U.S. missed chances to stop abuses
By Dave Moniz, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Pentagon and White House officials missed numerous opportunities to head off abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, according to interviews, testimony and public documents that have emerged since the scandal erupted last month.

From red flags raised months ago by prison guards at other facilities in Iraq to letters from lawmakers and non-government groups, the Pentagon and the Bush administration received a variety of complaints many months before the abuses began last fall.

Seven Army soldiers face criminal charges and seven others have been reprimanded in connection with abuse at Abu Ghraib in October, November and December of last year. The scandal, which has spawned six military investigations into misconduct, has damaged American credibility around the world and threatens to undermine the war effort in Iraq.

The missed warnings include reports by the International Committee of the Red Cross and at least one letter from a U.S. senator, concerns raised by military law specialists and commanders, and letters and phone calls from the relatives of U.S. troops serving at other prisons in Iraq.

•Last May, eight high-ranking military lawyers voiced concerns to Pentagon officials and the New York State Bar Association that new interrogation policies developed after the Sept. 11 attacks could lead to prisoner abuses. Scott Horton, former head of the New York Bar's committee on international law, said Thursday that the Army and Navy lawyers told him the new interrogation rules were "frightening" and might "reverse 50 years of a proud tradition of compliance with the Geneva Conventions." Horton said the lawyers came to him because they had been locked out of policy debates while the secret rules were being drafted. "It was a five-alarm fire," Horton said.

•Family members of guards at the Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq told CBS' 60 Minutes II that they called Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's office repeatedly last year and wrote letters to the White House complaining of conditions at the prison..

•Numerous high-ranking U.S. officials, including Rumsfeld, visited Abu Ghraib last year before the abuses. Although an Army investigation has noted that guards had failed to follow basic procedures — including requirements that the Geneva Conventions' rules for the treatment of prisoners be displayed throughout the prison in English and Arabic — none of the visitors raised questions.

Other military officers began voicing fears about U.S. policies for handling prisoners earlier.

Walter Schumm, a retired Army Reserve colonel who once commanded a military police battalion, warned in an article that the U.S. military was headed for a catastrophe. In an essay published in 1998 in the influential journal Military Review, Schumm wrote that most military officers know very little about legal requirements for handling prisoners.

Schumm went on to write that most MPs designated to handle enemy prisoners of war were reservists with fewer than 50 days of training per year. In a passage that seemed to foreshadow problems at Abu Ghraib, Schumm wrote, "It only takes one improperly trained soldier among a thousand to commit an offense against the Geneva Conventions that would cause our nation considerable embarrassment."

In the past 12 months, independent groups that monitor treatment of prisoners, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union, complained about the treatment of prisoners in Iraq. The Red Cross characterized problems as more widespread than just at Abu Ghraib.

Last June, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., wrote letters to the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon complaining about the treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan and "other locations outside the United States."

Leahy wrote that prisoners were being subjected to beatings, lengthy sleep- and food-deprivation, and "stress and duress" techniques. Pentagon and CIA officials wrote back to say the United States was not torturing prisoners.




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