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Sun 4 Jul, 2004 11:41 am
Rumsfeld gave go-ahead for Abu Ghraib tactics, says general in charge
By Julian Coman in Washington
(Filed: 04/07/2004) Telegraph UK
The former head of the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad has for the first time accused the American Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, of directly authorising Guantanamo Bay-style interrogation tactics.
Brig-Gen Janis Karpinski, who commanded the 800th Military Police Brigade, which is at the centre of the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal, said that documents yet to be released by the Pentagon would show that Mr Rumsfeld personally approved the introduction of harsher conditions of detention in Iraq.
In an interview with The Signal newspaper of Santa Clarita, California, which was also broadcast on a local television channel yesterday, Gen Karpinski was asked if she knew of documents showing that Mr Rumsfeld approved "particular interrogation techniques" for Abu Ghraib.
Gen Karpinski was interviewed for four hours by Maj- Gen Antonio Taguba, who was ordered to investigate abuse at Abu Ghraib and produced a damning report, which heavily criticised Gen Karpinski for a lack of leadership at the prison.
During inquiries into the scandal, she has repeatedly maintained that the treatment of Iraqi detainees was taken out of her hands by higher-ranking officials, acting on orders from Washington.
"Since all this came out," she replied, "I've not only seen, but I've been asked about some of those documents, that he [Mr Rumsfeld] signed and agreed to."
Asked whether the documents have been made public, Gen Karpinski replied "No" and went on to describe the methods approved in them as involving "dogs, food deprivation and sleep deprivation".
The Pentagon has consistently denied that Mr Rumsfeld authorised the transfer of harsher techniques of interrogation and detention from Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib, where all prisoners are supposed to be protected by the Geneva Conventions.
Replying to Gen Karpinski's allegations, a spokesman for the Pentagon told The Telegraph: "Mr Rumsfeld did not approve any interrogation procedures in Iraq. The Secretary of Defence was not in the approval chain for interrogation procedures, which would have remained within the purview of Central Command, headed by Gen John Abizaid."
The Bush administration has been dogged by suspicions that harsh interrogation methods employed at Guantanamo were transferred to Abu Ghraib, as Iraqi insurgents began to score significant hits against coalition forces last year. In May, before the Senate armed services committee, Stephen Cambone, the under-secretary of defence for intelligence, publicly denied charges that Mr Rumsfeld had approved Guantanamo-style interrogations in Iraq.
Last month, the White House took the unusual step of releasing hundreds of internal documents and debates concerning interrogation procedures at Guantanamo. Extreme interrogation techniques at the camp, it was revealed, now require the explicit approval of Mr Rumsfeld. The Bush administration insists, however, that the notorious abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was an aberration on the part of a handful of rogue soldiers. A Pentagon spokesman said that all relevant documents on interrogation techniques in Iraq would be made public but could not say when.
Gen Karpinski has been suspended from duty pending ongoing investigations into abuse of prisoners at the Baghdad prison. In a recent interview with the BBC, she complained of being turned into a scapegoat for the scandal, arguing that the running of the prison was taken out of her hands.
In a separate embarrassment for the Department of Defence last week, six recent studies, leaked to the Los Angeles Times, heavily criticised the military for failing to screen adequately potential recruits with violent and even criminal backgrounds.
The reports were written by a senior Pentagon consultant. One was delivered in September 2003, weeks before the worst abuses of Iraqi prisoners took place. The title of the report was Reducing the Threat of Destructive Behaviour by Military Personnel.
In it the author, Eli Flyer, a former senior analyst at the Department of Defence, stated: "There are military personnel with pre-service and in-service records that clearly establish a pattern of sub-standard behaviour. These individuals constitute a high-risk group for destructive behaviour and need to be identified."
According to a 1998 report by Mr Flyer, one third of military recruits had arrest records. A 1995 report found that a quarter of serving army personnel had committed one or more criminal offences while on active duty. In his 2003 study, Mr Flyer said that military personnel officers had been reluctant to toughen up screening procedures, fearing that the result would be a failure to meet recruitment goals.
Curtis Gilroy, who oversees military recruiting policy for the Pentagon, told the Los Angeles Times: "It's hard to pick out all the bad apples, but we are striving to improve the system and are doing so."
official manual re how to torture without being prosecuted
Liberty Beat by Nat Hentoff
What Did Bush Know?
The inside story of the official manual on how to torture without being prosecuted
June 28th, 2004 2:30 PM
[The] argument . . . is that the president, as commander in chief, is the law when it comes to the enemy. . . . [He is] unchecked by the courts or any other authority. . . . That's a very dangerous notion for a free country. ?-Newsday editorial, "Tormented Truths," June 10
In 2002, Donald Rumsfeld was asked by the CIA for legal advice about how to extract information from captured alleged terrorists. Rumsfeld turned to the Justice Department, and a memorandum was prepared by John Ashcroft's Office of Legal Counsel?-and shown as well to White House counsel Alberto Gonzales.
The essence of this memo's language?-as reported in a front-page June 8 Washington Post story?-was very similar to the March 2003 extensive Pentagon justification of torture that broke in the June 7 Wall Street Journal. Ashcroft's office had said: "[It] may be justified" to torture captured Al Qaeda terrorists abroad "in order to prevent future attacks on the United States by the Al Qaeda terrorist network . . . " "Necessity and self-defense," said the Justice Department, "could provide justification that would eliminate any criminal liability."
It was this hitherto secret August 2002 memo from John Ashcroft's department that helped lay the groundwork for the much longer and more inflammatory March 2003 classified Pentagon report from a constellation of administration civilian and military lawyers. These attorneys, presumably graduates of top law schools, included participants from intelligence agencies and the Justice Department that have exploded the government's cover-up of its selective approval of torture.
That March 2003 report includes stunning analysis of the overwhelming extent of George W. Bush's power. As summarized by The Wall Street Journal, " 'constitutional principles' make it impossible to 'punish officials for aiding the president in exercising his exclusive constitutional authorities' and neither Congress nor the courts could 'require or implement the prosecution of such an individual.' "
If the persnickety courts insisted on getting involved in accusations of torture, there is, says the memo, the defense of necessity and self-defense: "If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent future attacks on the United States by the Al Qaeda terrorist network. . . . In that case, DOJ [Department of Justice] believes that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."
But these crafty lawyers on the Bush team provided another possible defense. In "exceptional interrogations," the torturer could claim he or she was following "superior orders." This is also known as the Nuremberg defense, urgently and unsuccessfully offered by Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg trials.
Now, what kinds of torture?-according to these U.S. government memoranda?-are permissible? Here we see an exercise in slippery semantics that recalls Bill Clinton's famous end run: "It depends on what 'is' is." John Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee, "It is not the job of the Justice Department or this administration to define torture."
From the March 6, 2003, "Working Group Report" that John Ashcroft refuses to declassify, even though he says he is not even invoking executive privilege, the June 10 Financial Times has focused on this chilling excerpt:
" 'A defendant is guilty of torture only if he acts with the express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering.' . . . The suffering may be physical or mental, but in the case of mental suffering, 'the harm must cause some lasting, but not necessarily permanent' suffering." Omitted is, how "lasting" is "lasting"?
Moreover, and read this one closely: "The adjective 'severe' conveys that the pain or suffering must be of such a high level of intensity that the pain is difficult for the subject to endure." And as The Economist adds from the 2003 text: "To qualify as torture, the pain has to be 'equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.' "
But just knowing that severe pain is reasonably likely to happen does not meet the test of "specific intent." Accordingly, the defendant cannot be convicted of a crime.
This repellent semantic game approving torture is also in the August 1, 2002, Justice Department memorandum, "Standards of Conduct for Interrogations."
But what of the distinguished government lawyers who came up with these ways of evading the U.N. Convention on Torture, which this country signed in 1994, as well as the congressional statute forbidding our use of torture anywhere?
Scott Horton, former chairman of the New York Bar Association's international human rights committee, told Financial Times that these lawyers "could and should face professional sanctions. . . .
" 'There are serious ethical shortcomings here. . . . Lawyers who are employed by the U.S. government have a responsibility to uphold and enforce the laws of the United States. . . . To make an argument that the president's wartime powers give him the right to avoid these statutes is preposterous.' "
The Bush administration's lawless encouragement of torture has led to the abuses veering on torture at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan documented in The Washington Post, December 26, 2002 (a story followed in columns here); Guantánamo; and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Next week in this column, the CIA's super-secret prison interrogation centers somewhere around the world, as exclusively detailed on the May 13 Nightline, "The Disappeared." I have seen hardly any follow-ups to that frightening story. If you have, let me know.
How long will this new clear evidence from the Pentagon report of the Bush administration's euphemistically condoning torture have "legs," as newspaper people say? And how can Bush and company credibly protest when and if American captives are tortured overseas?
......To be continued.
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