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WASHINGTON - An American general recommended that Army prison guards in Iraq become more involved in "softening up" prisoners for interrogations shortly before abuses occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison last fall, according to an internal report at the heart of the controversy.
It is a role that military police are not trained to perform and are prohibited from doing, the Army says.
What remains to be explained is whether the abusive behavior was linked to pressure from military intelligence units responsible for prisoner interrogations to push the bounds of civilized behavior to make captives more compliant under questioning.
Full answers may not come until the Army completes an investigation into the culpability of military intelligence personnel. The inquiry began April 23.
In a report citing "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" inflicted on Iraqis held at Abu Ghraib from October to December, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba said he found credible evidence that military police guards were improperly drawn into the role of setting "physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation" of prisoners.
Taguba's report says using MPs to help break down prisoners may have been imported from the Guantanamo Bay prison complex and possibly others in Afghanistan used to hold terrorist suspects.
Interrogators from military intelligence and other government agencies, believed to include the CIA, actively requested that MPs guarding prisoners at Abu Ghraib set the conditions for interrogations in violation of Army regulations, Taguba reported.