One of Ours

The Army general who first investigated prisoner abuse in an Iraqi prison told Congress on Tuesday the mistreatment resulted from faulty leadership, a "lack of discipline, no training whatsoever and no supervision."

Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba also left open the possibility that members of the Central Intelligence Agency as well as armed forces personnel and civilian contractors were culpable in the abusive treatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.

"A few soldiers and civilians conspired to abuse and conduct egregious acts of violence against detainees and other civilians outside the bounds of international laws and the Geneva Convention," Taguba told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

[...]

...questions about ultimate responsibility for control of the Abu Ghraib prison produced a disagreement between Taguba and Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence.

Taguba said that control had been turned over to military intelligence officials.

Cambone said that was incorrect, and it resided with the military police.

In a further disagreement, Taguba said it was against Army rules for intelligence troops to involve MPs in setting conditions for interrogations. Cambone said he believed it was appropriate for the two groups to collaborate.

Taguba also told the committee his investigation had not found "any order whatsoever, written or otherwise," that directed the military police to cooperate with intelligence forces at the prison.

Regardless of any disagreements, Cambone and others told the panel that troops in Iraq were under orders to abide by the Geneva Conventions, which dictate terms for humane treatment of prisoners.

[...]

Taguba told the panel that his investigators had been told about participation by "other government agencies or contractors" in the abuse. Other government agencies is a euphemism for the CIA.

Byrd asked Taguba, "Who gave the order to soften up these prisoners, to 'give them the treatment?' Was this policy? Who approved it?"

"I did not find any evidence of a policy or a direct order given to these soldiers to conduct what they did," Taguba replied.

"I believe that they did it on their own volition. I believe that they collaborated with several MI (military intelligence) interrogators at the lower level, based on the conveyance of that information through interviews and written statements," Taguba said.

Over and over, one heard variations on the theme of, "Gee, it’s terrible about all those people who died in the towers and all"—that had already become the pro forma disclaimer/preface for America-bashing—"but maybe it’s a wake-up call for us to recognize how bad we are, Why They Hate Us."

Yes, the 9/11 attacks were terrible and all . . . but look at how badly the United States has treated the Third World, etc. etc. etc.

And I hear an echo of this "but" in some of the conservative commentary about Abu Ghraib: "Yes, the abuse and humiliation and battery of the Iraqi detainees was awful... but look how badly Saddam treated people in prison. Look what the Iraqis did to those four contractors on March 31, etc etc, etc.

There is no "but." Period. As Secretary Rumsfeld and his accompanying high defense officials and officers have made abundantly clear, the acts were crimes and must be understood as such.

There is no but. There is no but. There is no but. Clear?

The American campaign against terrorism is opening a new front in a region that military officials fear could become the next base for Al Qaeda — the largely ungoverned swath of territory stretching from the Horn of Africa to the Western Sahara’s Atlantic coast.

Generals here at the United States European Command, which oversees the area, say the vast, arid region is a new Afghanistan, with well-financed bands of Islamic militants recruiting, training and arming themselves. Terrorist attacks like the one on March 11 in Madrid that killed 191 people seem to have a North African link, investigators say, and may presage others in Europe.

...they are dispatching Special Operations forces to countries like Mali and Mauritania in West Africa to train soldiers and outfit them with pickup trucks, radios and global-positioning equipment.

“We want to be preventative, so that we don’t have to put boots on the ground here in North Africa as we did in Afghanistan,” said the European Command’s chief of counter-terrorism, Lt. Col. Powl Smith, adding that by assisting local governments to do the fighting themselves, “we don’t become a lightning rod for popular anger that radicals can capitalize on.”

[...]

The program, called the Pan-Sahel Initiative, was begun with $7 million and focused on Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad. It is being expanded to include Senegal and possibly other countries. The European Command has asked for $125 million for the region over five years...

US-led forces will hand over Saddam Hussein and top officials of his former regime to the Iraqis before the handover of power, according to a top lawyer coordinating Hussein’s trial. The iraqi trials will begin early in 2005, and Saddam Hussein will not necessarily be the first one tried.

"The coalition forces now have more than 100 detained former regime officials," Salem Chalabi told reporters in Kuwait. "They will be transferred to us before the transfer of power, and they include Saddam Hussein, Ali Hassan al-Majid and Tareq Aziz."...