Abu Ghraib torture sanctioned by Pentagon Political Appointees

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Fri, 07 May 2004 12:19:35 -0700
From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
Subject: Abu Ghraib torture sanctioned by Pentagon Political Appointees
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>, Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>

Lack of protection
A report by human rights lawyers found that the Abu Ghraib abuse was not
only lawless -- it was sanctioned by Pentagon political appointees.

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By Joe Conason
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/05/07/rights/index.html


May 7, 2004  |   Long before official reports and journalistic exposés
revealed the horrific abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, high-ranking
American officers expressed their deep concern that the civilian officials
at the Pentagon were undermining the military's traditional detention and
interrogation procedures, according to a prominent New York attorney.


 Scott Horton, a partner at Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler who now
chairs the Committee on International Law of the Association of the Bar of
New York City, says he was approached last spring by "senior officers" in
the Judge Advocate General Corps, the military's legal division, who
"expressed apprehension over how their political appointee bosses were
handling the torture issue." Horton, who once represented late Soviet
dissident Andrei Sakharov, was serving as the chairman of the bar
association's Committee on Human Rights law when the JAG officers first
contacted him.

 Prompted by their allegations as well as press reports of torture and
mistreatment of detainees in Afghanistan, Horton and other members of the
New York bar began to compile a report examining U.S. and international
legal standards governing the treatment of military prisoners. Horton says
he and his colleagues met with JAG officers expressing the same concerns
again last fall.

 The bar association's 110-page report, released last week, leaves no doubt
that the practices revealed at Abu Ghraib violated both U.S. and
international law. During the preparation of that report, Horton and his
colleagues were more concerned with practices in Afghanistan and Guantánamo
than in Iraq. What they have learned recently, however, suggests that
questionable practices and attitudes toward prisoners stem from broad policy
decisions made at the very highest levels of the Defense Department.

 Indeed, Horton says that the JAG officers specifically warned him that
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith,one of the most
powerful political appointees in the Pentagon, had significantly weakened
the military's rules and regulations governing prisoners of war. The
officers told Horton that Feith and the Defense Department's general
counsel, William J. Haynes II, were creating "an atmosphere of legal
ambiguity" that would allow mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

 Haynes, who was recently nominated to a federal appeals court seat by
President Bush, is responsible for legal issues concerning prisoners and
detainees. But the general counsel takes his marching orders from Feith, an
attorney whose scorn for international human rights law was summed up by his
assessment of Protocol One, the 1977 Geneva accord protecting civilians, as
"law in the service of terrorism."

 How did the "permissive environment" that encouraged rampant criminality
and cruelty arise at Abu Ghraib? According to the JAG senior officers who
spoke with Horton, Pentagon civilian officials removed safeguards that were
designed to prevent such abuses. At a detention facility like Abu Ghraib,
those safeguards would include the routine observation of interrogations
from behind a two-way mirror by a JAG officer, who would be empowered to
stop any misconduct.

 The JAG officers told Horton that those protective policies were
discontinued in Iraq and Afghanistan. They said that interrogations were
routinely conducted without JAG oversight -- and, worse, that private
contractors were being allowed unprecedented participation in the
interrogation process. Moreover, the contractors who participated in the
interrogation of Iraqi prisoners were operating in a legal twilight zone,
says Horton.

 "The Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs the conduct of
officers and soldiers, does not apply to civilian contractors," he adds.
"They were free to do whatever they wanted to do, with impunity, including
homicide."

 If that seems hard to believe, it is apparently true that the contractors
are exempt from prosecution by Iraqi and U.S. courts and not answerable to
those within the military chain of command. Kenneth Roth, the director of
Human Rights Watch, has suggested, however, that under the Geneva
Conventions, the U.S. government "nonetheless remains responsible for the
actions of those running the detention facilities, be they regular soldiers,
reservists or private contractors."

 In practice, the changes in oversight appear to have blurred authority and
accountability at Abu Ghraib. Along with the lack of proper supervision and
training of the Army reservists who ran the prison, these changes resulted
in lawlessness and atrocious abuse.

 After hearing the complaints of the JAG officers, Horton and his bar
colleagues wrote to Haynes and the CIA's general counsel in an effort to
clarify U.S. policy on the treatment and interrogation of detainees. Those
inquiries, he recalls, "were met with a firm brushoff. We then turned to
senators who had raised the issue previously, and [we] assisted their staff
in pursuing the issue directly with the Pentagon. These inquiries met with a
similar brushoff." The Bush administration wanted no meddling by human
rights lawyers as it brought democracy and human rights to the benighted
region.

 Horton says that career military officers at the Pentagon were "greatly
upset" by what they regarded as the deliberate destruction of traditions and
methods that have long protected soldiers as well as civilians. Those
officers, and others who may have evidence to offer, are obviously reluctant
to step forward and speak because they fear reprisal from the Pentagon and
the White House. They have been instructed not to talk to anyone about these
issues. It is to be hoped that in the investigations to come -- whether or
not Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld and Undersecretary Feith keep their
jobs -- those conscientious officers will be able to tell what they know
about the decisions that led to this national disaster.

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About the writer
 Joe Conason writes a twice weekly column for Salon. He also writes a weekly
column for the New York Observer. His new book, "Big Lies: The Right-Wing
Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth," is now available.

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