A few more bad apples

------- Finding that a skeptical public and an unusually inquisitive press are not buying the original assertion that abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib prison was the work of a few enlisted personnel acting on their own, the White House is looking for fall guys. Or in this case, a fall girl. Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who was nominally in charge of Abu Ghraib but was not in charge of intelligence gathering in the prison, has been suspended from her position. She claims she was set up.

About two months after the Red Cross warned U.S. commanders of widespread prisoner abuses, the commanding general at Abu Ghraib prison assured the Red Cross in a confidential letter that Iraqi detainees were being given the best treatment possible and that even more "improvements are continually being made." In an interview Monday, however, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski insisted she was "set up" by Army officials who had her sign the letter when she really had no idea of the depth of problems uncovered at the now-infamous prison outside Baghdad. Karpinski's account of the letter and the sequence of events as the Abu Ghraib scandal began to emerge contradicts those of her superiors, who have said they did not react to the abuses sooner because it took months for the reports of problems to rise to their level. The first report of abuses at Abu Ghraib was given to Army officials by the International Committee of the Red Cross last November. It was not until January, after an enlisted man working as a guard at Abu Ghraib passed photographs of abuses to his superiors, that senior Army officials began to investigate. But the letter Karpinski signed rejecting the original Red Cross allegations was written in December. And if, as she insisted Monday, the letter was drafted in part by advisers to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. ground commander in Iraq (news - web sites), that strongly suggests the allegations of abuses had already reached Sanchez's headquarters. She said in the interview Monday that by late December military intelligence officials were basically "running" the prison but wanted her to sign the response letter to the Red Cross because, she said, "I had no information whatsoever why these ICRC complaints were being registered." She said the letter took on several draft forms, and was repeatedly sent back and forth between her command and Sanchez's office of legal counsel -- an assertion borne out at a congressional hearing last week. Finally, she said, she signed the letter.

(LA Times via Yahoo News: General Overseeing Prisons Says She Was 'Set Up' by Army)

In another interesting development, it turns out rumors that some of the interrogation was done by a private contractor are true - and the contract was overseen not by the Defense Department or CIA but by the Interior Department. That's right the Department of the Interior is managing a contract for intelligence services operating outside the United States.

Army civilian interrogators under scrutiny in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal are working under a contract designed originally for information technology services and overseen by the Interior Department.

Now Interior's internal watchdog is investigating the arrangement. The department, which normally oversees national parks and American Indian matters, has blocked the Army from ordering new services under the contract.

The confusing arrangement adds another layer to the uncertainty over who was in control of Iraqi prisoners and what rules governed treatment of the detainees.

Interior's inspector general is investigating whether it was proper to hire interrogators under an information technology contract, Quimby told reporters in a conference call Tuesday.

Uncertainty over who was responsible for oversight of the interrogation contracts added to the confusion surrounding the prison abuse case. In a report on the abuse, Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba quoted military prison guards as saying that military intelligence officers and civilian contractors encouraged abuses, including stripping prisoners naked and handcuffing them in painful positions.

(Associated Press via Yahoo News: Gov't Suspends Iraq Prison Contracts)

Speaking of civilian contractors, the Nation Magazine exposed a dirty secret about one of the civilians hired by the Justice Department as a correctional adviser for the task of reconstructing and reusing Iraq's prisons. Lane McCotter was forced to resign as Director of the Utah Department of Corrections after he defended the use of a restraining chair to punish a mentally ill inmate in a situation where the inmate died shortly after being released from the chair.

The chilling incident made national news not only because it happened to be videotaped but also because Valent's family successfully sued the State of Utah and forced it to stop using the device. Director of the Utah Department of Corrections, Lane McCotter, who was named in the suit and defended use of the chair, resigned in the ensuing firestorm. Some six years later, Lane McCotter was working in Abu Ghraib prison, part of a four-man team of correctional advisers sent by the Justice Department and charged with the sensitive mission of reconstructing Iraq's notorious prisons, ravaged by decades of human rights abuse. It's bad enough that the Justice Department picked McCotter--whose reputation in Utah was at best controversial and at worst disturbing. But further, the Justice Department hired him less than three months after its own civil rights division released a shocking thirty-six-page report documenting inhumane conditions at a New Mexico jail, run by the company where McCotter is an executive. Here was a man whose prisons had been plagued by reports of inmate mistreatment for nearly a decade. The Justice Department won't comment on why it chose McCotter, whose company has been hounded by well-publicized and ongoing healthcare, security and personnel problems at many of the thirteen prisons it operates in the United States, Australia and Canada. Meanwhile, the Ontario provincial government is currently investigating an inmate death at MTC's Canadian prison on May 5, and inquests into three other mysterious deaths over the past year are expected, according to an article in the Barrie Examiner.

(The Nation via November Coalition: Exporting America's Prison Problems)

The Washington Post revealed more evidence that the torture was ordered from high up, and that the Taguba report has characteristics of a cover-up:

A U.S. Army general dispatched by senior Pentagon officials to bolster the collection of intelligence from prisoners in Iraq last fall inspired and promoted the use of guard dogs there to frighten the Iraqis, according to sworn testimony by the top U.S. intelligence officer at the Abu Ghraib prison. According to the officer, Col. Thomas Pappas, the idea came from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who at the time commanded the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and was implemented under a policy approved by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top U.S. military official in Iraq. Pappas, who was under pressure from Taguba to justify the legality and appropriateness of using guard dogs to frighten detainees, said at two separate points in the Feb. 9 interview that Miller gave him the idea. He also said Miller had indicated the use of the dogs "with or without a muzzle" was "okay" in booths where prisoners were taken for interrogation. Taguba, in a rare classified passage within his generally unclassified report, listed "using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees" as one of 13 examples of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" inflicted by U.S. military personnel at Abu Ghraib. Experts on the laws of war have charged that using dogs to coerce prisoners into providing information, as was done at Abu Ghraib, constitutes a violation of the Geneva Conventions that protect civilians under the control of an occupying power, such as the Iraqi detainees. Taguba never interviewed Miller or any officer above Karpinski's rank for his report. Nor did he conduct a detailed probe of the actions of military intelligence officials. But he said he suspected that Pappas and several of his colleagues were "either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib." In a Feb. 11 written statement accompanying the transcript, Pappas shifted the responsibility elsewhere. He said "policies and procedures established by the [Abu Ghraib] Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center relative to detainee operations were enacted as a specific result of a visit" by Miller, who in turn has acknowledged being dispatched to Baghdad by Undersecretary of Defense Stephen A. Cambone, after a conversation with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Cambone told lawmakers recently that he wanted Miller to go because he had done a good job organizing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and wanted Miller to help improve intelligence-gathering in Iraq.

(Washington Post: General Is Said To Have Urged Use of Dogs) Some have argued that the use of intimidation and torture, even if it violates international agreements like the Geneva Conventions, is worth it if it extracts information that can save American lives. That's a sticky debate; the rules and customs of war have changed many times over the centuries and are different in different cultures. Still, none of the American troops held prisoner by Iraqi armed forces or the Iraqi resistance have been tortured or abused. As it turns out the point is moot: no useful information was obtained from prisoners at Abu Ghraib:

The questioning of hundreds of Iraqi prisoners last fall in the newly established interrogation center at Abu Ghraib prison yielded very little valuable intelligence, according to civilian and military officials. The interrogation center was set up in September to obtain better information about an insurgency in Iraq that was killing American soldiers almost every day by last fall. The insurgency was better organized and more vigorous than the United States had expected, prompting concern among generals and Pentagon officials who were unhappy with the flow of intelligence to combat units and to higher headquarters. But civilian and military intelligence officials, as well as top commanders with access to intelligence reports, now say they learned little about the insurgency from questioning inmates at the prison. Most of the prisoners held in the special cellblock that became the setting for the worst abuses at Abu Ghraib apparently were not linked to the insurgency, they said.

(New York Times: Prison Interrogations in Iraq Seen as Yielding Little Data on Rebels[sic] - free registration required)

I guess that settles that.

I urge my readers to read all the linked articles in full, particularly the Washington Post and New York Times pieces. They have a lot more eye-opening information, and copyright laws prevent me from posting all of it here.
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Retired general says Bush screwed up

This Sunday retired General Anthony Zinni, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Central Command from 1997 to 2000, will appear on the CBS program 60 Minutes. CBS published some advance excerpts of his interview, and the general has nothing good to say about the Bush cartel's foreign policy.

The current situation in Iraq was destined to happen, says Zinni, because planning for the war and its aftermath has been flawed all along. Zinni blames the poor planning on the civilian policymakers in the administration, known as neo-conservatives, who saw the invasion as a way to stabilize the region and support Israel. He believes these people, who include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense, have hijacked U.S. foreign policy. "They promoted it and pushed [the war]... even to the point of creating their own intelligence to match their needs. Then they should bear the responsibility," Zinni tells [CBS correspondent Steve] Kroft. In his upcoming book, "Battle Ready," written with Tom Clancy, Zinni writes of the poor planning in harsh terms. "In the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw, at minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption," he writes.

(CBS News: Gen. Zinni: 'They've Screwed Up') That's what I've been saying here on the Truth for almost a year. But unlike General Zinni I have never been in combat or commanded US armed forces. Come to think of it, neither have George Bush, Dick Cheney, or Paul Wolfowitz.
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More buck-passing from Bushco

We've all seen the pictures of Iraqi POWs being tortured by American soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and his top generals are still blaming the abuse on a handful of enlisted personnel who got out of control. But the facts leaking out of the Pentagon tell a different story. Rear Admiral Don Guter, the Navy Judge Advocate General from 2000 to 2002, says political appointees in the Pentagon ignored advice from military lawyers in laws and regulations pertaining to how to treat prisoners.

Specifically, JAG officers say they have been marginalized by Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, and William Haynes II, the Pentagon's general counsel, whom President Bush has nominated for a judgeship on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Under condition of anonymity, one current JAG officer told ABC News that for the last two years, "the military lawyers have always been the ones speaking for greater protections and recognitions of rights for detainees and the political appointees have argued for no recognition of rights and careful control of the process. That's an argument, to date, that the political appointees have won."

(ABC News: Advice Rejected) Some soldiers who were stationed at Abu Ghraib, including the Brigadier General who was supposed to be in charge of the prison, also dispute the official story:

In an interview, Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, the commander of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq at the time of the alleged abuse, claimed that military intelligence imposed its authority so fully that she eventually had limited access to the interrogation facilities.

Sgt. Samuel Provance said intelligence interrogators told military police to strip down prisoners and embarrass them as a way to help "break" them. The same interrogators and intelligence analysts would talk about the abuse with Provance and flippantly dismiss it because the Iraqis were considered "the enemy," he said. The first military intelligence soldier to speak openly about alleged abuse at Abu Ghraib, Provance said in a telephone interview from Germany yesterday that the highest-ranking military intelligence officers at the prison were involved and that the Army appears to be trying to deflect attention away from military intelligence's role.

(Washington Post: Sergeant Says Intelligence Directed Abuse) It seems military intelligence officers, as well as civilian "contractors", circumvented the chain of command and Army rules regarding interrogation and ran things their own way. Far from being the work of a few rogue enlisted men, as Rumsfeld still claims, orders for this operation came from at least as high up Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone. According to UPI news analyst Martin Sieff, Iraqis and conscientious Americans are not the only people enraged by these practices:

Indeed, intelligence and regular Army sources have told UPI that senior officers and officials in both communities are sickened and outraged by the revelations of mass torture and abuse, and also by the incompetence involved, in the Abu Ghraib prison revelations. These sources also said that officials all the way up to the highest level in both the Army and the Agency are determined not to be scapegoated, or allow very junior soldiers or officials to take the full blame for the excesses. ...what enrages many serving senior Army generals and U.S. top-level intelligence community professionals is that the "few" in this case were not primarily the serving soldiers who were actually encouraged to carry out the abuses and even then take photos of the victims, but that they were encouraged to do so, with the Army's well-established safeguards against such abuses deliberately removed by high-level Pentagon civilian officials. ...the idea of using regular Army soldiers, including some even just from the Army Reserve or National Guard, and encouraging them to inflict such abuses ran contrary to received military wisdom and to the ingrained standards and traditions of the U.S. Army. The widespread taking of photographs of the victims of such abuses, they said, clearly revealed that civilian "amateurs" and not regular Army or intelligence community professionals were the driving force in shaping and running the programs under which these abuses occurred.

(UPI: Army, CIA want torture truths exposed) It is clear now that the torture at Abu Ghraib, and possibly other incidents which are as yet only rumors, was ordered by senior political appointees in the Pentagon. Bush, Rumsfeld, and General Sanchez's clumsy (and contradictory) denials simply add to the pile of lies associated with the Iraq war. They cannot be allowed to cover up this scandal or to blame it all on the low-ranking people who were obeying orders; the people who gave the orders must be held accountable. But we all know the Bush administration never takesresponsibilityy for any of their mistakes. Where does that buck stop again?
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Colin Powell admits WMD claims were false

In an interview yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press", Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked about the claims he made in his February 2003 address to the United Nations regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction™ in Iraq. Readers of the Truth know these claims had been debunked as early as last July, but this is the first time Secretary Powell has admitted it:

Powell: When I made that presentation in February 2003, it was based on the best information that the Central Intelligence Agency made available to me. We studied it carefully; we looked at the sourcing in the case of the mobile trucks and trains. There was multiple sourcing for that. Unfortunately, that multiple sourcing over time has turned out to be not accurate. And so I'm deeply disappointed. ...it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases, deliberately misleading. And for that, I am disappointed and I regret it.

(NBC News's Meet the Press: Transcript for May 16) Secretary Powell almost didn't get to make the admission. The transcript reveals that State Department press aide Emily Miller tried to end the interview as soon as Tim Russert brought up the UN address:

Russert: Finally, Mr. Secretary, in February of 2003, you placed your enormous personal credibility before the United Nations and laid out a case against Saddam Hussein citing... Powell: Not off. Emily: No. They can't use it. They're editing it. They (unintelligible). Powell: He's still asking me questions. Tim. Emily: He was not... Powell: Tim, I'm sorry, I lost you. Russert: I'm right here, Mr. Secretary. I would hope they would put you back on camera. I don't know who did that. Powell: We really... Russert: I think that was one of your staff, Mr. Secretary. I don't think that's appropriate. Powell: Emily, get out of the way. Emily: OK. Powell: Bring the camera back, please. I think we're back on, Tim. Go ahead with your last question.

(NBC News's Meet the Press: Transcript for May 16) Imagine that, a federal employee trying to control what the news media reports. Here's what Tim Russert had to say about it:

Russert was still puzzled afterward. "A taxpayer-paid employee interrupted an interview," he said. "Not in the United States of America, that's not supposed to go on. This is attempted news management gone berserk. Secretary Powell was really stand-up. He was a general and took charge." Powell later called the NBC anchor from his plane to apologize for the glitch.

(Washington Post: Colin Powell Interview With Russert Is Cut Off)
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