Abuse on the ground

December 23, 2004

Blessing from the top for abuse on ground

pv vivekanand


WHEN vivid, irrefutable images of prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison hit international news channels early this year, the White House contented that a few "rotten apples" in the US military establishment and private contractors were responsible for the gross violations of human rights that the pictures portrayed. Little was said about the build-up to the violations i.e. the way successive US administrations had dealt with the Arabs over the decades had given Americans the confidence that a free-for-all and no-holds-barred approach to the Arabs was permissible and accepted without question, and no one would be held accountable.

If a proper accounting was done over why American military personnel and private contractors felt they would be get away with abusing, torturing and humiliating Arabs and Muslims -- as they did in Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo Bay -- then the ball would have gone to the very top. The White House would have had to explain that its attitude, the manner in which the invasion and occupation of Iraq was carried out, and the instructions given to lower ranks of the military through the various layers had not bred an air of contempt for Arabs and Muslims that led to the despicable treatment of Iraqi, Afghan, Arab and Muslims prisoners under American detention.

Somehow, with all-too-indignant comments and lofty declarations about American values and principles, President George W. Bush himself and his close aides like Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and senior Pentagon official, eased themselves out of blame. For good measures, they picked a handful of soldiers and charged them for the crimes at Abu Gharib.

However, they might not be able to squirm out of the latest fallout. Documents which have come to the possession of the American Civil Liberties Union show that Bush himself had issued an executive order authorising the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq.

The ACLU has also released a series of other documents, including Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) complaints about the interrogation methods used by the US military and suggest that there has been always been a cover-up of the abuses.

The release of these documents follows a court order that directed government agencies to comply with a year-old request under the Freedom of Information Act filed by the ACLU, the Centre for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. The New York Civil Liberties Union is co-counsel in the case.

ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero states: "These documents raise grave questions about where the blame for widespread detainee abuse ultimately rests. Top government officials can no longer hide from public scrutiny by pointing the finger at a few low-ranking soldiers."

The Los Angeles Times was more blunt: "When will the president respond to the cascading allegations of prisoner abuse by the military?"

It continued: "The cascading allegations of prisoner abuse, of which these are but a few examples, long ago demolished the president's claim that only a few bad apples were responsible. So did reports that soldiers and officers who complained to their superiors about this mistreatment were threatened with reprisals and even physical harm. Yet as reports of unexplained deaths, humiliations and depravity across the services multiply, President Bush has recently remained silent."

Noting that Bush had said shortly after the Abu Ghraib abuses became public that "the cruelty of a few cannot diminish the honour and achievement" of the thousands who have served honourably in Iraq, the Los Angeles Times said: "It is now clear that 'the few' are in fact many. So many that either US troops are not under their commanding officers' control or they are beating, burning and sodomising suspects with the blessing -- or worse, at the direction -- of their commanders and Washington policymakers."

The ACLU has released a two-page e-mail that refers to an executive order stating that the president directly authorised interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." The ACLU is demanding that the White House confirm or deny the existence of such an order and immediately to release the order if it exists.

The e-mail is said to note that "all of those (techniques) used in these scenarios" were approved by the deputy secretary of defence in line with the presidential executive order.

The documents also seems explain what was a mystery in Iraq -- the appearance of Israeli flags in Fallujah and several other areas as reported in the Iraqi press.

It was claimed in the reports that Israeli soldiers took part in the assault along with the Americans when bodies draped in the Israeli flag were reportedly seen by many in Fallujah.

The ACLU documents say that using Israeli flags was the US military's way of humiliating Arab captives.

The Iraqi Lawyers Union have said that they had eyewitness accounts of Israeli-flag-draped bodies in Fallujah. Iraqi sources said that they had seen insurgents captured from Fallujah being shrouded in the Israeli flag in order to humiliate them.

The Los Angeles Times report did not speak about any Israeli flag in Fallujah.

The ACLU-released documents include reports of instances in which FBI officials said military interrogators pretended to be FBI agents and used the scheme as a "ruse" to glean intelligence information from prisoners.

An FBI agent said in a report to his seniors that he had witnessed military interrogators and government contract employees at the US Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using "aggressive treatment and improper interview techniques" on prisoners. Prisoners taken in Afghanistan are held there.

Another FBI field agent described abuses such as "strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees' ear openings and unauthorised interrogations."

Another FBI report said that an Abu Ghraib detainee was "cuffed" and placed into a position the military called "the Scorpion" hold. Then he was doused with cold water, dropped onto barbed wire, dragged by his feet and punched in the stomach.

The prisoner was spat upon and then beaten when he attempted to roll onto his stomach to protect himself. American soldiers were "beating him and grabbed his head and beat it into the cell floor," knocking him unconscious.

Another agent reported that he often saw detainees chained hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor "with no chair, food or water."

"Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left for 18-24 hours or more," the agent wrote, according to the documents.

Sometimes, the room was chilled to where a "barefooted detainee was shaking with cold." Other times, the air-conditioning was turned off and the temperature in the unventilated room rose to well over 100 degrees.

"The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him," the agent reported. "He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."

Add to these charges reports coming from Fallujah that the US military has used poison gas and other non-conventional weapons against civilians during the recent American assault against the restive town. Eyewitnesses quoted in the international media speak of unrestrained use of missiles, rockets and bomb and of American military trucks simply rolling over wounded civilians in the streets.

Every vehicle in the town was bombed out because of fears that they might be rigged with explosives as reported in a London paper before the Americans launched the offensive, and caught in the bombing spree were hundreds of bystanders.

Several American news organisations and newspapers have reported that the US soldiers opened fire on unarmed civilians holding white flags trying to flee the conflict zones of Fallujah. In an incident that is a classic example, American soldiers on the shores of the Euphrates called in helicopter gunships to sink boats carrying civilians, including women and children, who were frantically seeking refuge from the fighting.

There are scores of reports of such horrifying incidents that have appeared in the mainstream media.

American military commanders have revealed their troops had orders to shoot all males of fighting age seen on the streets, armed or unarmed, and ruined homes across the city attest to a strategy of overwhelming force.

The military behaviour in Fallujah was such that many American soldiers themselves were traumatised by the sight of appalling injuries, the screams of wounded comrades, the fear of death, or simply the chaotic hell of combat, according to psychologists.

So what do we have here? The military of the world's sole superpower is running amok in an occupied country against the occupied people with no constraints or rules of conduct and with the blessing of their government and the world is unable to do anything about it.

In a civilised world, not only those who carried out such heinous attacks but also those who gave them the green light would be put on trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But then, it does not apply to the US, which had foreseen the eventuality and excluded its nationals from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and made sure most other countries of the world would not send Americans to the ICC by signing bilateral agreements with them.

For all we know, what has emerged so far might only be the tip of an iceberg, and more might surface, including the existence of concentration camp like facilities in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan.

Someone, somewhere has to answer the charges and the White House is silent.