The reports add few additional details to those already publicized about the abuse, but are aimed at cleaning up the image of U.S. imperialism. Through such reports and trials of soldiers, Washington seeks to put the scandal behind it and minimize the political price it has to pay stemming from the worldwide trend that renders torture of prisoners less and less acceptable for the majority of humanity.

“The damage these incidents have done to U.S. policy, to the image of the U.S. among populations whose support we need in the Global War on Terror and to the morale of our armed forces, must not be repeated,” is how one of the reports summarizes its purpose. This 126-page document, called the Schlesinger report, gives the conclusions of a panel to investigate the abuse at Abu Ghraib that was appointed by U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld. The body was headed by former secretary of defense James Schlesinger.

A second report, based on an investigation conducted by the U.S. military, said that responsibility for the abuse went up the chain of command to the highest ranking officer in Iraq at the time, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.

Sanchez was recalled from his post earlier this summer. In May the U.S. Army suspended indefinitely Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski and removed her from command of the 800th Military Police Brigade until investigation into the abuse of prisoners is complete. Karpinski was in charge of the 16 U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, including the one at Abu Ghraib.

Seven soldiers facing various charges resulting from their alleged role in the abuse at the prison have said in their defense that they were simply following the orders of their superiors.

The military investigation cited 44 instances of “detainee abuse committed by MPs [Military Police] and MI Soldiers [Military Intelligence], as well as contractors.” The latter is a euphemism for guards and other personnel trained in private prisons in the United States, or during previous stints in the military, who are hired through private agencies that provide such goons to the army.

“On sixteen of these occasions,” the report said, “abuse by the MP Soldiers was, or was alleged to have been, requested, encouraged, condoned, or solicited by MI personnel.” The Schlesinger report cites about 300 incidents of abuse of detainees being held in U.S. jails in Afghanistan, Iraq, and at the U.S. Naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Out of the 155 charges of abuse investigated so far, it was judged that in 66 cases detainees were abused by U.S. troops. The majority of these, 55 cases, were in Iraq. U.S. personnel caused the deaths of five detainees during interrogation, the report says. Another 23 deaths of detainees remain under investigation.

A theme that runs throughout both reports is that authorities at the prison were under pressure to obtain information from detainees believed to have knowledge about insurgents fighting the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

This argument, however, is contradicted by the finding in the military’s report, which says, “Most, though not all, of the violent or sexual abuses occurred separately from scheduled interrogations and did not focus on persons held for intelligence purposes.”

The report holds General Sanchez responsible for the introduction into Abu Ghraib of more aggressive grilling methods that had been approved by Rumsfeld for use against “enemy combatants” held in Afghanistan and at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. These methods include threatening detainees with military dogs, strip searches, nudity, sense deprivation, and being held in isolation in extremely cold or hot cells. They began being used at Abu Ghraib after Sanchez met with Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, then in charge of the Guantánamo prison. The report says that Sanchez inappropriately attempted to apply the methods at Abu Ghraib.

Abuses at the prison “spanned from direct physical assault,” the report says, “such as delivering head blows rendering detainees unconscious, to sexual posing and forced participation in group masturbation.” It also cites an alleged rape observed by a female translator and the sexual assault of a female detainee. The report describes the acts as “without question, criminal.”

The report describes the case of a Syrian national, one of the 44 cases, allegedly captured while fighting occupation forces in Iraq and who had suffered gun-shot wounds and a broken leg. The prisoner told investigators that guards repeatedly threatened to kill him, forced him to eat pork, drink alcohol, and to curse Islam, his religion. He said guards beat him on his broken leg and urinated on him. Over several days he was beaten and threatened to be bitten by dogs while handcuffed to the upper bunk bed of his cell and later to the cell door. A medic who found him cuffed to the cell door with a dislocated shoulder confirmed the man’s claims, the report says.

Despite the medic’s corroboration, the report adds that while it is likely some soldiers treated the detainee harshly, his accusations are “potentially the exaggerations of a man who hated Americans.”

“Ghosts Detainees” incarcerated and held by the CIA were never accounted for in the prison rolls. A request from a Saudi general on the whereabouts of three medical personnel from his country said that they were not in U.S. custody. Similar requests for information on the men from Paul Bremmer, then the U.S. proconsul in Iraq, the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, and U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell produced the same result. These men were in fact being held at Abu Ghraib, which was only publicized when an intelligence soldier “recalled” that three men had been brought in by CIA officers.

The report describes how this procedure of not identifying CIA prisoners facilitated the cover-up of the death of a detainee. CIA agents brought the man to Abu Ghraib on the morning of Nov. 4, 2003, it says. He was suffering from a head wound resulting from being struck with a rifle butt during capture by a Navy Seal team. His presence in the prison was not recorded.

About 30-45 minutes after his arrival a guard was summoned to a shower where the detainee was being held because he was not moving. An Iraqi doctor in the prison confirmed the detainee was dead. The deceased was placed in a body bag packed with ice. The next day he was removed from the prison on a litter, to make it appear that he was only ill. The autopsy gave the cause of death as “a blood clot in the head, likely a result of injuries he sustained during apprehension,” the report says.

Commanders at the prison on occasion denied representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to detainees. In one case an ICRC delegation attempted to visit a Syrian national who had been held in a cell six and a half feet long and less than three feet wide. The cell was completely dark, with no window, latrine, water tap, or bed. On the door the ICRC delegates noticed the inscription “the Gollum,” and a picture of the character from the book and film trilogy Lord of the Rings.

Abuse of detainees at the prison by threatening them with attack by military dogs began “almost immediately upon the arrival of the animals on Nov. 20, 2003.” The report says that by that date “abuses of detainees was already occurring and addition of the dogs was just one more device.” The use of dogs was recommended by General Miller when he visited Abu Ghraib to assess the effectiveness of the prison.

In January, the report states, a guard and a military dog handler entered a cell where two Iraqi teenagers were being held. The dog handler allowed the unmuzzled dog to “go nuts on the kids,” barking and scaring them. Another soldier told military investigators that the dog handler joked that he was trying to make the teenagers defecate on themselves. He said the dog handler had also told him that he was in a competition with another dog handler after the two had earlier that day frightened a group of detainees into urinating on themselves. As the Militant reported last spring, this kind of abuse of Iraqi inmates mirrored similar practices widespread throughout the U.S. prison system.  
 
 
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