Don't run from the issue. We Americans will not stand for this whether it is Saddam or it is Bush. It looks like you pro-Bushies are outfoxed on this issue.
Rights groups say mistreatment was reported last year
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | May 8, 2004
WASHINGTON -- Human rights groups say they told top American officials in Iraq as early as last May that Iraqi prisoners in US custody were being abused, and warned in October about sexually humiliating practices at Abu Ghraib prison -- about half a year before the discovery of graphic photos led to the current scandal.
Warnings about abuse of Iraqi prisoners also were made in an internal US military audit of conditions at the prison conducted last autumn, in addition to the warnings by international rights groups, including Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC.
In June, for example, Amnesty gave the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad a memorandum detailing allegations of prisoner abuse, including at Abu Ghraib, and asked for an independent investigation, said Nicole Choueiry, the Middle East spokeswoman for Amnesty International in London.
''They knew about it for a long time," Choueiry said.
One of the most damaging complaints came in a confidential report by the ICRC, disclosed yesterday by The Wall Street Journal. The report said the ICRC began briefing US officials in Iraq about their concerns of prisoner mistreatment last May after the invasion phase of the war.
The report, which calls some of the abuse ''tantamount to torture," said ICRC officials visited the prison in mid-October and witnessed prisoners being kept naked for extended periods of time and male prisoners being forced to ''parade" around in women's underwear, according to the Journal. When ICRC officials reported the abuse to a military intelligence official, they were told it was ''part of the process," the newspaper said.
The ICRC said its report was given in February to L. Paul Bremer III, the top US administrator in Iraq, and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress yesterday that he, President Bush, and many other senior US officials were ''blindsided" by the graphic nature of the photos of the abuse recently released by the media. Rumsfeld said that although he learned of the allegations and the existence of the photos in January, and even discussed the public impact the photos would have if they were made public, he did not view the military's copies of the photos until Thursday night.
''I wish we had known more sooner and been able to tell you more sooner, but we didn't," he said, apologizing to Congress for not alerting them to the scandal.
Yesterday, as Rumsfeld tried to contain the widening scandal, he said that the military had been acting for months behind the scenes to correct the abuses but that he himself had not been aware of their extent.
''And as I indicated in my remarks, if there's a failure, it's me," he said. ''It's my failure for not understanding and knowing that there were hundreds or however many there are of these things that could eventually end up in the public and do the damage they've done."
Rumsfeld said he could not remember exactly when he briefed the president on the abuse allegations, but said he never gave Bush ''a briefing with the impact that one would have, had you'd seen the photographs or the videos."
''He was just as blindsided as the Congress and me and everyone else," Rumsfeld said.
Rumsfeld, General Richard B. Myers, who is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other senior military officials had not read a detailed internal military report issued in February about the abuse before the problems were highlighted in the media last week.
Asked why Rumsfeld had not demanded to see the report, which was written by Army Major General Antonio Taguba, Rumsfeld's spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said Rumsfeld ''had confidence in the military justice system" and faith that the allegations were being properly investigated.
Last Sunday, after details of Taguba's report were published in the New Yorker magazine, Myers told ABC'S ''This Week" show that he had not read it.
''I don't know about the reporting, and I'm not going to comment about it until I have a chance to read it and see what the context is," he said. ''This sort of reporting can often be very, very wrong."
Myers, who asked producers for the CBS program ''60 Minutes II" to delay airing the photos because of the instability in Iraq, said yesterday that he also had not seen the photos until they were shown in the media, but that their impact on public opinion had been discussed.
''We had discussed the potential damage back in January and in February and in March," Myers said. ''Previously, in our discussions back in January when they said there were photos, they described them to me and the secretary, up through the chain of command to the secretary, and I happened to be there. It was discussed several times. And the general nature of the photos, about nudity, some mock sexual acts, and other abuse, was described."
Human rights groups said the testimony showed that Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials were more concerned about a public relations scandal than correcting the actual abuse.
''What did Bush criticize Rumsfeld for? Not for presiding over a system that has been abusing people systematically but for not showing him the pictures," said Ken Hurwitz, a senior associate at Human Rights First, a nonprofit human rights advocacy group. ''Everybody has been telling them about the abuse, but it wasn't real to these people until they saw it themselves in the image.
''These reports have been coming out for two years. If it had been an administration that really cared about these issues, and more to the point, recognized the foreign policy and legal significance, they would have found who was responsible two years ago."
Rights groups had been raising questions about abuse of inmates in US custody since 2002, when two prisoners in Afghanistan reportedly died from blunt blows to the body. Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit civil rights litigation organization, said he has been trying to get information from the government about the Afghan case but received no response.
After the invasion of Iraq, the ICRC protested repeatedly to US officials about prisoner mistreatment, a US diplomatic official said on condition of anonymity.
''The fact that there was abuse going on and that the ICRC was concerned about abuse has been an issue for some time," said the official, who said the military made attempts to correct abuse. ''When there were actions taken, they have publicized those actions."
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