The abuse of detainees at U.S. camps hurts our national security and puts our troops at risk. The Bush administration should demand answers.
A Times Editorial
Published May 26, 2005
This nation has every reason to be proud of the U.S. soldiers putting their lives on the line in an increasingly unpopular war. We should keep their courage and sacrifice in mind as we weigh evidence of the severe abuse of detainees at U.S. camps in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.
The latest horror stories come in an exhaustive report by the New York Times, based on the government's own investigative files. It describes the deaths of two prisoners who were held at Bagram detention center in Afghanistan in 2002. One of the men - a taxi driver believed to be innocent - died after having his legs beaten so badly that a coroner described the tissue as having been "pulpified." The other died after being repeatedly beaten and shackled to the ceiling while hooded.
According to U.S. investigators, detainees were shackled, hooded and held in tiny isolation cells for at least the first 24 hours and sometimes 72 hours. Some prisoners were tormented with dogs, sexually humiliated and shackled to the ceiling or frequently prodded so they couldn't sleep. Military police used the "common peroneal strike" as a method of control - described as a blow on the side of the thigh above the knee that could destroy the tissue of a prisoner's legs.
Not surprisingly, many of these same techniques migrated to Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, when Capt. Carolyn Wood, who led interrogations at Bagram, was reassigned there in 2003.
Military officials first claimed the detainees died of natural causes. Yet even after the deaths were ruled homicides by military coroners, the American commander in Afghanistan, then-Lt. Gen. Daniel McNeill, who has since been promoted, said the methods used at Bagram were "in accordance with what is generally accepted as interrogation techniques."
Surely our political and military leaders can see the harm being done to our national security interests by such abuse. Right now, a school in Pakistan is featuring the play Guantanamo based on accounts of detainees in that U.S. prison camp in Cuba. And our loyal ally and friend, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, asked to take control of all Afghan prisoners being held by U.S. authorities in his country - a request President Bush rejected this week.
The abuse is not surprising when we have a president who decided to ignore international norms for the treatment of prisoners, a Justice Department that redefined and narrowed the definition of torture, a Pentagon that used reservists and National Guard troops who had little or no training to guard prisoners and a defense secretary and other high-ranking military officials who approved abusive interrogation methods.
The only way to repair some of the damage is for the administration to show it is serious about getting answers. It should launch a truly independent investigation that includes reviews of not just the Pentagon but the CIA as well. The military has conducted numerous internal probes of prisoner abuse that haven't seriously looked beyond low-ranking soldiers and officials for complicity. Only a group with the kind of independence the 9/11 commission brought to its work will have the stature and freedom to do a thorough review.
The president owes the American people - and especially our military men and women - nothing less than a full accounting of what went wrong and where the responsibility rests.
