting conditions’ which were neither authorized” nor in accordance with Army regulations. “He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse,” Taguba wrote. He also recommended disciplinary action against a second CACI employee, John Israel. (A spokeswoman for CACI said that the company had “received no formal communication” from the Army about the matter.) “I suspect,” Taguba concluded, that Pappas, Jordan, Stephanowicz, and Israel “were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuse at Abu Ghraib,” and strongly recommended immediate disciplinary action. The problems inside the Army prison system in Iraq were not hidden from senior commanders. During Karpinski’s seven-month tour of duty, Taguba noted, there were at least a dozen officially reported incidents involving escapes, attempted escapes, and other serious security issues that were investigated by officers of the 800th M.P. Brigade. Some of the incidents had led to the killing or wounding of inmates and M.P.s, and resulted in a series of “lessons learned” inquiries within the brigade. Karpinski invariably approved the reports and signed orders calling for changes in day-to-day procedures. But Taguba found that she did not follow up, doing nothing to insure that the orders were carried out. Had she done so, he added, “cases of abuse may have been prevented.” General Taguba further found that Abu Ghraib was filled beyond capacity, and that the M.P. guard force was significantly undermanned and short of resources. “This imbalance has contributed to the poor living conditions, escapes, and accountability lapses,” he wrote. There were gross differences, Taguba said, between the actual number of prisoners on hand and the number officially recorded. A lack of proper screening also meant that many innocent Iraqis were wrongly being detained—indefinitely, it seemed, in some cases. The Taguba study noted that more than sixty per cent of the civilian inmates at Abu Ghraib were deemed not to be a threat to society, which should have enabled them to be released. Karpinski’s defense, Taguba said, was that her superior officers “routinely” rejected her recommendations regarding the release of such prisoners. Karpinski was rarely seen at the prisons she was supposed to be running, Taguba wrote. He also found a wide range of administrative problems, including some that he considered “without precedent in my military career.” The soldiers, he added, were “poorly prepared and untrained . . . prior to deployment, at the mobilization site, upon arrival in theater, and throughout the mission.” General Taguba spent more than four hours interviewing Karpinski, whom he described as extremely emotional: “What I found particularly disturbing in her testimony was her complete unwillingness to either understand or accept that many of the problems inherent in the 800th MP Brigade were caused or exacerbated by poor leadership and the refusal of her command to both establish and enforce basic standards and principles among its soldiers.” Taguba recommended that Karpinski and seven brigade military-police officers and enlisted men be relieved of command and formally reprimanded. No criminal proceedings were suggested for Karpinski; apparently, the loss of promotion and the indignity of a public rebuke were seen as enough punishment. After the story broke on CBS last week, the Pentagon announced that Major General Geoffrey Miller, the new head of the Iraqi prison system, had arrived in Baghdad and was on the job. He had been the commander of the Guantánamo Bay detention center. General Sanchez also authorized an investigation into possible wrongdoing by military and civilian interrogators. As the international furor grew, senior military officers, and President Bush, insisted that the actions of a few did not reflect the conduct of the military as a whole. Taguba’s report, however, amounts to an unsparing study of collective wrongdoing and the failure of Army leadership at the highest levels. The picture he draws of Abu Ghraib is one in which Army regulations and the Geneva conventions were routinely violated, and in which much of the day-to-day management of the prisoners was abdicated to Army military-intelligence units and civilian contract employees. Interrogating prisoners and getting intelligence, including by intimidation and torture, was the priority. The mistreatment at Abu Ghraib may have done little to further American intelligence, however. Willie J. Rowell, who served for thirty-six years as a C.I.D. agent, told me that the use of force or humiliation with prisoners is invariably counterproductive. “They’ll tell you what you want to hear, truth or no truth,” Rowell said. “‘You can flog me until I tell you what I know you want me to say.’ You don’t get righteous information.” Under the fourth Geneva convention, an occupying power can jail civilians who pose an “imperative” security threat, but it must establish a regular procedure for insuring that only civilians who remain a genuine security threat be kept imprisoned. Prisoners have the right to appeal any internment decision and have their cases reviewed. Human Rights Watch complained to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that civilians in Iraq remained in custody month after month with no charges brought against them. Abu Ghraib had become, in effect, another Guantánamo. As the photographs from Abu Ghraib make clear, these detentions have had enormous consequences: for the imprisoned civilian Iraqis, many of whom had nothing to do with the growing insurgency; for the integrity of the Army; and for the United States’ reputation in the world. Captain Robert Shuck, Frederick’s military attorney, closed his defense at the Article 32 hearing last month by saying that the Army was “attempting to have these six soldiers atone for its sins.” Similarly, Gary Myers, Frederick’s civilian attorney, told me that he would argue at the court-martial that culpability in the case extended far beyond his client. “I’m going to drag every involved intelligence officer and civilian contractor I can find into court,” he said. “Do you really believe the Army relieved a general officer because of six soldiers? Not a chance.”<br> Link: www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact
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Post by karpomrx on May 2, 2004 7:37:02 GMT -5
Is it possible that the brutality of a few soldiers is going to make people aware of the excesses of this war? Can the military find a few scapegoats( My-Lai again), and smooth things over because people can't believe that G.I. Joe can be a sexual sadist? If the govt. can keep people from being aware of depleted uranium, CIA drug smuggling, and a raft of other crimes, who's to say they can't find a way to make this into an "incident"-not at all in line with the day to day operations of the coallition forces bringing freedom to the oppressed masses of Iraq?
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Post by calabi-yau on May 2, 2004 7:55:41 GMT -5
If, as I'm told, the American media is already working at tampering down this story, the opportunity has already been lost on the Anti-war movement in the US.
The images were strong enough to have blown up in American faces in just a few days. It hasn't happened and the media seems to be working at rationalizing it now.
Maybe I'm wrong (I hope I am) but I'm quickly coming to the realization that a growing number of Americans may wish for a complete razing of Iraq in order to "get it over with once and for all." If it wasn't for the black gold...
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Post by Moses on May 3, 2004 1:29:51 GMT -5
Look how the AP story completely ignores the New Yorker story, which is being reported around the world: Probe: No evidence Iraq abuses were widespread By ROBERT BURNS - AP Military Writer - 5/03/04 WASHINGTON — A high-level Army investigation of prisoner interrogation techniques in Iraq has found no evidence that abuse by U.S. military police or intelligence officers is widespread, officials said Sunday. The review continues, however, and the Army has not determined whether all six soldiers charged with abusing Iraqi prisoners will face a military trial. The investigation, led by officials in the office of the Army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, is looking broadly at interrogation methods in Iraq. It is not a criminal investigation of the cases that occurred last fall involving the Army Reserve's 372nd Military Police Company, officials said. Among the most pressing questions is the extent of prisoner abuse and whether it is condoned or encouraged by U.S. military or civilian intelligence officials who have overseen the interrogations. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the Army Reserve commander who oversaw the prison system until recently, said in weekend interviews with the New York Times and Washington Post that she knew nothing of the alleged abuse until it was reported. She suggested it may have been encouraged by military intelligence officers, who kept tight control of the cellblock where the abuse occurred. ‘‘I think there are bad people masquerading as soldiers doing bad things to detainees,'' she said in an interview Sunday evening on ABC News. She said when she first saw the photos of abuse, ‘‘I really had to take a couple of seconds because I thought that I might really get sick from it.'' Attempts to reach Karpinski, who has returned from Iraq, were unsuccessful Sunday. Amnesty International, the London-based human rights group, said it has uncovered a ‘‘pattern of torture'' of Iraqi prisoners by coalition troops. The group called for an independent investigation into the claims of abuse and said it received ‘‘scores'' of reports of ill treatment of detainees. Dan Senor, spokesman for the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad, said the reported abuse is being aggressively investigated by the military. ‘‘Careers will be ended and criminal charges are going to be leveled,'' he told CNN's ‘‘Late Edition.'' Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was confident that the vast majority of American soldiers involved in the Iraqi prison system are acting properly. He said it was clear from the high-level Army investigation under way that abuse is not widespread. ‘‘I would say that categorically,'' Myers told ABC's ‘‘This Week.'' ‘‘There is no, no evidence of systematic abuse in this system at all,'' including the U.S. military prison system at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where about 600 suspected terrorists are detained, he said. ‘‘We review all the interrogation methods. Torture is not one of the methods that we're allowed to use and that we use. I mean, it's just not permitted by international law, and we don't use it,'' Myers said. The Joint Chiefs chairman said that as soon as the initial allegations came to light, an investigation team was sent to Iraq at the request of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. The central focus has been the Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, but Myers said the investigation is looking at prisons throughout Iraq to determine the extent of abusive or illegal handling of prisoners. ‘‘The report back is that it is not systematic, but that work is still ongoing,'' he said. More yada yada what the military line is: www.helenair.com/articles/2004/05/03/national/a02050304_01.txtSo what's with AP?! Their political reporters simply work the RNC spin into every single piece. Shouldn't there be an investigation of AP?
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Post by Moses on May 3, 2004 1:32:29 GMT -5
Here's the AFP story: Military had pre-warning of abuse May 3, 2004 - 3:23PM The US military knew troops had abused Iraqi prisoners for months before graphic, humiliating photographs surfaced last week, a journalist who revealed a US army report said today. "There were three investigations, each by a major general of the army," Seymour Hersh told the CNN program Late Edition. "Clearly somebody at a higher level understood there were generic problems." Hersh was speaking after his article in The New Yorker revealed a secret army investigation by Major General Antonio Taguba, which resulted in discipline and courts-martial for troops involved in the documented abuse. "Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of 'sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses' at Abu Ghraib," a US-run prison in Baghdad. Hersh said the abuses went far beyond those portrayed in the widely broadcast photographs of sexual abuse, nudity and humiliation that have angered the Arab world. However, the 53-page report also made it clear that the troops would not have attempted to break down prisoners in this way unless higher-ups or intelligence agents wanted them to soften the prisoners up for interrogation - or, euphemistically, to "set the conditions" for the session, Hersh said. Taguba's report found personnel assigned to the 372nd (Military Police) Company, 800th MP Brigade were "directed to change facility procedures to set the conditions for (Military Intelligence) interrogations". Army intelligence officers, CIA agents and private contractors "actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favourable interrogation of witnesses," Taguba wrote. Hersh reported that the investigation identified abuses such as "breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomising a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack and, in one instance, actually biting a detainee." - AFP www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/03/1083436527339.html
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Post by Moses on May 3, 2004 1:37:49 GMT -5
Houston Chronical Editorial. (Even they aren't as bad as AP): ------------------------------------------------------------------------ HoustonChronicle.com -- www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: Editorial May 2, 2004, 9:44PM DISGUSTING Abuse of Iraqi prisoners shames the United States During Saddam Hussein's reign of terror, the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad was a center of torture and execution and a symbol of the regime's depravity. Now the prison is a source of shame for the United States and its armed forces in Iraq. President Bush said he felt deep disgust upon seeing pictures of U.S. soldiers humiliating and abusing Iraqi prisoners. Although the military is widening its investigations into prisoner treatment and interrogations in Iraq, the president said only a few U.S. soldiers were to blame. Americans must hope the president is right and that there was no widespread and systematic abuse of prisoners. But if only a few were to blame, those few must include the Army commanders on the scene and perhaps their commanders, who failed to set and enforce proper standards and prevent the abuse from happening. The senior Army commander at the prison at the time of the documented abuse was Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski. The general says she didn't find out about the prisoner mistreatment -- which allegedly included both physical and psychological torture and went on for weeks or months -- until long after the fact. The general should have gotten out more. Her responsibility was to see that soldiers under her command did their duty and did not commit war crimes. Where was the officer corps at the prison while the mayhem was taking place? Was the work of guarding Iraqi prisoners too degrading for them to witness and supervise properly? Karpinski, returned to the United States, said soldiers in her military police brigade might have been encouraged to do wrong by military intelligence officers. But no one, not even the president, has the authority to order U.S. troops to commit atrocities. The military prison guards should have refused to comply and reported the situation immediately. According to The New Yorker magazine, an Army report found that military intelligence and CIA agents urged the guards to mistreat the prisoners to soften them up for interrogation. In light of the report's findings, "military intelligence" seems more an oxymoron than ever. Whatever value the interrogators might have gained through illegal mistreatment is lost in the backlash of ill will the abuse will cause among the Iraqi people and the Arab world. One of the soldiers under investigation wrote that private contractors hired to assist the interrogations encouraged the prisoner mistreatment. If true, this is another warning of the risk of hiring mercenaries not subject to military discipline and accountability, instead of using troops. The top U.S. military officer, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he had not read the Army report on prisoner mistreatment. He said it was working its way up the chain of command. The report was finished in February. Considering its shocking findings and the terrible cost the abuses will have to the effort to pacify and democratize Iraq, the report should not take three months to reach the top. It should have spurred immediate and vigorous action up and down the chain of command. In addition to the criminal investigation of soldiers charged with abusing prisoners, the Army is investigating whether to to hold commanders responsible. This nonissue requires no investigation. Commanders are responsible for the behavior of their troops. There is no need to postpone a command shake-up in Iraqi prison operations and military intelligence. Most U.S. troops do their duty under trying conditions to the best of their ability. Their job will be all the harder because of the bad apples and the commanders who kept their eyes averted from the barrel. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ <br>HoustonChronicle.com -- www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: Editorial This article is: www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/2545926
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Post by RPankn on May 3, 2004 3:28:33 GMT -5
A Venezuelan take on the Iraqi prisoner abuse situation.Underlying everything is racism and chauvinismVHeadline.com commentarist Chris Herz writes: The exposure by the American CBS network, after sitting on the story for weeks ... going to publication only when other media were about to break it ... of systematic homosexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners of war by their military jailers is a nine-days wonder here. Our own mass media have taken the opportunity to at least to some extent break with the careful scripting and editorial censorship hitherto characterizing their reporting from the new colony. But however our official media try for a new-born sense of journalistic integrity there are still many facts that they will avoid ... Vheadline.com will not! By chance the military police unit involved drew much of their troop strength from the area of Western Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia adjacent to my old hometown of Frederick, Maryland. I know these people well. The once great port city of Baltimore, the once great manufacturing center at Hagerstown in Maryland and the cities of central Pennsylvania and Virginia have in common the fact that they have been severely devastated by the flight of jobs and factories to third-world sweat-shops. The resulting social dislocations -- expanding impoverishment -- have led to more marginalization and criminality. There exists also a substantial drug culture. Of course, given their economic fragility, the local minority populations are disproportionately impacted by this loss of jobs. American states and the federal government have chosen to deal with all of this social dislocation with mass incarceration. We are just a bit over 5% of global population, yet we have 25% of the world's prisoners, half of them African-American, and many of the rest Mexican-Chicano or other Ibero-Americans. At least half of the prisoners are locked up for low-level drug crime. We have per capita incarceration rates between 10 and 20 times higher than Western European nations. For us, for profound historical reasons going back through the Civil Rights and Anti-War Struggles of the sixties and seventies, to the Civil War and beyond, crime does not wear an Anglo complexion. Our justice system and the police themselves descend from "patterollers" -- the militias first designed to control an extensive population of black slaves, and then new waves of immigrants, always racially distinguished from the majority Anglo population. Underlying everything is the racism and chauvinism of the modern Republican Party and its "third way" Democratic imitators. And so the disproportion of minority prisoners. And a like disproportion of Anglo jail-guards. Since I lived in Maryland and worked for quite a while on behalf of my congregation in the prison ministry, I know a great deal about that state's system, whence came some of the abusers. That state's prison population is nearly 80% black while that is so for only 28% of the general population. The design to influence electoral demographics and to reward safely white, conservative areas with state construction and jobs has led to the concentration in Hagerstown of most state penal institutions. While the prisoners cannot vote, still they are counted as part of the local electorate for purposes of apportionment. Thus the liberal urban area is weakened and the conservatives -- many profiting by the growth of a prison/industrial complex are strengthened. Also, the criminalization of a full third of its male population has totally devastated the ability of the African American urban community to organize politically or in any other way. The other states operate in a similar manner. Few whites give a d**n about what happens to blacks in the best of circumstances -- and criminals are just utterly beyond the pale. These prisons, staffed by guards who in many cases fly from the vehicles they drive to work Confederate flags, are a fertile breeding-ground for the sorts of abuse that we have seen in Iraq. And their administrators choose usually to look the other way at best, and often collaborate with the racism overtly. Basically, in their attitudes toward prisoners these individuals took with them to Iraq the corporate culture they had imbibed at home. And these were the persons recruited by the army to serve as guards -- perhaps we should call them keepers -- via the national guard/reserve. Also, in the civil, as in the military system, keepers of one sex are frequently permitted to "supervise" prisoners of the opposite. Frankly, in this disgraceful escapade all that has surprised me is that it took so long to surface. Apparently there are other such incidents of prisoner abuse ready to burst into public view. The spiraling scandal has also engulfed the British units in Iraq ... there is apparently in that country a dislike of "sand-black persons" equal to our own. I have not, to be just, heard often of such overt torment of civil prisoners in domestic jails, but it does occasionally happen. Usually, however, violent homosexual rape at the hands of insane or psychotic prisoners is allowed to occur almost without check. I rarely have heard of a criminal prosecution for this crime, although activist and human rights organizations in the USA estimate up to 300,000 such incidents per year nationally. I have even read that, a while back, at a public forum, the chief officer of the California system was heard jesting about introducing new prisoners to their six-foot three, 250 pound cell mate, Bubba who offers the following greeting: "Hi, I'm Bubba, and you're my new wife." Lacking access to Lexis-Nexis I cannot be sure of the exact quote, nor of the person's name or title, but this man's comments were certainly to that effect. They were reported publicaly. There is comment in the Guardian today to the effect that the British, as signatory to the Rome Convention, the UN instrument establishing the International Criminal Court, are concerned that their personnel are exposed to international trial for any incident involving the abuse of POWs, and thus will be compelled to deal with investigating these matters themselves -- thoroughly -- or run the risk of having the business transferred to the Hague. The treaty offers this option to its signatories. But non-signatory powers, specifically the United States, are not immune to the international process. They do not enjoy the right to interpose their own judicial process between perpetrators and the Court. Any state party can make complaint to the International Criminal Court about any other. And aggressive war, as was once said by our own Justice Robert Jackson remains "the supreme international crime." Perhaps Venezuelan or Cuban diplomats can bring such complaint. And not against a few stupid ignorant troopers, but against their commander-in-chief, President George W. Bush ... and don't forget Tony Blair. But, in Holland ... where the Court is located ... these crooks are not likely to meet Bubba. Only Slobodan Milosevic. Chris Herz cdherz44@yahoo.com Link: www.vheadline.com/printer_news.asp?id=20980
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Post by RPankn on May 3, 2004 3:40:52 GMT -5
You know what ticks me off? The fact that this witch has shown no remorse that this happened under her command, nor has she apologized for her dereliction. Where the hell was this woman that she seemed "surprised" and "shocked" that this was going on in her prison under her command. The troops' behavior and their excuses for it are just as deplorable, but this woman should be held accountable like the rest of them instead of getting, what was it, a demotion and a reprimand?
It looks like she has a bright future in either the Republican or Democratic Parties because she's good at pointing fingers and absolving herself of any blame for her own mistakes.
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Post by Moses on May 3, 2004 7:56:34 GMT -5
Note that her background was "Intelligence" -- I think DIA? There's a reason they put her in charge of the prisons, rather than someone with a background in this.
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Post by Moses on May 3, 2004 8:00:12 GMT -5
Re: the Times editorial, according to Socialist party. www.wsws.org/articles/2004/may2004/tort-m03.shtmlBut such is the gravity of this damage to US policy in the Arab and Muslim world that little or nothing can be done to contain it. The televised images seen by Iraqis have largely sealed the fate of the US occupation. They have confirmed the widespread and well-founded opinion that the war launched by the Bush administration was aimed not at liberating but subjugating the people of Iraq and expropriating the country’s oil wealth. And they have created vast new reservoirs of support for a nationalist resistance that had already gained a mass following. Iraqis viewing the hooded, naked men forced by grinning Americans to pile onto each other, simulate sex acts and, in one case, stand on a box with electrodes attached to the prisoner’s body, were left to wonder whether the faces behind the masks were those of their relatives, neighbors or co-workers, tens of thousands of whom have disappeared into a network of concentration camps set up by the US occupation. But such is the gravity of this damage to US policy in the Arab and Muslim world that little or nothing can be done to contain it. The televised images seen by Iraqis have largely sealed the fate of the US occupation. They have confirmed the widespread and well-founded opinion that the war launched by the Bush administration was aimed not at liberating but subjugating the people of Iraq and expropriating the country’s oil wealth. And they have created vast new reservoirs of support for a nationalist resistance that had already gained a mass following. Iraqis viewing the hooded, naked men forced by grinning Americans to pile onto each other, simulate sex acts and, in one case, stand on a box with electrodes attached to the prisoner’s body, were left to wonder whether the faces behind the masks were those of their relatives, neighbors or co-workers, tens of thousands of whom have disappeared into a network of concentration camps set up by the US occupation. So the US media’s efforts have largely been aimed at softening the impact of these revelations upon the American people themselves, among whom antiwar sentiment has never been higher. Two newspapers that serve as national voices for the ruling political establishment made this clear in a pair of editorials published over the weekend. “President Bush spoke for all Americans of conscience yesterday when he expressed disgust” over the photographs, the New York Times declared in an editorial Saturday entitled “Abuses at Abu Ghraib.”It continued, stating that the torture and abuse captured in the photos defied “the accepted conventions of war” and supporting Bush’s contention that the crimes committed at Abu Ghraib prison were the work merely of a “few soldiers” who would be “taken care of.”<br> The media—including the Times—revel in proclaiming Bush the “commander-in-chief” as if it were some royal title. Yet now, somehow, he is the voice of “conscience” who bears no responsibility for the actions of those soldiers whom he presumes to command. It can be safely assumed that Bush was neither shocked nor disgusted. The White House and the Pentagon had known about these atrocities for months and had done all they could to prevent them from being exposed. As for the claim that torture at the US concentration camps is a crime carried out by just a handful of depraved military police reservists, it is disproved by the very existence of the photographs. Why did these soldiers feel so comfortable recording their criminal actions for posterity? How were they were able to assemble large numbers of naked prisoners in an open area and stack them into a pyramid for their amusement, without any fear of being discovered or punished? Clearly, this degrading and abusive treatment was standard operating procedure for the US military. Torture was accepted and encouraged.
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Post by Moses on May 3, 2004 8:06:09 GMT -5
The Post (truly disgusting):
For its part, the Washington Post, the authoritative voice of the Washington political establishment, published an editorial headlined “Rule of Lawlessness.” Again, while ostensibly condemning the acts at Abu Ghraib, the editorial is crafted in a manner designed to minimize and even justify them.
“Taken together, the photographs demonstrate some of the most demeaning, humiliating and shameful treatment of prisoners imaginable, short of actual physical torture,” the Post writes.
Forcing naked men with bags over their heads to climb onto each other in a pyramid, or attaching electrodes to a man’s body and telling him he is going to be electrocuted if he falls off a box, is indeed torture. A number of Iraqis have come forward to say that they found the kind of degenerate sexual humiliation carried out by their US captors worse than the physical torture inflicted by the secret police of the Saddam Hussein regime.
The Post laments the existence of the photographs for the “the damage they have done to America’s image in the world, to the cause of stability in Iraq and even to the cause of democracy in the Middle East.”<br> In reality, these images have provided a graphic expression of the criminal character and aims of the US intervention in Iraq. The war and occupation have nothing to do with democracy. The type of cruelty seen in these pictures is a feature of every war waged by an imperialist power against the people it seeks to colonize.
The Post goes on: “The fact that some of the soldiers in charge of the prison have now been suspended or penalized will surely be overlooked by foreign audiences, and the fact that the prisoners had attacked US troops matters not at all.”<br> This argument, meant to exonerate the US military, consists of inventions and lies. Those who are being prosecuted were not “in charge of the prison”; they consist of a handful of low-ranking reservists who are, from the standpoint of the Pentagon, entirely expendable. As for the prisoners having “attacked US troops,” how do the Post editors know that? Have they the names and records of the naked men with sacks on their heads? The bulk of those who are being held at the US prisons and torture camps were grabbed on the flimsiest grounds by US troops and are being held indefinitely without hearings or even charges.
Finally, the newspaper chides the Bush administration for failing to provide “adequate legal processes” for detainees held without charges not only in Iraq, but in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.
“Better than any legal treatise, these photographs demonstrate the potentially corrupting effect of the atmosphere of lawlessness in these prisons,” the editorial concludes. “It must not be allowed to continue.”<br> But the “corrupting...atmosphere of lawlessness” did not begin in the military’s prison camps. The torture carried out there is only the refined expression of the corrupt and lawless character of the US ruling establishment and the policy of armed conquest it has pursued in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
America’s ruling elite, both the Democratic and Republican parties, and in particular the corporate-controlled media are all implicated in the shameful and repulsive crimes carried out at Abu Ghraib and other US concentration camps and prisons around the world. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others are guilty of war crimes for the actions carried out by their military subordinates.
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Post by calabi-yau on May 3, 2004 11:05:04 GMT -5
Quote from article: But the “corrupting...atmosphere of lawlessness” did not begin in the military’s prison camps. The torture carried out there is only the refined expression of the corrupt and lawless character of the US ruling establishment and the policy of armed conquest it has pursued in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. America’s ruling elite, both the Democratic and Republican parties, and in particular the corporate-controlled media are all implicated in the shameful and repulsive crimes carried out at Abu Ghraib and other US concentration camps and prisons around the world. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others are guilty of war crimes for the actions carried out by their military subordinates.
The media, the ruling elite from both parties, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld ... guilty of war crimes. I heard exactly the same this morning on French CBC radio when they were discussing the past week's events and daily international press reviews. The little credibility the US had left in world opinion has evaporated. The world is in shock and is watching.
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Post by Moses on May 4, 2004 1:54:21 GMT -5
I should be posting this in the Julius Streicher category -- how's this for propaganda? The Washington Timeswww.washingtontimes.com------------------------------------------------------------------------ President orders tough punishmentBy James G. Lakely and Sharon Behn THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published May 4, 2004------------------------------------------------------------------------ President Bush called Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday morning to make sure that those responsible for abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners are punished -- a process already under way as the Pentagon took steps likely to end the careers of seven U.S. soldiers. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, ordered the most severe level of administrative reprimand to officers involved in the abuse, which was exposed through photos published in newspapers around the world last week and on CBS' "60 Minutes II." Six U.S. military police are facing criminal charges, and Pentagon sources said the probe of the activities at the Abu Ghraib prison will expand in light of the death of an Iraqi detainee in an unrelated incident. The Army chief of staff senior intelligence officer, Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, is "conducting an investigation into the intelligence practices in Iraq and how we collect intelligence throughout that country," a defense official told The Washington Times. The photos have enraged the Arab world, including the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, in the wake of an increase in attacks against U.S. troops less than two months before sovereignty is scheduled to be handed over to Iraqis. "The president wanted to make sure that appropriate action was being taken against those responsible for these shameful, appalling acts," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "Our military does not tolerate prisoner abuse." Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday called the acts at the prison "despicable," [note his use of an appropriate word, v. Bush's adolescent and horrendously inappropriate "disgusting"] and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff applauded the six ongoing investigations. Mr. Powell said he expected the matter to "be fixed promptly," stressing that the actions of those soldiers "doesn't reflect on all of our troops." "Most of our troops are doing a great job upholding the highest standards of the service and are doing everything they can to help the Iraqi people," Mr. Powell said. According to the defense official, of the seven memorandums issued yesterday, six were reprimands and one was an admonition. [Wow!! That Bush sure is tough! six reprimands and an admonition! Rumsfled really followed through on his commands! ] Two of the more serious cases were "released for cause" -- meaning that those two individuals have been removed from their positions. These reprimand memos are basically career-killers, the official said, although he did not provide names or specifics. Sen. John W. Warner, Virginia Republican and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said yesterday he will hold hearings with Pentagon officials "to get to the bottom of this situation." "These allegations of mistreatment, if proven, represent an appalling and totally unacceptable breach of military conduct that could undermine much of the courageous work and sacrifice by our forces in the war on terror," Mr. Warner said in a statement. "This is not the way for anyone who wears the uniform of our armed forces to act." [An honorable statement - note his concern for the effect on our mission and our troops-- unlike the rest of his dishonorable compatriots] Those involved in the abuse -- which included making Iraqi prisoners strip naked and form a human pyramid and telling them they were about to be electrocuted -- are thought to be mostly reservists and members of the 800th Military Police Brigade. In a sign that punishment could reach the brass, Army Reserve Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" yesterday with her attorney, Neal Puckett. Gen. Karpinski, who is in charge of the Abu Ghraib prison, said she was "sickened" when she saw the photos, but maintained that she "did not know anything about" the incidents. "Had I known anything about it, I certainly would have reacted very quickly," Gen. Karpinski said. Although the abuse was carried out by soldiers under her command, Gen. Karpinski said military intelligence and the CIA were in charge of that part of the prison.
Gen. Karpinski said other photos she saw of the incidents indicate that units other than her military police brigade were involved.
"There was one photograph that showed -- it didn't show faces completely, but the photograph showed 32 boots," Gen. Karpinski told "Good Morning America." "I'm saying [there] were other people than the military police."
She added that she was "not on site" at the prison, but had received good reviews from her junior officers about the conduct of the military police there.
Gen. Karpinski said she first heard about these incidents after a member of her brigade complained about having to escort a naked prisoner back to his cell after he was interrogated by intelligence officers.
A senior CIA official told Reuters news agency yesterday that the agency's inspector general is conducting an investigation of the death of an Iraqi prisoner at the same prison outside Baghdad.
The official, however, denied the CIA interrogators were involved in the abuse shown in the photos.
"I know of no CIA officers involved in the abuses, which are now so famously described," the official told Reuters. "There were a small number of prisoners at Abu Ghraib who are of interest to the CIA, and a small number of CIA officers would periodically visit the prison to interrogate them.
"But I don't know of anything which connects us to those particularly ugly photos."
Gen. Karpinski, who has been reprimanded but not relieved of her command, said the overall commander in Iraq also deserves blame.
"If I'm responsible, so in fact is Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez," she said. "I think that there are others responsible here. [It is] not limited to one person, or an individual, or a command, but there is a shared responsibility in this."
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said from Baghdad yesterday that he is "not sure that military intelligence had anything to do with those individual acts of criminal behavior."
The abuse came to light, Gen. Kimmitt said, in March, and the Army immediately began an investigation. [No, it was February]
"It's important to recognize that as soon as that information was brought to the right level, investigations were started," Gen. Kimmitt said on "Good Morning America." "There's been a determination on the part of the command to open up every door, to look under every rock and to find out what's going on here."
The defense official said Army Reserves realized a month ago that it had to train soldiers on acceptable interrogation techniques under U.S. military codes and international law.
In February, "the Army Reserves recognized they needed to do an assessment of their training particularly with [military police] and [military intelligence] focus."
Also in February, the Army inspector general "did determine that an assessment of doctrine and training associated with detention operations needed to be conducted."
•This article is based in part on wire service reports. <br>Copyright © 2004 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Return to the article
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