One of Ours

The Army general who investigated the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad said yesterday that he had found no evidence the misconduct was based on orders from high-ranking officers or involved a deliberate policy to stretch legal limits on extracting information from detainees.

Instead, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba attributed the scandal to the willful actions of a small group of soldiers and to "a failure of leadership" and supervision by brigade and lower-level commanders.

[...]

But several senators challenged the notion that low-ranking soldiers could have devised the particularly humiliating measures on their own, and Taguba reported that military guards probably were influenced by intelligence personnel. He also clashed openly with the Pentagon official responsible for intelligence, Stephen A. Cambone, over the propriety and significance of a decision last November to place Abu Ghraib prison under the command of a military intelligence officer.

...Taguba testified that the move made military guards subject to the tactical control of interrogators, thus violating Army doctrine and blurring lines of responsibility...

[...]

...Asked by Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the committee chairman, to put "in simple words" how the abuses happened, Taguba said: "Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down. Lack of discipline, no training whatsoever and no supervision. Supervisory omission was rampant."

Pressed by several senators on whether any order had been given to the guards "to soften up" the detainees prior to interrogation, Taguba said he discovered none, nor any "overall military or intelligence policy" to do so. But he said that the military guards who have been charged with committing the abuses were influenced by military intelligence personnel and private contractors responsible for interrogations.

"We did not find any evidence of a policy or a direct order given to these soldiers to conduct what they did. I believe that they did it on their own volition," said Taguba...