Headline in the Democrat
and Chronicle on May 3: “Abuse of Iraqis Called Isolated.”
Statement
by President Bush May 5: “The abuse does not represent the America that I
know.”
Statement
by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on May 7: “It was inconsistent with the
values of our nation.”
Many
Americans, no doubt, accepted the pro-Bush slant of headlines like that on the D&C‘s front page last week. And
many, no doubt, embrace the statements by the president and Rumsfeld. Certainly
this is not the America we want to know. And we want to believe that the abuse
of Iraqi prisoners is “isolated.”
But
“isolated” is a relative term, and a dangerous one. No doubt the vast majority
of US military personnel — and the vast majority of civilians risking their
lives in the employ of private contractors in Iraq — do not practice or
condone the abuse of prisoners. But according to the International Red Cross
and other agencies, the abuse — torture, physical punishments, threats,
deprivation, and humiliation — is not an aberration. It is not limited to the
Abu Ghraib prison. It has taken place during searches and capture and in
prisons throughout Iraq. It has taken place in Afghanistan.
And it is a
clear violation of the Geneva Conventions and other international laws.
The news
over the past week and a half has been the revelations about Abu Ghraib. But
the real news is that the photographs from Abu Ghraib simply reinforce what
human-rights groups and many news media have been saying for more than a year.
The real news is that high-level administration and military officials had been
told about the abuses — and did little.
The real
news is that the United States Secretary of Defense, in effect, shrugged his
shoulders at reports of horrendous abuses and violations of international law,
until, to use his own words, he saw the photographs.
The real
news is that the atrocities of Abu Ghraib are both the symptom of and the
predictable consequence of an administration that sees no need to respect
international law.
The
atrocities have further sullied the image of the United States among our
traditional allies.
They have
further damaged our attempt to win over Iraqi public opinion.
They have
fueled the hostility of Arabs and Muslims around the world. (“A more insulting,
inflammatory message to the world’s Muslims and Arabs — and a more effective
recruiting tool for groups like Al Qaeda — can scarcely be imagined,” notes The Nation.)
Equally as
serious, the Bush administration’s initial attitude toward the reports — and
its attitude toward the Geneva Conventions and other regulations — have
undermined the strength of international law. And they have put in danger
captured US troops and civilians — in this conflict, and in conflicts far
into the future. If the world’s strongest superpower sees no need to treat
prisoners humanely, neither will any states, rogue groups, or terrorists in any
part of the world.
The president brags
that he does not read newspapers. But other members of the administration,
presumably, do.
As the
organization Human Rights Watch notes, US journalists have been writing about
the abuses for nearly a year and a half. Among the items in a lengthy
“Timetable” on the Human Rights Watch website (http.hrw.org) are the following:
• In
December, 2002, the Washington Post wrote about the mistreatment of prisoners — and the apparent killing of three
— at a CIA detention center in Afghanistan. The Post quoted one official as saying: “If you don’t violate someone’s
human rights some of the time, you probably aren’t doing your job.”
“According
to one official who has been directly involved in rendering captives into
foreign hands,” said the Post, “the
understanding is, ‘We don’t kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to
other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them.”
“Bush
administration officials,” wrote the Post journalists, “said the CIA, in practice, is using a narrow definition of what
counts as ‘knowing’ that a suspect has been tortured. ‘If we’re not there in
the room, who is to say?’ said one official conversant with recent reports of
renditions.”
• After
publication of the Post reports,
Human Rights Watch wrote President Bush asking for an investigation, and
leaders of international human-rights groups wrote both Bush and Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz asking the administration to state publicly that the
US would not tolerate torture. The leaders also insisted that there be “clear
written guidance applicable to everyone engaged in the interrogation and
rendition of prisoners.”
• US media,
including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, continued to
publish reports of mistreatment and torture during the winter of 2003. On
February 6, 2003, a Newsday article
quoted a former US intelligence official as saying: “Better intelligence… has
come from a senior Al Qaeda detainee who had been held in the US base at
Guantanamo, Cuba, and was rendered to Egypt after refusing to cooperate. They
promptly tore his fingernails out and he started to tell things.”
• In early
June 2003, Senator Patrick Leahy wrote National Security Advisor Condoleezza
Rice expressing concern about the news reports and asking that the Bush
administration issue a statement that the US will not tolerate abuse. Later
that month, Senator Arlen Specter wrote Rice asking about the news reports,
says Human Rights Watch, and asked “how the administration ensures that torture
does not occur when it sends detainees to countries that are known to practice
torture.”
In addition, the
human-rights agencies were gathering their own information and issuing
their own reports. Human Rights Watch says it wrote Rumsfeld in January of this
year regarding reports that US forces “detained innocent, close relatives of
wanted suspects in order to compel the suspects to surrender, which amounts to
hostage-taking, classified as a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.” It
says it wrote Rumsfeld again in February, asking the Bush administration “to
clarify the status of the detainees and to make public the numbers of detainees
being held.”
Amnesty
International says it has received “frequent reports of torture or other
ill-treatment by Coalition Forces during the past year.”
In a
National Public Radio interview earlier this week, an Amnesty International
official said AI representatives had met “with senior administration officials”
about the reports.
“Our
extensive research in Iraq suggests that this is not an isolated incident,” AI
said in a press statement last week. “It is not enough for the USA to react
only once images have hit the television screens.”
“Virtually
none of the allegations of torture or ill-treatment has been adequately
investigated by the authorities,” said AI.
Particularly
damning is the report by the International Committee of the Red Cross — a
report the ICRC says it gave to Coalition Forces in February 2004.
The report
deals with “the treatment by the Coalition Forces of prisoners of war and other
protected persons” in Iraq “during arrest, internment, and interrogation.” The Wall Street Journal published excerpts
of the report — which had been released without the ICRC’s consent — on May
7 and put the full document on its website on May 10. At a news conference on
May 8, ICRC official Pierre Krähenbühl expressed concern over the release of
the report, since the Red Cross depends on confidentiality to insure access to
prisoners. But it made clear that it stood by the report.
At the
press conference, Krähenbühl described the abuse as “a broader pattern and a
system, as opposed to individual acts.”
And, he
said, “It is important to understand that this report represents the summary of
concerns that were regularly brought to the attention of the CF throughout
2003.”
“Orally and
in writing,” said Krähenbühl, “the ICRC has repeatedly made its concerns known
to the Coalition Forces and requested corrective measures prior to the
submission of this particular report.” And, he said, the ICRC has cited, in
“oral and written interventions,” the laws of the Geneva Conventions.
An ICRC
official told National Public Radio earlier this week that it had presented the
findings of its report to Paul Wolfowitz and Secretary of State Colin Powell in
January of this year, and to Paul Bremer, head of the US occupation in Iraq, in
late February.
The Red Cross report
cites “serious violations of International Humanitarian Law… documented and
sometimes observed while visiting prisoners of war, civilian internees, and
other protected persons” — “protected persons” referring to people protected
by the provisions of the Geneva Conventions.
The
violations, said the Red Cross, include:
•
“Brutality against protected persons upon capture and initial custody, sometimes
causing death or serious injury;
• “Absence
of notification of arrest of persons deprived of their liberty to their
families;
• “Physical
or psychological coercion during interrogation to secure information;
•
“Prolonged solitary confinement in cells devoid of daylight;
•
“Excessive and disproportionate use of force against persons deprived of their
liberty resulting in death or injury during their period of internment.”
“Ill
treatment during capture was frequent,” says the report. And that treatment
occurred “in Baghdad, Basrah, Ramadi, and Tikrit, indicating a consistent
pattern with respect to times and places of brutal behavior during arrest,”
says the report. “The repetition of such behavior by Coalition Forces appeared
to go beyond the reasonable, legitimate, and proportional use of force required
to apprehend suspects or restrain persons resisting arrest or capture, and
seemed to reflect a usual modus operandi by certain CF battle-group units.”
The report
cites a common pattern of arrests, in which Coalition Forces broke down doors,
entered homes, destroyed or confiscated property, harshly treated residents
(sometimes striking them with rifles), and then hooded and bound some occupants
and took them away. “Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a
house, including elderly, handicapped, or sick people,” says the report.
“Certain CF
military intelligence officers told the ICRC that in their estimate between 70
percent and 90 percent of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had
been arrested by mistake,” says the Red Cross report. “They also attributed the
brutality of some arrests to the lack of proper supervision of battle-group
units.”
Without question,
military troops and private contractors called into service in Iraq have
worked under great duress. The US did not send enough troops or enough
resources to Iraq, and it did not sufficiently train those troops to perform
the difficult, varied jobs they’ve had to do since the overthrow of Saddam
Hussein.
In a
lengthy article published May 9, the New
York Times outlined “a picture of US troops ill prepared and overwhelmed.”
Many of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib were members of the Army Reserves and
National Guard — “insurance agents, checkout clerks, sales people” — and
few had been trained to guard prisoners, said the Times.
“You’re a
person who works at McDonald’s one day; the next day you’re standing in front
of hundreds of prisoners, and half are saying they’re sick and half are saying
they’re hungry,” one soldier told the Times.
“We never
learned how to deal with a riot, what to do when we were being assaulted,” said
another.
Many of the
troops thought their tour would end last May, with the end of formal combat,
but their stays were extended. And at Abu Ghraib, the military converted Saddam
Hussein’s prison into a prison of its own and began packing the complex with
captives. Soldiers told the Times of
working 16-hour days, in incredible heat, under enormous stress. Inside, the
prison was horribly overcrowded. Outside, there was danger. Abu Ghraib “was in
the middle of a hostile-fire zone,” the Times
was told, “mortared every night, practically.”
Secretary
Rumsfeld has insisted that the troops in Iraq have been trained in the Geneva
Conventions. But Army Reservist Sabrina D. Harman, who has been charged with
abuses at Abu Ghraib, disagrees. “The Geneva Convention was never posted, and
none of us remember taking a class to review it,” she told the Washington Post last week. “The first
time reading it was two months after being charged. I read the entire thing
highlighting everything the prison is in violation of.”
“There’s a
lot,” she said.
The
problems and abuses at Abu Ghraib are the result of poor planning, poor
training, and insufficient resources. And Abu Ghraib is the end product of an
administration’s making decisions grounded in ideology, not facts. The Bush
administration was hell bent on war against Iraq, convinced that the United
States’ power would make the war quick and easy and the aftermath a parade
showered by flowers.
The same
administration that waged war based on false information — ignoring the
warnings from its own terrorism experts and the cautions coming from its own
State Department — has continued, throughout the occupation, to ignore the
warnings and the factual reports of human-rights groups and its own troops.
Secretary
Rumsfeld has clung so blindly to his own vision that even after the media began
to publicize the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, he said last week that he had not
yet read an official Army report on the Abu Ghraib abuses — a report that had
been completed in March.
There are
calls now for President Bush to fire Rumsfeld. So far, he is refusing to do so.
“You are doing a superb job,” he told Rumsfeld in a public appearance at the
Pentagon on Monday. If in the end Bush does get rid of Rumsfeld, it will no
doubt be because the secretary has become a political liability. The president
already has all the information he needs to fire Rumsfeld for cause.
In the end,
firing Rumsfeld might send an important message to the Iraqis and to the rest
of the world, but it will not correct the problem. Dick Cheney will still be in
office. Paul Wolfowitz will still be in office.
The nation
will still be led by a man who believes that the United States knows how the
rest of the world should be governed, and that God put him in the White House.
And the
president, presumably, will continue to lead in the polls.
The US and world law
The Geneva Conventions of 1949 are a set of international
laws that govern the treatment of people captured during armed conflicts. The
United States ratified the laws, and it is subject to them.
American
war-movie fans may be most familiar with Convention Three, which protects
Prisoners of War, including military personnel. Among those protections is that
POW’s are required to give only their name, date of birth, rank, and serial
number. Conventions One and Two protect captured medical and the wounded or
sick. Convention Four protects captured civilians.
In total,
the Conventions protect every person involved in armed conflict. Regardless of
whether the prisoners are soldiers or civilians, the Geneva Conventions require
that they be treated humanely and not subjected to torture.
Convention
Four, protecting non-military prisoners, prohibits — “at any time and in any
place whatsoever” — the following: “A) violence to life and person, in
particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture; B)
taking of hostages; C) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular
humiliating and degrading treatment; D) the passing of sentences and the
carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly
constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized
as indispensable by civilized peoples.”
In
addition, the Conventions require that the International Committee of the Red
Cross must have access to all prisoners — and that governments must follow
the Red Cross’s recommendations regarding what it has found in its talks with
prisoners.
The
International Committee of the Red Cross emphasized the extensive coverage of
the Conventions, in a 1958 document called “Commentary: Geneva Convention
Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War”:
“Every
person in enemy hands must have some status under international law: he is
either a prisoner of war and, as such, covered by the Third Convention, a
civilian covered by the Fourth Convention, [or] a member of the medical
personnel of the armed forces who is covered by the First Convention. There is
no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can fall outside the law.”
Other
international laws signed by the United States also provide protection, notes
the organization Human Rights Watch, “against torture and other cruel, inhuman,
or degrading treatment.” Here’s language from Article 2 of the International
Convention Against Torture:
“No
exceptional circumstance whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war,
internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as
a justification of torture.”
Violation
of Article 2, says Human Rights Watch, “is a criminal offense of universal
jurisdiction.”
Rumsfeld
has insisted that the Geneva Conventions don’t apply to the US treatment of
prisoners captured in Afghanistan and sent to Guantanamo Bay. Human Rights
Watch and others have disagreed strongly. But even Rumsfeld agrees that the
Conventions apply to prisoners in Iraq.
This article appears in May 12-18, 2004.
