GLOBE EDITORIAL
Disgraced by Abu GhraibTHE NATION came a little closer this week to learning what really happened, and why, at the Army's Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but there is still need for a truly independent review that would include members of Congress and human rights advocates. The sadistic abuses that are documented in two new government reports sicken the soul. They must not be absolved or allowed to happen again.
For all its shortcomings, the panel led by James Schlesinger, the former defense secretary, at least makes clear that the responsibility for understaffing and other problems at Abu Ghraib reaches as high as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "In Iraq," its report says, "there was not only a failure to plan for a major insurgency but also to quickly and adequately adapt to the insurgency that followed after major combat operations." This failure, which has resulted in so many needless American and Iraqi deaths, as well as the mixed messages the Defense Department sent about the treatment of prisoners were two factors this page considered when it called on Rumsfeld to resign in May. The four Schlesinger panelists, all members of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board, recommend against his resignation. But their report presents a convincing argument for it. The report also makes clear that President Bush miscalculated in May when he tried to dismiss the abuse at Abu Ghraib as "the wrongdoing of a few." In fact, the panel found that there have been about 300 allegations of prisoner abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Of that total, 155 have been fully investigated, with 66 -- mostly in Iraq -- substantiated. In addition, prison personnel hid the existence of at least eight detainees from the International Committee of the Red Cross in violation of international law. At least five prisoners died during questioning. Both the Schlesinger investigation and an internal review by the Army distinguish between the most notorious, photographed instances of sexual abuse and humiliation of prisoners -- most of whom were not being held for intelligence reasons -- and acts of mistreatment that occurred during interrogations. The Army's report referred to the soldiers and civilians who engaged in the scenes of piled naked bodies and dog-leashed prisoners as "morally corrupt." That judgment should prompt a review of the military's recruitment standards and training procedures.
An investigative panel with a broader mandate and membership would also look more closely at the role of the Central Intelligence Agency in interrogation abuses. Most important, such an inquiry could focus on why the highest Defense Department officials, including Rumsfeld, did not make clear to everyone -- soldiers, civilian contractors, CIA agents -- that the Geneva Conventions must be respected in Iraq and that future US prisoners of war suffer when they are not. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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