OUR SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS: Abu Ghraib Prison Tragedy…

Iraqi Prisoner at Abu Ghraib Prison

Before the Iraq War, the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad was well-known as Saddam Hussein’s most notorious torture and murder facility. With this week’s horrendous revelations about American abuses of Iraqi prisoners there, it now represents our torture chamber as well.

As a public-relations nightmare, it couldn’t get much worse than this.

Billions of dollars in reconstruction aid, thousands of good deeds, and untold gestures of goodwill and generosity have all been eclipsed by a growing collection of photographs — photographs and stories that show us to be no better than Saddam Hussein’s goons.

The irony of this week’s revelations is disastrous. As a Pentagon general put it, “We just lost the war because of a bunch of morons.” That explanation should now be expanded to include this addition: We just lost the war because of the arrogance and incompetence of our secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and under secretary of defense for policy, Douglas Feith.

Bush invaded Iraq to bring democracy to the Iraqi citizens and to transform their world of fear into one of hope. The abuses at Abu Ghraib, and other American-operated prisons, portray us as an occupying force every bit as frightening as the Baathists. Osama bin Laden must be overjoyed.

These incidents of prisoner abuse and mistreatment represent a self-inflicted wound to our monumental effort in Iraq from which we may never recover. The battle for “the hearts and minds” of average Iraqi citizens may now be lost.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the media that revealed this story after the Pentagon sat on its own scathing report for over two months. The CBS show “60 Minutes II” and an article in The New Yorker by Seymour Hersh broke this terrible story open to the American public, and the international uproar has continued ever since. Rumsfeld still doesn’t seem to understand the seriousness of the situation. He refuses to acknowledge that the actions depicted in the photographs from Abu Ghraib represent incidents of torture. He says they represent abuse instead, as if playing word games will make the situation melt away.

Rumsfeld apologists don’t get it either. Rush Limbaugh referred to the incidents as “college fraternity pranks.”

Rumsfeld is well-known for his disdain for the Geneva Convention and the international rules of conduct during war. In 2002 he said that the people detained in Afghanistan “do not have any rights.” This mentality of macho lawlessness has obviously filtered down from the top of our military to the lowest ranks within the military prison system. Abu Ghraib is the result. A terrible blow to our international reputation as the champions of freedom is the consequence.

President Bush, in an unprecedented attempt at damage control, went on Arab television to express his disgust with the revelations and promised “Justice will be delivered.” But he fell short of what was really needed. Bush did not personally apologize immediately — he left that to his aides.

In the Middle East, that translates as insincerity — an ineffectual effort to explain, but not to take responsibility. The next day, he responded to criticism and offered an apology to Crown Prince Abdullah of Jordan — too little too late.

President Bush isn’t holding anyone else responsible at the moment either. He continues to have the highest regard for his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld. As one of the principal architects and advocates of the war, Rumsfeld was widely criticized for promoting a war-on-the-cheap in Iraq. His original estimates on the human and material costs of the war and occupation have been blown away by reality, yet he retains the ear and eternal confidence of the president. As his grand visions and predictions of easy victory have evaporated, Rumsfeld has become dismissive and evasive. As the chaos of the occupation unfolds, he is more likely to want to shoot the messenger than to address the realities of all that is going wrong — or rather off-schedule.

The president’s continued support for Rumsfeld is especially puzzling when you consider the amazing story coming out this week about what the president knew about the Abu Ghraib situation and related stories and when he knew it.

By all accounts, Rumsfeld told Bush back in January that the Army was investigating serious reports of abuse and torture in our prisons in Iraq. In reality, six different inquiries were underway, including investigations into 14 cases of suspicious deaths. The main report, completed in April by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, is a serious indictment of our prison-management system in Iraq. But apparently Rumsfeld never got back with the president on any of these investigations over the following months, including the Taguba report, nor did the president ever ask.

Rumsfeld admitted that the Taguba Report sat around his office for two months without being studied. General Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has also admitted he never got around to reading it. The Taguba Report details “sadistic, blatant, wanton criminal abuses,” yet nobody high up in the Pentagon thought it important enough to alert the president or do anything serious about — or so we are now told.

Astonishingly, President Bush admitted on Arab television that he found out about the Abu Ghraib abuses as the stories and pictures broke on television this week and in The New Yorker magazine. If he feels any embarrassment or anger over his lack of knowledge of such an explosive issue, it isn’t showing. If he’s furious with his staff for not keeping him informed — or with himself for not making sure he was — it’s not in evidence. This is an administration that seems to take pride in never admitting a mistake, or holding anyone accountable, especially itself.

It seems inconceivable that President Bush could be so ignorant of such a scandal brewing. It also seems hard to believe that if he did know, he didn’t take it seriously.

It has been 3 1/2 years since September 11th and not a single intelligence or criminal justice official has lost his or her job as a result of that tragic failure. It has been almost a year since someone in the White House revealed the name of an undercover CIA operative, and nobody has yet to be held accountable for this felonious and traitorous act. And it has been over a year since we started a war based on manipulated and distorted intelligence, but nobody is losing his or her job over it.

We can’t afford to endure months of finger pointing, stonewalling, and name-calling. The responsibility for this disaster belongs to Donald Rumsfeld. The president should fire him and Wolfowitz immediately. The two of them promoted this disastrous war and now endless occupation, and they dismissed this prison scandal until it blew up in our faces. They have failed us all, and they should go!

And if President Bush doesn’t show some serious leadership and fire them both, then Congress should initiate impeachment proceedings against him for dereliction of duty!

If President Bush will not see to it that the leaders in his administration take full responsibility for their decisions, then he is failing us as well.

There is an explanation floating around that the Abu Ghraib disaster is symptomatic of an unwritten understanding that we can now bend or even ignore the rules of international conduct regarding prisoners of war because the war on terrorism is so important. If this is true, then Osama bin Laden is successfully getting us to erode the very foundation of our own morality, our own essential decency.

May 7, 2004 | Filed Under GFA