FOR 15 MONTHS now the Bush administration has insisted that the
horrific photographs of abuse from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were
the result of freelance behavior by low-level personnel and had
nothing to do with its policies. In this the White House has been
enthusiastically supported by the Army brass, which has conducted
investigations documenting hundreds of cases of prisoner mistreatment
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but denies that any of
its senior officers are culpable. For some time these implacable
positions have been glaringly at odds with the known facts. In the
past few days, those facts have grown harder to ignore.
The latest evidence has emerged from hearings at Fort Meade
about two of those low-level Abu Ghraib guards who are charged with
using dogs to terrorize Iraqi detainees. On Wednesday, the former
warden of Abu Ghraib, Maj. David DiNenna, testified that the use of
dogs for interrogation was recommended by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D.
Miller, the former commander of the Guantanamo Bay prison who was
dispatched by the Pentagon to Abu Ghraib in August 2003 to review the
handling and interrogation of prisoners. On Tuesday, a military
interrogator testified that he had been trained in using dogs by a
team sent to Iraq by Gen. Miller.
In statements to investigators and in sworn testimony to
Congress last year, Gen. Miller denied that he recommended the use of
dogs for interrogation, or that they had been used at Guantanamo. "No
methods contrary to the Geneva Convention were presented at any time
by the assistance team that I took to [Iraq]," he said under oath on
May 19, 2004. Yet Army investigators reported to Congress this month
that, under Gen. Miller's supervision at Guantanamo, an al Qaeda
suspect named Mohamed Qahtani was threatened with snarling dogs,
forced to wear women's underwear on his head and led by a leash
attached to his chains -- the very abuse documented in the Abu Ghraib
photographs.
The court evidence strongly suggests that Gen. Miller lied about
his actions, and it merits further investigation by prosecutors and
Congress. But the Guantanamo commander was not acting on his own: The
interrogation of Mr. Qahtani, investigators found, was carried out
under rules approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Dec.
2, 2002. After strong protests from military lawyers, the Rumsfeld
standards -- which explicitly allowed nudity, the use of dogs and
shackling -- were revised in April 2003. Yet the same practices were
later adopted at Abu Ghraib, at least in part at the direct
instigation of Gen. Miller. "We understood," Maj. DiNenna testified,
"that [Gen. Miller] was sent over by the secretary of defense."
The White House and Pentagon have gotten away with their
stonewalling largely because of Republican control of Congress. When
the Abu Ghraib scandal erupted, GOP leaders such as Sen. John W.
Warner (Va.) loudly vowed to get to the bottom of the matter -- but
once the bottom started to come into view late last year, Mr. Warner's
demands for accountability ceased. Mr. Rumsfeld and other senior
officials have never been the subject of an independent investigation.
A recommendation by the latest Army probe that Gen. Miller be
reprimanded for his role in the Qahtani interrogation was rejected by
Gen. Bantz Craddock of Southern Command.
The only good news in this shameful story is that a group of
Republican senators, though resisting justified Democratic demands for
an independent investigation, are attempting to reform the policy of
abuse to which the administration still adheres. Six GOP senators led
by John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) have backed an
amendment to the defense operations bill that would exclude
exceptional interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay and ban the use
of "cruel, inhumane and degrading" treatment for all prisoners held by
the United States. The administration contends that detainees held
abroad may be subject to such abuse. Attempts by the White House and
Mr. Warner to block or gut the legislation failed, and on Tuesday the
GOP leadership pulled the defense bill from the floor rather than
allow a vote. The administration probably will spend the next month
trying to quell this rebellion of conscience and good sense. The
nation would be better served if President Bush instead accepted, at
last, the truth about Abu Ghraib.
