Abu Ghraib Report Indicts Rumsfeld; The Wall Street Journal Calls It Vindication

By M.P. Prabhakaran

            Ever since those gruesome pictures showing American soldiers torturing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison sent shock waves through the civilized world, The Wall Street Journal has been trying hard to protect the rear end of Donald Rumsfeld. As Secretary of Defense, the ultimate responsibility for those abuses should be borne by him, said many of the lawmakers, the mainstream media and a majority of the general public in America. Many of them also demanded his resignation.

            The Journal’s line of argument in defense of Rumsfeld has been that “the Abu Ghraib abuses were an aberration caused by a few bad apples and enabled by poor command leadership” (“Torture Arguments,” editorial, June 25, 2004). It is quite surprising that the paper has not changed that line even after a panel appointed by Mr. Rumsfeld himself, after investigating the matter for four months, produced evidence to the contrary. It is more surprising that the paper flaunts the same report, released on August 24, 2004, as “A Rumsfeld Vindication” (editorial, August 26, 2004). It does so by plucking out just two sentences from the 93-page report: “No approved procedures called for or allowed the kinds of abuse that in fact occurred. There is no evidence of a policy of abuse promulgated by senior officials or military authorities.”

            It is appalling that the editorial should ignore the next two lines wherein lies the essence of the report: “Still, the abuses were not just the failure of some individuals to follow known standards, and they are more than the failure of a few leaders to enforce proper discipline. There is both institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels.” Anyone can guess whom the panel is pointing to as the culprit.

            As Dahlia Lithwick says in “No Smoking Gun,” her guest column in The New York Times of August 26, “If you’re waiting around for evidence of the phone call from Donald Rumsfeld to Pfc. Lynndie England – the one where he orders the ‘code red,’ instructing her to pile up a bunch of naked, hooded men and strike a queen-of-the-mountain pose – you’ll wait forever. That’s not how armies function. Armies depend on the realities of the chain of command and the cha-cha of plausible deniability.”

            The mainstream media in America and impartial observers around the world drew more or less the same conclusion after reading the report. The report, it may be added, was produced by a four-member panel headed by James R. Schlesinger, who was Secretary of Defense in the Nixon administration and no friend of liberals whom the Journal despises. In the Journal’s opinion, the report “is devastating to those who’ve sought to pin blame on an alleged culture of lawlessness going all the way to the top of the Bush administration” (editorial, August 26).

            Earlier, the paper had chastised those who demanded Rumsfeld’s resignation. “Every accusation against U.S. troops is now getting front-page treatment. Like reporters at a free buffet, Members of Congress are swarming to the TV cameras to declare their outrage and demand someone’s head, usually Donald Rumsfeld’s,” it said in its May 6, 2004 editorial, “Abuse and the Army.” The same editorial went on to say: “Another bizarre notion is that Abu Ghraib happened because the Pentagon decided to hold ‘enemy combatants’ under other than ‘prisoner of war’ status.”

            It is not a bizarre notion. It has now been confirmed that what happened at Abu Ghraib has a lot to do with the confusion which arose from that decision. Early on in the war on terror, the Bush administration had decided to treat al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners as “unlawful combatants,” undeserving of Geneva Convention treatment. The argument was that most of them were terrorists, not belonging to a formal army of any nation, and so not entitled to the humane, prisoners-of-war treatment guaranteed under the Geneva Conventions.

            It was in pursuance of that administration decision that Rumsfeld issued his now-infamous interrogation memo. The memo, issued on December 2, 2002, authorized for use on prisoners brought from Afghanistan and held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 16 new interrogation procedures (more appropriately called torture methods). The new procedures included hooding prisoners, using dogs to terrify them, forcing them into “stress positions” for long periods, shaving them and isolating them. They were more rigorous than the 17 methods long approved as part of standard military practice. Rumsfeld later decided to remove some of the extreme methods. The decision was made only when pressured by some Pentagon lawyers and officers of the navy. It is not something that Rumsfeld should be complimented for, as the Journal does in its May 25, 2004 editorial, “Tortured Arguments.”

Confusion

            The confusion over interrogation procedures arose from inadequate communication between the interrogators and their superiors. The interrogators were well aware of the procedures authorized under Rumsfeld’s December 2002 memo. But his later decision to drop some of the procedures, the more cruel ones, was not conveyed to them properly and in a timely manner. And when some of those interrogators were later transferred to Iraq, the methods meant to be used on terrorists detained at Guantanamo, whom the administration had categorized as “unlawful combatants,” followed them.

            Most Iraqi prisoners met the Geneva Conventions' prisoner-of-war criteria: fighting in uniform and belonging to the formal army of a nation. They were not supposed to be treated as “unlawful combatants.” The newly-arrived interrogators did not know that. They treated them as “unlawful combatants” and used on them the methods detailed in Rumsfeld’s original memo. The result was the kind of abuses portrayed in the pictures the world has been watching in horror since April. To answer the Journal’s “bizarre notion” accusation: a nexus did exist between the abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib and the Pentagon decision to create a new category of prisoners under the label of “unlawful combatants.”

            The Journal may also note that those who are asking for Rumsfeld’s resignation are only echoing what the paper itself said in its May 6 editorial: “Accountability has to run beyond the soldiers immediately responsible and up the Army and intelligence chains of command.” Also, holding Rumsfeld, the man “up the … chains of command,” accountable does not mean “impugning the entire Army and Pentagon,” as the editorial says. The army is doing an honorable job in Iraq, in strict obedience to the orders given by its commander in chief, though many of its members are now painfully aware that the mission they were sent to accomplish has undergone revision a few times. Revision became necessary when the original mission turned out to be based on flawed information.

            The Schlesinger report could not have been stronger in its censuring of Rumsfeld than when it says: “It is the judgment of this panel that in the future, considering the sensitivity of this kind of mission, the OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] should assure itself that serious limitations in detention/interrogation missions do not occur.”

            The Wall Street Journal sees in that judgment “A Rumsfeld Vindication.” Bah!