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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Harvey Allen who wrote (132147)	5/8/2004 12:41:04 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

An Inadequate Response _______________________ Editorial The Washington Post Saturday, May 8, 2004 washingtonpost.com SECRETARY OF Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld read a statement yesterday to Congress taking responsibility for the abuse of prisoners in Iraq, and he was right to do so. But Mr. Rumsfeld did not accept the fundamental nature of the problem, much less commit himself to correcting it. In testimony before Senate and House committees, the defense secretary and his deputies continued to portray the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison as isolated acts by individuals. They defended, or refused to acknowledge, the policy decisions that made the abuses more likely. They pledged that those connected to the repugnant acts documented in published photographs -- and others yet to be released -- would be punished. But they offered no assurance that their unacceptable system of detention in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere would be fixed. Much congressional questioning focused on process: on the timing of the Pentagon's response to the abuses at Abu Ghraib, on Mr. Rumsfeld's failure to adequately inform Congress or the president. There was discussion of whether the secretary should resign; he and President Bush clearly intend to avoid that. We believe that Mr. Rumsfeld bears much of the responsibility for creating the legal and political climate in which the prison abuses occurred and that his failure to respond to previous reports of abuses or appeals for reforms made possible the catastrophe of Abu Ghraib. But whether or not he remains in office, the most important task before the administration and Congress should be to reform the system of prisoner detention so that it fully conforms to the Geneva Conventions and other international standards of human rights. That will require changes in procedures, the formulation of clear standards and rigorous outside oversight. Mr. Rumsfeld's testimony yesterday offered no support for such basic change. He repeatedly defended the procedures created two years ago to extract intelligence from prisoners even though these have led to documented abuses in several overseas prison facilities. At one point he suggested that he was not aware of the decision that laid the foundation for the Abu Ghraib crimes -- a determination that military prison guards should "set the conditions" for intelligence interrogations, in violation of Army regulations -- even though that policy was developed by a major general and previously implemented at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan. Mr. Rumsfeld dodged questions about whether guards had been told by intelligence officers and civilian contractors how to treat prisoners, even though an official investigation has already determined that that is what occurred. Mr. Rumsfeld claimed that guards at Abu Ghraib had been instructed to follow the Geneva Conventions, but the investigation by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba has documented that no such instructions were given. The Third Geneva Convention says that prisoners of war "may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind" as a way to make them answer questions. That rule has been systematically violated at U.S. detention facilities abroad -- in part because the Pentagon has designated many prisoners as illegal combatants not eligible for Geneva protections. In fact, the interrogation system developed at Mr. Rumsfeld's Pentagon cannot be legally applied to anyone considered a prisoner of war. The Pentagon leadership would like to limit the scandal, and the scrutiny, to a handful of soldiers at one prison during two months of last year. But investigations by the International Committee of the Red Cross and independent human rights groups have demonstrated that abuses occurred elsewhere. The Army now has admitted that at least 25 prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan have died in U.S. custody. These are the signs not of isolated acts but of a broken system, one that is leading to criminal abuses. If Mr. Rumsfeld and President Bush are unwilling to fix it, Congress must step in. © 2004 The Washington Post Company

To: Harvey Allen who wrote (132147)	5/9/2004 9:04:07 AM
From: Harvey Allen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The Price of Arrogance In a war that could go on for decades, you cannot simply detain people indefinitely on the sole authority of the secretary of DefenseBy Fareed Zakaria NewsweekMay 17 issue - America is ushering in a new responsibility era," says President Bush as part of his standard stump speech, "where each of us understands we're responsible for the decisions we make in life." When speaking about bad CEOs he's even clearer as to what it entails: "You're beginning to see the consequences of people making irresponsible decisions. They need to pay a price for their irresponsibility." "I take full responsibility," said Donald Rumsfeld in his congressional testimony last week. But what does this mean? Secretary Rumsfeld hastened to add that he did not plan to resign and was not going to ask anyone else who might have been "responsible" to resign. As far as I can tell, taking responsibility these days means nothing more than saying the magic words "I take responsibility." After the greatest terrorist attack against America, no one was asked to resign, and the White House didn't even want to launch a serious investigation into it. The 9/11 Commission was created after months of refusals because some of the victims' families pursued it aggressively and simply didn't give up. After the fiasco over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, not one person was even reassigned. The only people who have been fired or cashiered in this administration are men like Gen. Eric Shinseki, Paul O'Neill and Larry Lindsey, who spoke inconvenient truths. Rumsfeld went on in his testimony to explain that "these terrible acts were perpetrated by a small number." That's correct, except the small number who are truly responsible are not the handful of uniformed personnel currently being charged for the prison abuse scandal. The events at Abu Ghraib are part of a larger breakdown in American policy over the past two years. And it has been perpetrated by a small number of people at the highest levels of government. Since 9/11, a handful of officials at the top of the Defense Department and the vice president's office have commandeered American foreign and defense policy. In the name of fighting terror they have systematically weakened the traditional restraints that have made this country respected around the world. Alliances, international institutions, norms and ethical conventions have all been deemed expensive indulgences at a time of crisis. Within weeks after September 11, senior officials at the Pentagon and the White House began the drive to maximize American freedom of action. They attacked specifically the Geneva Conventions, which govern behavior during wartime. Donald Rumsfeld explained that the conventions did not apply to today's "set of facts." He and his top aides have tried persistently to keep prisoners out of the reach of either American courts or international law, presumably so that they can be handled without those pettifogging rules as barriers. Rumsfeld initially fought both the uniformed military and Colin Powell, who urged that prisoners in Guantanamo be accorded rights under the conventions. Eventually he gave in on the matter but continued to suggest that the protocols were antiquated. Last week he said again that the Geneva Conventions did not "precisely apply" and were simply basic rules. The conventions are not exactly optional. They are the law of the land, signed by the president and ratified by Congress. Rumsfeld's concern—that Al Qaeda members do not wear uniforms and are thus "unlawful combatants"—is understandable, but that is a determination that a military court would have to make. In a war that could go on for decades, you cannot simply arrest and detain people indefinitely on the say-so of the secretary of Defense. The basic attitude taken by Rumsfeld, Cheney and their top aides has been "We're at war; all these niceties will have to wait." As a result, we have waged pre-emptive war unilaterally, spurned international cooperation, rejected United Nations participation, humiliated allies, discounted the need for local support in Iraq and incurred massive costs in blood and treasure. If the world is not to be trusted in these dangerous times, key agencies of the American government, like the State Department, are to be trusted even less. Congress is barely informed, even on issues on which its "advise and consent" are constitutionally mandated. Leave process aside: the results are plain. On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq—troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani—Washington's assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been reversed, often too late to have much effect. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw in the eyes of much of the world. Whether he wins or loses in November, George W. Bush's legacy is now clear: the creation of a poisonous atmosphere of anti-Americanism around the globe. I'm sure he takes full responsibility. msnbc.msn.com