MUST READ! Abuse of Iraqi prisoners scandal widens
globeandmail.com
By PAUL KORING
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Wednesday, May. 5, 2004
Washington — A firestorm of congressional outrage engulfed President George W. Bush's administration yesterday as the scandal over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners spread, threatening to become a serious domestic political problem as the Pentagon acknowledged it has been investigating dozens of cases of alleged abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Officials said 10 suspicious deaths are currently being reviewed, out of 35 investigations that have been initiated since the war to topple Afghanistan's Taliban was launched in late 2001. The cases involved included 25 deaths and 10 alleged instances of abuse. One U.S. soldier was discharged, but served no jail time, after shooting a prisoner who threw rocks at him. Another homicide involved a contractor working for the Central Intelligence Agency, Pentagon officials told reporters.
As Mr. Bush stumped through Ohio, his campaign bus tour was dogged by grim images of U.S. soldiers brutalizing Iraqi prisoners. His officials promised a sweeping probe. The Defence Department is "taking a comprehensive look at the entire prison system to make sure there's no systematic problem," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
On Capitol Hill, even staunch backers of Mr. Bush's war in Iraq were furious after Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld failed to quell the storm. Echoing presidential "disgust," he called the abuse "totally unacceptable and un-American" but refused to apologize to the victims or to Iraqis in general.
Leading Republican lawmakers, vital presidential allies in Congress, rebuked the Pentagon's "civilian leadership" — a direct jab at the Defence Secretary.
John Warner, chairman of the Senate's powerful armed services committee, warned that prisoner abuse may be more widespread than first reported and vowed to hold open hearings grilling top administration officials.
"I have been privileged to be associated with the military for over a half century, been on this committee for 25 years now, and this is as serious a problem of breakdown in discipline as I've ever observed," Mr. Warner said after emerging from a private briefing by senior military officers.
Another respected Republican senator, John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam four decades ago, accused Mr. Rumsfeld of failing in his duties.
"It's a neglect of the responsibilities that Secretary Rumsfeld and the civilian leaders of the Pentagon have to keep the Congress informed of an issue of this magnitude," Mr. McCain said.
"There are so many allegations swirling around this situation that we must have a public hearing, with the Secretary of Defence testifying," he said. "Not an hour goes by that there isn't an additional allegation. And unfortunately, the Congress in general and the Senate armed services committee in particular [have] been, up until this morning, kept completely in the dark."
Domestically, the whiff of cover-up threatens to damage Mr. Bush as much as the pictures of abused Iraqi prisoners have enraged Arabs and alienated European allies.
Mr. Rumsfeld denied any attempt to bury the abuses, insisting that an investigation was launched immediately after the allegations were first reported. He noted that a brief announcement in mid-January referred to the matter.
But it was also clear that top administration officials have known the severity of the allegations for months and kept them from the public and Congress. General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tried to talk CBS television out of broadcasting the damning images.
Although Mr. Bush's Democratic opponents have been reluctant to directly attack the President's policy on Iraq, even when it became evident that no weapons of mass destruction were being found there, they went on the attack yesterday.
Tom Daschle, Democratic Minority Leader in the Senate, said it is time for the White House "to come clean." He said efforts to suppress broadcast of the pictures were inexcusable.
Secretary of State Colin Powell made the most candid admission to date by any senior administration official about the damage to U.S. policy and image.
"The photos that we all saw last week and into this week stunned every American. It was shocking. It showed acts that are despicable," he said. "..... What they did was illegal, against all regulation, against all standards. It was immoral."
The mounting furor bodes ill for Mr. Bush as he struggles to cope with a worsening insurgency in Iraq. Even if most of the allegations turn out to be baseless, the barrage of allegations of rape, looting, willful destruction of property and deliberate humiliation have left in tatters his boastful claim that invading U.S. troops would end up garlanded as liberators.
The scandal could also dog Mr. Bush as he seeks re-election in November — especially if it widens.
"This is going to be an election issue. These pictures are going to frame this election unless this President, as Commander-in-Chief, acts decisively now," warned Jane Harman, the senior Democrat on the House of Representatives intelligence committee.
Mr. Rumsfeld was forced yesterday to fight off suggestions that mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners echoes the grim brutality of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein's regime.
"The pattern and practice of the Saddam Hussein regime was to murder and torture," Mr. Rumsfeld said testily. "And the killing fields are filled with mass graves. And equating the two I think is a fundamental misunderstanding of what took place."
There have been simmering accusations that detainees were being maltreated ever since the White House denied full prisoner-of-war status to Taliban and al-Qaeda suspects captured in Afghanistan and created a special offshore prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to hold them. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering whether basic human and legal rights have been denied.
There are no allegations that any Canadian soldiers were involved in the abuse of prisoners caught in Afghanistan, said Darren Gibb, a spokesman for Defence Minister David Pratt.
With a report from Colin Freeze in Toronto |
