Schlesinger Report on Abu Ghraib Abuses Points at Pentagon

The four-member commission Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appointed to look into the abuses of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad are far from naive pacifists. James Schlesinger and Harold Brown were predecessors of Mr. Rumsfeld. Charles Horner was a general in the Air Force, and Tillie Fowler spent four terms in the House of Representatives serving on the House Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittees on Military Installations and Facilities, and Military Readiness. Their conclusion, that the abuses were part of a general bungling rather than a deliberate policy, is comforting only to the degree that one feels comfortable with an administration that doesn't know what it is doing. Better to be incompetent than evil, but not by much.

Page 5 of the full report sums it up. "The abuses,"says the report, "were not just the failure of some individuals to follow known standards, and they are more than the failure of a few leaders to enforce proper discipline. There is both institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels." The report didn't name anyone at the Pentagon, but implicated the president and secretary of state by reciting the history that resulted in the "chaos at Abu Ghraib."

On February 7, 2002, the president signed a memo that determined Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters didn't merit the formal protections of the Geneva Conventions, but they would be treated along those lines. The State Department had already advised that the Geneva Conventions "provided a sufficiently robust legal construct under which the War on Terror could effectively be waged." [p.6] Then in August 2002, the Justice Department announced, in reply to a query from the Counsel to the President, that an action counted as torture only if it "must be specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain and suffering that is difficult to endure." [p.6]

These slipping standards continued when the 17 authorized interrogation methods found in Army Field Manual 34-52 were amended by Secretary Rumsfeld to include 16 more on December 2, 2002. After Navy General Counsel questioned this, Mr. Rusmfeld rescinded most, but not all, of the new 16. A working group then set to study interrogation techniques and of 35 examined, recommended 24 to Mr. Rumsfeld. Direct questioning has been all right all along, but stress positions such as continued standing were OK only between December 2, 2002 and January 15, 2003. Isolation for 30 days was not part of the Field Manual, was approved in December 2002, withdrawn in January 2003 and reinstated, but only with approval from Southern Command and Mr. Rumsfeld.

The report also says that the 800th Military Police Brigade, the unit running Abu Ghraib, had inadequate training, was under attack early on, and encountered friction from military intelligence officers. This was a recipe for disaster. Changing rules, poor training and a sense of threat (all of which could have been avoided with proper war planning and post-war governance) set the stage.

As Senator Lindsey Graham said when this whole sorry affair first hit the news, "When you are the good guys, you've got to act like the good guys." General Taguba's report back in May made mention of three of the good guys:

4. (U) The individual Soldiers and Sailors that we observed and believe should be favorably noted include:

a. (U) Master-at-Arms First Class William J. Kimbro, US Navy Dog Handler, knew his duties and refused to participate in improper interrogations despite significant pressure from the MI personnel at Abu Ghraib.

b. (U) SPC Joseph M. Darby, 372nd MP Company discovered evidence of abuse and turned it over to military law enforcement.

c. (U) 1LT David O. Sutton, 229th MP Company, took immediate action and stopped an abuse, then reported the incident to the chain of command.