General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Sunday denied reports of “widespread and systematic abuse of inmates at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison”. It’s a hollow denial.
In an explosive piece for the May 10 issue of the New Yorker magazine — Torture At Abu Ghraib: American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go? — investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh refutes Meyers denial by revealing a devastating report from the military’s own internal investigation.
General Myers stated Sunday that, “There’s no, no, no evidence of systematic abuse in the system at all. We’ve paid a lot of attention, of course, in Guant¿namo as well. We review all the interrogation methods. Torture is not one of the methods that we’re allowed to use, and that we use–it’s just not permitted by international law–and we don’t use it.
“That is not how the American military acts or should act. And it’s really a shame that just a handful can besmirch maybe the reputations of hundreds of thousands of our soldiers and sailors, airmen and Marines who’ve been over there”.
On the contrary, according to the Hersh story: “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”.
The report details systematic “‘sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses’ at Abu Ghraib”.
Hersh only provides a few direct quotes from the report, including this catalog of horrendous abuses: “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”.
I am appalled by the phony public relations stances the leaders of our country have taken concerning incommunicado detention and routine psychological torture–and their attempt to portray the situation at Abu Ghraib, where the existence of sadistic physical torture is proven by the pictures–as the work of “just a handful” of low-level bad actors.
Furthermore, when Myers suggests that the US military has passed its own inspection of the Guant¿namo Bay prison camp, so that Iraq must be okay too, we all should be laughing if the situation weren’t so horrible.
This self-approval is among the most troubling indictments of US conduct of the War on Terror. Meyers attitude, “Torture is not one of the methods that we’re allowed to use,” consistent with that of his Commander-in-Chief, who said Friday, “I shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated. Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people. That’s not the way we do things in America. And so I–I didn’t like it one bit”.
Sorry, Mr. President, Seymour Hersh shows that Military Intelligence in fact insisted on coercive treatment of prisoners, whether there was any evidence against them or not. As Hersh puts it, “…civilians in Iraq remained in custody month after month with no charges brought against them. Abu Ghraib had become, in effect, another Guant¿namo”.
Hersh responded this way during a Sunday interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer:
BLITZER: “General Myers [says] this was not–there’s no evidence of systematic abuse. This may have been a few soldiers simply going bad”.
HERSH: “Taguba says otherwise. He says this is across the board. And what he says that’s very important, is that these are jails, by the way, when we talk about prisoners, these are full of civilians. These are people picked up at random checkpoints and random going into houses. And even in the Taguba report, he mentions that upwards of 60 percent or more have nothing to do with anything.
“So they’re people just there. There’s no processing. It’s sort of a complete failure of anything the Geneva Convention calls for. What can I tell you”?
Hersh argues in his New Yorker article that the interrogations conducted under these conditions basically are valueless. But the consequences are enormous:
“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”.
Please listen President Bush: These arbitrary incommunicado detentions and widespread abuses are to me a very peculiar “strategy toward freedom”. Please focus your disgust and use your power as Commander-in-Chief to order an end to these detentions and release everyone you hold who has not been properly convicted of a crime.
Reports showing abuses are widespread, not an isolated aberration
There is a strong desire among officials to paint the prisoner-abuse situation as an “aberration”. This would be a false impression. I suppose the despicable denial and abuse of human rights incited by US detention and interrogation policy is aberrant, but, contrary to the PR stance, it has been widespread and persistent. These references illustrate that concern over the situation has also been widespread for months now. It took CBS News and 60 Minutes II to finally raise the concerns to a high enough level so they would be noticed. What you see below barely scratch the surface of what’s available on the internet.
Here are the references:
Deep Blade Journal, April 12, 2004
US military tactics condemned by allies
Deep Blade Journal, April 8, 2004
Violence breaks out in Iraq amidst “dire” human rights situation
Amnesty International, March 18, 2004
Report on dire human rights situation in Iraq
Jim Loney, Electronic Iraq, 19 February 2004
Detained and tortured by the US military, excerpt below…
“Ahmed is a 52 year-old farmer who lives on the outskirts of Bagdhad. He was detained and tortured by US forces at the end of January. Ahmed has 8 children. His youngest son is 11 years old. He grows vegetables, wheat, rice and beans, and is a driver for the Ministry of Irrigation. He asked us not to use his real name for fear of punishment from the US military.
“The following story is an edited version of his translated remarks. Ahmed met with Christian Peacemaker Teams and Occupation Watch on February 13, 2004. This is his story….
“After I hit the wall with my head and fell down, they handcuffed me with my hands behind my back lying on my stomach. [Ahmed shows us his wrists. They are ringed with pink scar tissue.] They kept me in this position through the night and into the next day — almost 24 hours — and we weren’t allowed to move our legs in that time. We could not sleep during that time because they would kick us. I don’t know for sure, but I think they did this for a purpose, as a way to torture us and not give us a chance to sleep”.
Robert Fisk, May 2, 2004
The ‘good guys’ who can do no wrong
“We used to call Saddam the Hitler of Iraq. But wasn’t Hitler one of “us”, a Westerner, a citizen of “our” culture? If he could kill six million Jews, which he did, why should we be surprised that “we” can treat Iraqis like animals? Last week came the photographs to prove we can”.
Robert Fisk, September 17, 2003 from Abu Ghraib prison
Saddam’s old terror cells fail squeaky-clean test despite US facelift
“There is still no clear judicial process for the supposed killers, thieves and looters behind the razor wire. There was no mention–until we brought it up–of the mortar attack that killed six prisoners in their tents last month”….
They thought, “The Americans were using them as human shields.”