UNTIL now, the only mitigating circumstance for the Americans in the Abu Ghraib prison outrage has been the apparent readiness of the authorities to investigate and charge those responsible. However, there were always those who predicted a cover-up and expected that only the US soldiers directly responsible for the crimes would ever be brought to justice. This week it looks like those predictions are coming true.
On Tuesday, we had a report from a US commission which laid overall blame for the appalling abuse of Iraqi detainees on the “chaos” among the US military — for which it held top brass in the occupation forces, including the overall commander, Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, responsible. The commission led by a former Republican defense secretary, James Schlesinger, found that there had been no official policy of abuse. No credence was given to claims that the policy of abusing detainees was approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The commission found only that there had been muddle and confusion over the supervision of prisoner treatment, not just in Iraq but in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay.
There are clear international rules set out for the treatment of enemy prisoners. All the lack of clarity and confusion in the world should not stop any military force, especially the army of a country that prides itself so much on the rule of law, from conforming to those rules. If the American Army really is the disciplined fighting machine that the Pentagon presents it as, then its soldiers are unlikely to break clear international rules which must have been part of their training, unless they were acting under orders.
The pretrial hearing of four Abu Ghraib guards currently under way in Germany has seen two intelligence colonels refusing to testify on the grounds that they might incriminate themselves. One of the military judges having admitted the potential importance of the two officers to the defense has suggested that he might grant the colonels immunity from prosecution. This would be completely unacceptable. The guards who have been charged all claim they were acting under orders. That lessens but does not remove their guilt because they had the power, indeed the duty, to refuse an illegal order. The real culpability would, however, lie with the persons who decided that the rules of war should be abandoned. If it was the colonels, they cannot be let off. If it goes still higher, then the investigation must follow the chain of command to where the original order was given.
Yesterday, the US Army issued its own report naming further personnel, including Brig. Janis Karpinski in charge of the military police at Abu Ghraib, and focusing on the activities of the military intelligence unit at the prison. But it is still not clear if there was dereliction of duty by senior officers or someone somewhere was issuing direct orders. Unless everyone who was actively or passively involved in the depravities is brought to account, the protests by the Bush administration that it was sickened by the revelations of mistreatment will never have any meaning.
