Commissioned by the Secretary of Defense, an independent panel examined the abuses at Abu Ghraib and other DoD detention operations. They issued this report.
Earlier, I presented a plausible scenario of how the scandal unfolded and the extent to which cabinet officials would be held accountable. I argued that while Rumsfeld’s actions would precipitate such a scandal, e.g. “Rumsfeld orders a broad based interrogation plan to deal with insurgency, but does not know of the specifics of how his orders are carried out on the ground. Rumsfeld doesn’t realize that coalition forces on the ground would interpret the interrogation orders in such a way.” I also argued that Bush would not be held accountable for obvious “delegation of responsibility” reasons. Further, I argued that the commanders on the ground would get the harshest criticisms and bare the brunt of a system of mistakes.
I was right on all arguments. Rumsfeld gets a slap on the wrist, Bush is not found responsible at all, and the commanders on the ground got the brunt of the criticism.
I also argued that torture is not out of the realm of possibility at Guantanamo Bay. I attended a talk by a guy who worked in the DoD. He said “that no one in Guantanamo has been tortured, and no plans are made to torture them to give up information.” Some argued that the U.S. military would probably not resort to torture as it is “ineffective.” According to the independent panel review (p. 13):
“Of the 66 already substantiated cases of abuse, eight occurred at Guantanamo, three in Afghanistan, and 55 in Iraq. Only about one-third were related to interrogation, and two-thirds to other causes. There were five cases of detainee deaths as a result of abuse by U.S. personnel during interrogations.”
From the report, I couldn’t tell which of the Gitmo abuses were during interrogations. Clearly, however, in either Gitmo, Iraq, or Afghanistan, prisoner abuse during interrogations occurred. Keep in mind that these abuses were not officially sanctioned by the DoD or the President. A list of interrogation techniques are listed in Appendix E.
The U.S. military does use torture. Failures of understanding the “proper” interrogation techniques, I argue, are symptoms of a larger problem. That problem is a lack of foresight by the DoD and the planners of the Iraq war to get information in a timely fashion. The report backs-up my claim (p. 11):
“In Iraq, 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. The October 2002 CENTCOM War Plan presupposed that relatively benign stability and security operations would precede a handover to Iraq’s authorities…”
Abu Ghraib, other abuses, and the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq on the current scale since the May 1st, 2003 declaration of the end of “major” combat operations are a result of poor planning and poor control over field operations. The current administration screwed up in the worst way and needs to be held accountable in the next free and fair election.
Hopefully, the next “free and fair” election will bring us somebody who has some kind of idea about what he’d do differently, instead of endlessly carping without providing a solution. Something other than a “secret plan.” That’s all we’ve got from the Kerry/Edwards bunch: carping.
And then, when something doesn’t go the exact way we’d like it to, we’ll be able to sit back, point fingers, and campaign to vote in somebody else in a “free and fair” election who will get us out of this mess. Only this time, we’ll have lots and lots of information from the mistakes other people made, and everything will turn out perfectly. Not only will we do great good, but we’ll have Held Someone Accountable for screwing up in the worst way.
Until the next election.
Again, war is hell. Bad things happen in a war. Do we excuse them? No, but we have to understand they will happen. Of the 140,000 soldiers, there are going to be a few bad apples. These soldiers should and will be prosecuted by the proper authorities.
As for the insurgency, I actually agree. The administration has been running a politically correct war which has been getting soldiers killed. If rebels have been firing from inside a mosque, destroy the mosque. I don’t care if it’s the mosque devoted to Mohammad’s mother. If the enemy is using it as a fort to kill us, it is no longer a religious site, it’s a target.
I agree with your agreement, Morgan. You can’t win a war by committee, and you can’t fight a battle “sensitively.” The problem is that if you’re going to quell an insurgency the way it should be done (with horrific, overwhelming force that scares the living shit out of the next group of dickheads that thinks about Saddam’s good old days), then you run the risk of alienating the population that you’re trying to save.
This wouldn’t be an issue if, as the Michael Moore-wing of the Democratic party claims, we were truly empire-building. If you’re annexing territory and staying there as the “Great White Father” the way the English did in their colonial battles, then it’s fine to smack the natives around. You’re in charge by force of arms, dint of effort, and blood and treasure spent. In Iraq, we don’t want that. We just want these people to enter the 20th century (if not the 21st) and create some type of representative democracy. We can’t afford to alienate them. So what can you do? What if Sadr-type militias only fight from mosques? Keep destroying religious sites? Pull out?
It’s a gigantic shit sandwich no matter how you slice it. The only bright spot is that it’s happening THERE, not here, and that someone had the political and moral courage to fight this fight. We are making mistakes. But we are also making great progress, and through the bureaucratic process, we are trying to fix these mistakes. It will take time. We all knew it would take time.
Only the pusillanimous or nakedly politically-motivated would deny the strides made in Iraq and counsel that we pull out.