WASHINGTON — The discovery of photographs showing grinning American GIs torturing and sexually abusing Iraqi prisoners is no isolated incident. President Bush expressed shock and outrage over the pictures first aired last week by CBS, and said that was how
WASHINGTON — The discovery of photographs showing grinning American GIs torturing and sexually abusing Iraqi prisoners is no isolated incident. President Bush expressed shock and outrage over the pictures first aired last week by CBS, and said that was how he learned about what was happening. But that’s hard to believe.
It also strains credulity to think that Bush wasn’t made aware of the more than 30 criminal investigations launched by the Army over the last 16 months into charges of captor assault and abuse in Iraq. It is more likely that decisions were made to keep the charges of abuse secret for fear they would undermine support for the war and, by implication, Bush’s re-election.
Once again, we’re asking what did the president know and when did he know it?
The graphic photos and reports of atrocities by military personnel in Iraq undercut the moral high ground that has been a hallmark of Bush’s leadership.
Bush is on the defensive. Why didn’t he do something about this earlier? Shouldn’t somebody’s head roll? Bush’s loyalty to those he appoints is laudable, but court-martialing a handful of wayward soldiers while their superiors go unpunished will not repair the damage. This scandal is just beginning. There are more threads that will be pulled, people exposed and reputations ruined.
The regular army has been seriously downsized while America’s commitments are on the rise. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld saw Iraq as an opportunity to remake the Army into a smaller, lighter and more mobile fighting force, which is why he insisted on storming the country with the smallest possible number of troops. When there was widespread looting after the fall of Baghdad and coalition troops couldn’t bring the city under control, rather than admit he had miscalculated, Rumsfeld turned to the Reserves, National Guard, and private civilian contractors to supplement the overextended troops.
Reserve units have been implicated in the worst incidents of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where Saddam Hussein’s goons once held sway. Iraqis, already disheartened by the slow pace of reconstruction, must now wonder whether they have exchanged one tyrant for another. During the first Gulf War, reserve brigades backed up the regular Army. But most reserve brigades were not deployed because they were not combat-ready. Today, U.S. forces are stretched so thin that holding back the Reserves is not an option. Forty percent of the troops in Iraq are Reservists and National Guardsmen.
The reliance on civilian contractors is another Rumsfeld-era development that appears to have backfired. The extent to which these contractors are free agents will be the subject of congressional hearings. To what degree were they tied in to the CIA? Lawmakers will want to know whether the systematic outsourcing of numerous military functions, including the interrogation of prisoners, to private contractors is a deliberate effort by the Bush administration to circumvent military law and/or the Geneva Convention. Civilian contractors are beyond the reach of military punishment, and can more easily push the bounds of ethical behavior without fear of punishment than can soldiers.
The revelations of human-rights abuses committed against the Iraqis have evoked worldwide condemnation, as well they should. This is profoundly embarrassing for a democratic government, and will further set back Bush’s attempts to spread Western values in the Middle East, now that those values have been exposed in such a negative light.
Political Correspondent: Eleanor Clift
Copyright 2004 Anderson and Cohn
Distributed by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
