What I took away from reading the entire James Schlesinger “independent” commission report [.pdf] and the executive summary and a skim of the rest of the Jones-Fay generals’ report [.pdf] on the abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was a profound confirmation of what many of us have been saying for some time. The Bush administration and apparently even the planners at the Pentagon were completely unrealistic about what was likely to happen in the wake of an unsurprising initial military victory in Iraq.
They had no coherent plans for the occupation that followed – or rather, what plans they had were based on the “cakewalk” theory that the Iraqis would be deliriously grateful to the Americans for getting rid of Saddam Hussein and would bend over backwards to be cooperative. They believed their own propaganda. That wasn’t the only reason the outrages at Abu Ghraib occurred. But it certainly was a contributing factor.
Here’s the way the Schlesinger report puts it (from the Executive Summary):
“In Iraq, there was not only a failure to plan for a major insurgency, but also to quickly and adequately adapt to the insurgency that followed after major combat operations. The October 2002 CENTCOM War Plan presupposed that relatively benign stability and security operations would precede a handover to Iraq’s authorities. The contingencies contemplated in that plan included sabotage of oil production facilities and large numbers of refugees generated by communal strife.
“Major combat operations were accomplished more swiftly than anticipated. Then began a period of occupation and an active and growing insurgency. Although the removal of Saddam Hussein was initially welcomed by the bulk of the population, the occupation became increasingly resented. Detention facilities soon held Iraqi and foreign terrorists as well as a mix of Enemy Prisoners of War, other security detainees, criminals and undoubtedly some accused as a result of factional rivalries. Of the 17 detention facilities in Iraq, the largest, Abu Ghraib, housed up to 7,000 detainees in October 2003, with a guard force of only about 90 personnel from the 800th Military Police Brigade. Abu Ghraib was seriously overcrowded, under-resourced, and under continual attack. Five U.S. soldiers died as a result of mortar attacks on Abu Ghraib. In July 2003, Abu Ghraib was mortared 25 times; on August 16, 2003, five detainees were filled and 67 wounded in a mortar attack. A mortar attack on April 20, 2004 killed 22 detainees.”
Higher Responsibility
The Schlesinger panel did at least imply, as most of the newspaper stories reported, that responsibility for the abuses at Abu Ghraib should not be confined to the mostly lower-level soldiers who actually committed them, but extends far up the chain of command, to Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, although it doesn’t explicitly suggest that he actually gave orders to rough up some prisoners.
Shucks, the panel didn’t even explicitly say that Rumsfeld’s war plan, which grew in part out of his longer-held desire to reform the military to be leaner, meaner and more agile, was responsible for Abu Ghraib, and the occupation generally, being seriously “under-resourced” (don’t you love these bureaucratic expressions?). But if early stories are a guide, several reporters made the inference and Rumsfeld’s “leadership of the Pentagon has been weighed by a jury of his peers and found somewhat wanting,” as Tom Ricks put it in the Washington Post.
The Bush Connection
The panel also inferred that President Bush bears at least some moral culpability.
The report outlines the policy debate going on in Washington inner circles in early 2002. The State Department argued that the Geneva Conventions on prisoner and detainee treatment were applicable to the conflicts likely to come in the upcoming “war on terror,” but the Department of Justice and the president’s counsel wanted to make exceptions. President Bush cut through the disagreement on February 7 when he “issued his decision memorandum (see Appendix B). The memorandum stated the Geneva Conventions did not apply to al-Qaeda and therefore they were not entitled to prisoner of war status. It also stated the Geneva Conventions did apply to the Taliban but the Taliban combatants were not entitled to prisoner of war status as a result of their failure to conduct themselves in accordance with the provisions of the Geneva Conventions.”
How did this affect activities at Abu Ghraib? For starters, few of those acting as prison guards were even trained for that activity, let alone made familiar with the specific interrogation techniques authorized in the Iraq war – which were, as the panel report makes clear, confused and confusing even for those with the proper training. So knowing vaguely about a White House directive that al-Qaeda were not protected by the Geneva Convention helped some guards, however indirectly, to self-justify what increasingly became an “anything goes” attitude.
In addition, there was palpable pressure on the interrogators at the prison to produce actionable intelligence from the prisoners. Most of this came from military higher-ups. But the report also notes that, “In November 2003, a senior member of the National Security Council visited Abu Ghraib, leading some personnel in the facility to conclude, perhaps incorrectly, that even the White House was interested in the intelligence gleaned from their interrogation reports.” While the panel carefully “found no undue pressure exerted by senior officials,” it still remarked, “Nevertheless, their eagerness for intelligence may have been perceived by interrogators as pressure.”
I warrant that the second statement is more plausible than the first.
Confusion Reigning
The story of confusion in the way Abu Ghraib was run is too extensive for a detailed recounting here. It includes reservists and others having to be recycled after their particular duty hitch was up in September 2003, just as the insurgency (which the report at least calls by its proper name, as officials were reluctant to do for an unduly long time) was heating up and demands on detention centers increasing. Many of those called up from Reserve or National Guard units didn’t even know what their assignment would be when they got to Iraq.
Units were broken apart, so even if they had received training together as a unit, which it turns out they didn’t, people were thrown together and told to improvise. The few military people with detention experience or training had combat detention training – capturing on the battlefield, doing preliminary screening and interrogation, shuffling prisoners back to a secure rearward unit well behind the lines – which is different from running a facility at a fixed location actually in an active combat zone.
The prison unit seems to have had weak leadership and officers who winked and nodded at abuses.
Furthermore, there was maximum confusion about what rules for acceptable interrogation techniques were in place. As we know, the Geneva Conventions didn’t apply at Guantanamo, but they were supposed to apply in Iraq. But special techniques were used at Guantanamo, and Lt. Gen. Miller was dispatched from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib to see if they could be applied usefully there. The directives from on high – the defense secretary’s office – changed several times. It is unclear whether there were real rules in Afghanistan, but people in Iraq learned, from people being transferred and from hearsay, about how those in Afghanistan treated prisoners.
No Intelligence Help
Those who actually performed the abuses and took the pictures, of course, bear primary responsibility for the outrageous behavior. The Schlesinger panel says the most egregious abuses were not directly connected to interrogation or intelligence requirements anyway, but done in a rather freelance manner – actually it rather cavalierly refers to “Animal House on the night shift,” which to me doesn’t treat them with the seriousness that is warranted. (I talk often to a retired cop who did some intelligence jobs as well, and he tells me torture and abuse are not only not necessary for eliciting accurate information, in almost all cases they are counterproductive.)
There’s little question, although the report is not as explicit as one might like, however, that upper management, quite likely all the way to the Oval Office, either encouraged or tolerated an atmosphere of confusion and tolerance for going a bit over the line. The top guys worked assiduously to interpret treaties and laws to allow interrogators to get away with as much as possible, short of outright egregious and vile torture. They made strategic mistakes about the environment the soldiers in Iraq encountered – it seems, shockingly, that there was no effective Plan B when not all Iraqis greeted the occupiers with flowers and gratitude – and did little to adapt the plan to the changed circumstances.
Human Rights Watch says it is not satisfied with the report, which “seems to go out of its way not to find any relationship between Secretary Rumsfeld’s approval of interrogation techniques designed to inflict pain and humiliation and the widespread mistreatment and torture of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo,” said Reed Brody, a special counsel to HRW. He’s right, but the story is there, although you might have to read between the lines or draw inferences sometimes.
The abuses at Abu Ghraib were outrageous. Perhaps more outrageous was the terrible and deficient planning – so deficient as almost to amount to no serious planning – that went into the occupation phase of the conflict. This deficiency arose from top officials stubbornly choosing to believe what they wanted to believe, despite strong evidence to the contrary and despite qualms that managed to find expression from senior military and intelligence officials about how easy the occupation would be.
This mirrors the phenomenon of believing what they wanted to believe about weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks despite the implausibility of those beliefs.
The corporals and privates deserve discipline. The top officials, up to the commander in chief, also deserve to be punished. That won’t happen (except perhaps indirectly at the polls in November). But Messrs. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Ashcroft, et al., have forfeited any claim to be taken seriously as to their credibility or judgment by any perceptive American.
