Full disclosure of incidents in Iraq, Afghanistan urged

Regardless of one’s opinion of the United States’ military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, there can be no disagreement over the right of the American people to know as much as possible about what’s going on in those countries.

This is particularly true about the activities of American soldiers with regard to civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. There have been many allegations of criminal acts by the troops, but the court-martials that have been held and the subsequent convictions should reassure Americans that commanders are taking them seriously.

That is why we are puzzled by the Defense Department’s failure to fully respond to a request from the American Civil Liberties Union for all documents relevant to U.S. military involvement in the deaths of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. The request was filed last year through a federal Freedom of Information Act request.

The ACLU is pursuing a lawsuit to force the government to release the documents, even though it has received 10,000 pages of courts-martial summaries, transcripts and military investigative reports about 22 incidents.

Within the law

In its analysis of the documents, the Associated Press reported, “They show repeated examples of soldiers believing they were within the law when they killed local civilians.”

The wire service quoted Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, convicted of negligent homicide in the death of a former Iraqi general believed to be helping insurgents, thus:

“The simple fact of the matter is interrogation is supposed to be stressful or you will get no information. To put it another way, an interrogation without stress is not an interrogation — it is a conversation.”

It is precisely because of such arguments that full disclosure of the documents sought by the ACLU is urged. It isn’t about giving critics of the war more ammunition. Rather, it’s about showing the American public that the military has nothing to hide.

In addition, such openness will bolster the Bush administration’s contention that what the people in Iraq and Afghanistan are being offered is a change from the police states in which individual and other freedoms were nonexistent.

There is another reason to give the public a close-up look at what soldiers are doing in the field: The documents will illustrate the extent of the dangers they face every day.

As a lawyer for a member of the Kentucky National Guard contended, the perception of hostility merits deadly action. He added that the rules of engagement are clear and in favor of soldiers.

But a retired Army intelligence colonel who served in Vietnam says there are no rules of engagement “that would authorize someone to kill someone in custody.”

In light of such ongoing debates, not only within the military, but also in communities around the country, there is a need for the defense department to determine whether soldiers are being adequately trained for handling detainees and whether they have been sufficiently schooled in the rules of engagement.

In the end, this is all about the credibility of the United States as a liberator in Iraq and Afghanistan.