Helen Thomas

WASHINGTON — How long are the American people going to tolerate the horror stories of Iraqi prisoner abuse that continue to emerge? Why aren’t Americans mortified and enraged over the tarnishing of the nation’s good name?

How long is President Bush going to resist issuing a clear order that all U.S. military prison authorities simply must abide by international law governing the humane treatment of prisoners?

After conferring with his legal staff Bush gave the Pentagon some loopholes, requiring humane treatment of war prisoners and detainees, “consistent with military necessity,” but not requiring obedience to the letter of the Geneva Conventions.

When are any top government officials going to take some responsibility for prisoner abuse instead of letting a few low-ranking so-called “bad apples” take the rap? These are the same GIs who may have thought they were “only following orders.”

Isn’t it time for some U.S. leaders to admit that their ambiguous orders contributed to the lawless atmosphere in some military prisons, where rank-and-file guards thought they had the green light to do anything they wanted to prisoners?

The latest disclosures come in the form of government documents released as part of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU released the documents earlier this week.

The new documents show that, in addition to the photographed abuse by U.S. Army personnel at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, other U.S. personnel were pepertrating abuse at other sites, including the Adhamiya Palace, one of Saddam Hussein’s villas in Baghdad. The documents released by the ACLU describe dozens of reports of sodomy, electric shocks, cigarette burns, beatings, forced nudity and other sexual humiliations.

The ACLU also has accused the U.S. military of not thoroughly investigating some cases of the mistreatment of detainees. Separately, the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch has released reports of systematic torture of Iraqi prisoners by the Iraqi police, jailers and intelligence agents, many of who held the same jobs under Saddam Hussein. Detainees were subjected to beatings and electric shocks and were hung by their wrists, according to Human Rights Watch, which accused the regime of Iraqi interim Prime Minister Alyad Allawi of complicity. Some of the cases of alleged abuse occurred as recently as last summer, months after the shocking photos from the Abu Ghraib prison.

The ACLU also reported that 23 terrorism suspects tried to hang or strangle themselves during a coordinated mass protest at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2003.

Military officials insist they have aggressively investigated complaints of abuse. But the ACLU has accused the Pentagon of a “woefully inadequate response” to the hundreds of cases of alleged abuse.

The pictures of prisoner tormented by American guards finally got the attention of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who had signed off on some extremist methods of interrogation at Guantanamo Bay in December, 2002 -- and then revoked the order six weeks later. Rumsfeld had ignored damaging investigative reports on his desk for a long time, but he could not avoid the front-page pictures. When he testified last May before a Senate Committee, Rumsfeld said: "I wish I had been able to convey to them (the prison officials) the gravity of this before we saw it in the media.”

Much of this disgrace came about because Bush decided to follow the Geneva Conventions “in principle” but not in practice. This was initially promulgated to cover the Guantanamo detainees, almost of whom had been captured during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001-1002. A major goal at Guantanamo was the extraction of information, a process overseen by Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller. Later, Miller was sent to Iraq with orders to improve the information flow at Abu Ghraib. The cases of prisoner abuse occurred shortly afterward, suggesting that Miller’s get-tough policies had matriculated from Guantanamo to Iraq.

Bush’s overall policy gave the guards in Iraq a wide berth since they could cite “military necessity” for whatever they wanted to do. Alberto Gonzales, then-chief White House lawyer and now attorney general-designate, called the Geneva Conventions “obsolete” and advised Bush he was the ultimate authority in conducting a war.

A devastating memo signed on Aug. 1, 2002, by then-assistant attorney general Jay S. Bybee -- who now sits on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals -- defined illegal torture of prisoners as the use of force that causes “organ failure or the permanent impairment of a significant body function.” Everything else was legal.

The civil rights organizations and the Freedom of Information Act are keeping alive the people’s right to know. And now that we know, it'’s time for the president to do the right thing and order -- loudly and clearly -- a halt to prisoner abuse.

(Helen Thomas can be reached at 202-263-6400 or at the e-mail address hthomas@hearstdc.com)

(c) 2004 Hearst Newspapers