Investigating Abu Ghraib

Tuesday, April 26, 2005 | 0 comments

A book review by

Zainab Mahmood

This review can also be downloaded as a Word document from here.

The Abu Ghraib Investigations: The Official Reports of the Independent Panel and the Pentagon on the shocking prisoner Abuse in Iraq, edited by Steven Strasser with an introduction by Craig R Whitney.


In light of of recent court proceedings ruling that General Sanchez is cleared of any responsibility of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, Iraq, it is essential for any informed reader to familiarise themselves with the contents of these reports.

The in-depth and at times non-committal account of Independent Panel and Pentagon investigations begins with the words, “the photographs did not lie”. We are then systematically led through the findings of investigations ordered by Lt. Gen Sanchez, the overall military commander in Iraq, once the stories of the abuse splashed across TV and print media across the world. General Taguba, the head of investigations, which were underway before the media got hold of prisoner abuse pictures, clearly found that the entire brigade deployed at Abu Ghraib, was inadequately trained for its mission. The report also discusses another investigation led by General Fay into the role of the intelligence personnel, which concluded that the root of the problem lay at the high-level misallocation of resources. Fay found that Secretary Rumsfeld overrode recommendations of advisers even before the war in Iraq started and thus mismanaged the allocation of soldiers and Military Police (MP’s) at prison sites and laid down ambiguous instructions as to permitted interrogation techniques and prison guard regulations. Both investigators concluded that had the Department of Defense adopted a more transparent and swift investigative process then possibly the ensuing catastrophe and maligning of the U.S reputation could have been avoided.

General Jones, who was part of the investigative team, claims that Secretary Rumsfeld himself had authorized the use of harsh interrogation techniques including dogs and removal of clothing to break down detainees while Sanchez who was responsible for revising the memos for MP’s in Iraq based on the techniques used at Guantanamo Bay, left the guidelines vague. Therefore techniques that had been approved for use only in Guantanamo under strict supervision and special permission were introduced at Abu Ghraib without authorization. Further mayhem was caused by presence of CIA and other secret agency personnel who were operating under their own rules, opening the door for certain soldiers to take advantage of Abu Ghraib’s isolation and indiscipline.

The reports emphatically state ‘there was a relationship between abstract political acts by high officials in Washington and illegal actions committed by simple soldiers in Iraq’, but fails to ascribe blame to any one party, shifting it from MP’s right up to the White House and Pentagon.

The Panel’s inference suggests that the new kind of ‘asymmetric warfare’ in Iraq brought with it a new set of problems that the American military was not prepared for. The flood of incoming detainees in the prisons far exceeded the number of released due to slow processing and interrogation (some prisoners were held 90 days before being interrogated for the first time). To deal with threats the American military relied mainly on intelligence received by capturing and interrogating potential threats or sources. Thus, allowing sadistic and perverted individuals to overstep the boundaries during interrogations, taking advantage of zero accountability.

The Panel’s report also found that Brigadier General Karpinski’s ‘ineffective leadership helped set the conditions leading to abuse at the prison’, which includes her failure to do the following: establish systematic operating procedures, ensure safeguard of the prisoners, take action against ineffective commanders and staff officers, not to mention lie about the frequency of her visits and extent of control over prison activities.

The investigations found that the once the Army Field Manual, which had been modified with respect to changing needs at Guantanamo Bay, was introduced in Iraq by MP’s who were called in to assist the under-staffed detention centres, they led to disastrous results. The policy memos issued for Iraq did not ‘adequately set forth the limits of interrogation techniques’. The unclear military intelligence chain of command as well as confusing assignments of untrained MP’s and MI’s as prison guards and more importantly the failure to act promptly in equipping Abu Ghraib security personnel to handle the growing problems, led to the prisoner abuse. Also the inability to react to Red Cross reports following its visit to Abu Ghraib regarding inhuman conditions and problem areas at the prison, were a grave error on the part of the leadership.

It seems the priority at Abu Ghraib was to extract useful information from detainees and pressure was elicited on interrogators to produce “actionable” intelligence. In light of this situation, the investigators found that untrained soldiers, some of them hired on contract, proceeded to implement unapproved techniques. Removal of clothing, isolating detainees for a long time, withholding food, stress positions, use of dogs to intimidate and light and sleep deprivation were some of the techniques which were used incorrectly at detention centres in Iraq.

The panel after reviewing all the reports and conducting interviews with soldiers and commanders involved in Iraq, directly or indirectly, presented a list of recommendations to prevent the re-occurrence of conditions that led to the prisoner abuse in Iraq. It suggested that the U.S must redefine its policy regarding categorization of the detainees so that the Geneva Convention applies to them. Also it stated that improved coordination between Military Intelligence and Military Police at detention facilities was needed while the introduction of trained interpreters, interrogators, detention specialists, linguists and behavioural scientists would also prove effective. Thorough appraisals of changing situations and timely implementation of military regulations and tactics were suggested, not to mention better training methods and improved conditions at prisons, as well as compulsory participation in professional ethics programs for all prison officers.

Also the most crucial recommendation was a clear and well-defined policy on approved interrogation techniques leaving no room for confusion or misuse. Clearer guidelines for CIA operatives in detention centres were also recommended, ending with a broad assessment that the U.S must redefine its ‘approach to international humanitarian laws, which must be adapted to realities of conflict in the 21st century’.

Furthermore 24 accounts of serious incidents of abuse (until September 2003), accompanied by explicit photographs, are included in the report, describing how certain detainees were stripped of clothing, left with only a blanket in the cold, beaten with a chair, kicked and choked, made to lie face down while MP’s jumped on him and even breaking of chemical lights on detainees’ bodies. Upon questioning the soldiers and MP’s who were involved, it seemed they were under the impression that they had to “soften-up” the detainees however they could. At the same time, none of the soldiers admit to never reporting the abuse and no official records of these abusive interrogations exist, while the MI claim that they had no knowledge of the incidences of abuse in the mentioned cases.

This is just the tip of the iceberg and one gets the feeling that the military as well as the so called independent investigations are merely cover-up operations. It also seems evident that incidents of abuse in Iraq as well as previously in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay are indicative of a deeper problem than is being discussed, and could not have been possible without the go-ahead of officials at Pentagon and the White House. At best, the report candidly describes prisoner abuse accounts and at worst reveals only a part of the reality behind the photographs. Whatever the truth may be it seems there is a systematic need to elude responsibility regarding the prisoner abuse and to only scrape at the volatile surface. Many other reported incidents of abuse have been undermined or dismissed as exaggeration by the investigators, such as the use of detainees as target practice in shooting, while most accounts of detainee abuse included in the report, are followed by vague explanations of conditions which may have led to the abuse. The adopted strategy seems to imply that the abuse was inflicted by only specific misguided elements and was not as rampant and uncontrolled as the media let the world to believe. How far this is true, we can only judge for ourselves, at the end of a very revealing but highly disturbing read.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005 | permalink | 0 comments

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