HOW HE SEES IT Abuse of prisoners not an aberration

By DANIEL SNEIDER
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
There were apologies and genuine dismay from Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon top brass before Congress on Friday. They acknowledged the huge damage done to America's image and the war on terror from the disturbing photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, with hints of much worse to come.
But the real message was that these were the acts of an aberrant few. They were done in violation of the commands of their superiors, who responded swiftly and without hesitation when evidence of those abuses emerged.
Unfortunately, even the most cursory look at the U.S. Army's own investigative report, along with other documents now surfacing, makes it clear that this is all untrue.
What happened at Abu Ghraib was the product of deliberate national policy that must have been set at the highest levels. It was the application of "dirty war" techniques of interrogation aimed at yielding information to pursue the counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq. These "stress and duress" techniques, which at their best border on torture, have been going on behind closed doors. Now they are graphically out in the open.
This policy began with the decision to detain those captured in the Afghanistan war at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay without the protections accorded to POWs under the Geneva Convention. That applied not only to suspected Al-Qaida members but also Afghan Taliban fighters.
Former CIA counter-terror director Cofer Black told a congressional committee in late 2002 that after Sept. 11, "the gloves came off." A March, 2003 New York Times report on Guantanamo cited officials saying that the techniques of interrogation there were "not quite torture, but as close as you can get."
Interrogation center
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has access to the facility, described the camp as mainly a center for interrogation rather than detention. There are reports, which now have much greater credibility, that prisoners were softened up for questioning by isolating, stripping, binding and leaving them standing for extended periods of time.
Those techniques were exported back to Afghanistan. According to reports that began to emerge more than a year ago, detainees there were made to stand naked for hours at a time, with hoods over their heads, arms chained to the ceiling. Bound male prisoners were kicked and humiliated by female prison guards. Two detainees died under interrogation, ruled homicides by medical officials.
Remember back to August of last year: The United States faced an upsurge of violence in Iraq, including the truck bombing of United Nations headquarters. Fear that the war was not going well was on the rise. Saddam Hussein was in hiding.
It was at this point that Major Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the Guantanamo commander, was dispatched to Iraq. In order to fight the insurgency, he recommended that the United States "rapidly exploit internees for actionable intelligence," according to the investigation carried out by Major Gen. Antonio Taguba.
Miller concluded that "it is essential that the guard force be actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees." The guards told investigators that military intelligence and CIA interrogators told them to "loosen this guy up for us," or to "make sure he gets the treatment," all intended "to get them to talk." This role for MPs is in direct violation of standing procedure.
Taguba questioned why these interrogation methods were applied to the detainees in Iraq, many of whom were taken into custody as criminals or in sweeps after attacks on U.S. troops. "These are not believed to be international terrorists or members of Al-Qaida, Anser Al Islam, Taliban, and other international terrorist organizations," the report points out.
Rumsfeld's contention that these conditions were not known until January is untrue. As early as mid-October, Red Cross officials witnessed and reported to U.S. authorities that abuse of prisoners, including at Abu Ghraib, was widespread and in some cases "tantamount to torture."
Finally, if Rumsfeld and the Pentagon are now determined to root this out, why was Maj. Gen. Miller, who set this all into motion, placed in command of the entire Iraqi prison system in mid-April?
X Daniel Sneider is foreign affairs columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.