[A-List] US military: systematic abuses

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Army Discloses Criminal Inquiry on Prison Abuse
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
New York Times: May 5, 2004

WASHINGTON, May 4 - In the last 16 months, the Army has conducted more than
30 criminal investigations into misconduct by American captors in Iraq and
Afghanistan, including 10 cases of suspicious death, 10 cases of abuse, and
two deaths already determined to have been criminal homicides, the Army's
vice chief of staff said Tuesday.

To date, the most severe penalties in any of the cases were
less-than-honorable discharges for five Army soldiers, military officials
said. No one has been sentenced to prison, they said.

The disclosure of the investigations, by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the
Army's second-highest ranking general, was the strongest indication to date
of a wider pattern of abuse at American prisons beyond the horrific
descriptions and photographs that have emerged recently of acts of
humiliation, sexual and otherwise, at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in November.

At the Pentagon on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld condemned
the abuses at Abu Ghraib as "totally unacceptable and un-American," but
sought to minimize the significance of incidents elsewhere and insisted that
the military had acted swiftly in cases in which misconduct was alleged.
"The system works," he said.

But on Capitol Hill, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee
expressed anger after a briefing in which they were told of the details and
potential scope of the misconduct for the first time.

The Senate Intelligence Committee said it would hold a closed session on
Wednesday to determine whether American intelligence officers from the
military or other agencies were involved.

The Bush administration dispatched top officials, including Secretary of
State Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser,
to contain the fallout over the widening story of abuse at the prisons,
which Mr. Powell said had "stunned every American." Administration officials
have acknowledged that the episode had caused enormous damage to the
American image around the world.

To date, only Army military police officers assigned to Abu Ghraib prison
have been disciplined in abuses committed in November in a secure cellblock.
But a March 9 report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba said two military
intelligence officers and two private contractors who oversaw interrogations
may have been "either directly or indirectly responsible."

It was not until April 24 that the Army began to investigate possible
involvement by military intelligence units and contractors working with them
in Iraq in any abuse, including the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade;
employees of CACI, a private contractor; and the Iraqi Survey Group, a unit
of the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to Defense Department
officials.

The worst abuses at Abu Ghraib took place in November, after Maj. Gen.
Geoffrey D. Miller, then in charge of the detention facility at Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba, recommended changes in procedures intended "to rapidly exploit
internees for actionable intelligence," according to General Taguba's
report.

In Iraq on Tuesday, General Miller said he had recommended that military
police be given a more active role in gathering intelligence, but said the
abuses had not been the result.

In providing a detailed accounting of other Army investigations into
accusations of abuse, General Casey said the military had conducted a total
of 25 criminal investigations into deaths and 10 into allegations of
misconduct involving detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of the cases involving death, the cause in 12 was natural or undetermined.

Of the 13 other deaths, one - a prisoner killed while trying to escape - was
ruled a justifiable homicide, General Casey said.

Of the two cases determined to have been criminal homicides, defense
officials said, one was in Iraq, and has resulted in a dishonorable
discharge but not the jailing of the American soldier responsible, whose
actions were judged to have been provoked by rock-throwing Iraqi prisoners.