Army Sec. Said No Lawyers: Now I Conclude Torture Scandal Went to the Top

[Billdo]

In Shakespeare’s often misinterpreted “let’s kill all the lawyers” quote, he shows the absence of lawyers to be the first step toward tyranny. Unfortunately, the torture scandal in Iraq proves Shakespeare’s dictum correct once again – there was no legal officer on site in the Abu Ghraib prison where the worst of the mistreatment appears to have occurred. And the Secretary of the Army and an Undersecretary of Defense appear to be personally responsible, at least in part, for the insufficiency of lawyers in the 800th Military Police Brigade.

Like almost everybody else, I have been greatly disturbed by the news reports about the torture of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. service members. It was clear to me that Brig. Gen. Karpinski ran a lax and inadequately trained organization, and the actions of the individual soldiers involved were reprehensible.

However, until today, I was less willing than many to pin the blame on the Bush administration. In my view, although the political leadership has overall responsibility for the conduct of our military, they can’t really be blamed for every time an individual or small group of service members does something out of line. (Whether Secretary Rumsfeld should step down or get fired for his failure to keep President Bush informed is a different question from whether the members of administration hold individual blame for the torture.)

In the context of deployment in a hostile Iraq, I can understand how young, undertrained soldiers could allow emotions overcome common sense, and engage in barbarities. And I can see how the military chain of command in Iraq would minimize and keep concealed the systematic problems that allowed this to happen, even as they presumably tried to correct them and punish the wrongdoers. To me, these alone do not demonstrate that the President or the Pentagon were at fault for the torture.

But, this morning I read an Associated Press report, Pentagon Refused Lawyer As Prison Adviser, which discussed Congressman Steve Buyer (R-Ind.), a strong supporter of the Iraq war, who is a lawyer and a Lieutenant Colonel in Army Reserves and had served as a lawyer in a prisoner of war camp in the first Gulf War. Rep. Buyer had volunteered to serve in Iraq and had been assigned by the Army as part of the 800th Military Police Brigade, an assignment approved up to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

However, Army Secretary Les Brownlee and Pentagon personnel officials rejected the assignment. Secretary Brownlee wrote to Rep. Buyer, saying that the requirement would be filled another way and that he would be a high-value target that could be a risk to his fellow soldier.

Buyer said he objected to David Chu, the Pentagon’s personnel chief, and Charles Abell, Chu’s deputy.
“I expressed the importance of having a (lawyer) at the camp,” Buyer said. “You have to ask, when you had a qualified officer, and the civilian leaders, Dr. Chu and the secretary of the Army, said no, who did you send in his place?”

Although this article doesn’t make the play-by-play entirely clear, it appears that the Secretary of the Army and Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness were on clear notice of the importance of having a lawyer at Abu Ghraib, and prevented Rep. Buyer from serving as such without sending a replacement. I can’t really blame them for not sending a Congressman, but I can for not filling the hole that they created.

Until now, I hadn’t seen any way the Bush administration could have prevented the torture scandal. However, I now feel Bush political appointees directly hindered an important thing that could have addressed the torture problems at the earliest stage, adequate on-scene legal guidance. I now lay the scandal at Bush’s feet.

[Master_Wang-Ka]

Well, from what I understand, this whole circus was kind of ill-planned from the beginning. The military was consulted, and when the administration didn’t like the timetables the military said were “reasonable and necessary,” they just went ahead and did what they wanted anyway.

I suspect that the Pentagon was more interested in shuffling vital supplies and manpower to areas that HAD to have them, rather than staffing a prison with a shiny new lawyer. A shame. Seems like they could have used one. Then again, this administration, from what I’ve seen, hasn’t been particularly concerned with the rights of its political prisoners… even when they’ve been American citizens. Why should they give a pffft about a buncha Iraqis on some other continent? It’s an ELECTION YEAR, dammit!

Likewise, it probably never occurred to anyone outside Iraq that keeping idle troops entertained and busy is a bit of a handful in the middle east. I’m told most Arabian Peninsula countries make Podunk, Nowhere seem like Las Vegas, when one considers the number of diversions, entertainments, places to go, and things to do. Far as Americans are concerned, the places are hellishly boring… and any prison guard will tell you how easy it is to begin regarding your prisoners as less than human, if you let yourself do that.

Seems to me that a combination of boredom, contempt for one’s prisoners, and a general lack of supervision could have pretty serious effects in a prison setting. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.

Can I lay it at Bush’s feet? Partly. The man has made it clear that he has NO time for details… but has also made it clear that he isn’t going to allow the military time to worry about them either. It’s an ELECTION YEAR, dammit!

[Spavined_Gelding]

There’s a guy over at 372d Engineer Group, activated this past winter, who would be just perfect for the job. Chair of the state GOP. Lawyer with no practice. Son of US Attorney. Member of the state legislature. Extend him – it’ll keep him from running for Governor.

To get serious, the failure to assign a Staff Judge Advocate to an independent major command with an important job where there is a potential for a serious and embarrassing screw up (or for the suspicious, where there is a chance that having staff legal council might inhibit fun and games) is just another indication that the whole thing was planed with an eye only to the happiest and most rosie scenario. You have got to realize that career soldiers, being for the most part men of action who believe that their duty is to salute, about face and go get the job done, resent the presence of people who keep telling them that the course they want to pursue is ill-advised or flat unlawful and do their best to operate free of such oversight.

There is, of course, no excuse for not having an in-house service lawyer in the prison or on the MP brigade staff but there are lots of reasons not to have one, some innocent and many not so innocent. For instance, did the MI guys really want any constraints on their behavior?

[Billdo]

@Spavined Gelding

To get serious, the failure to assign a Staff Judge Advocate to an independent major command with an important job where there is a potential for a serious and embarrassing screw up (or for the suspicious, where there is a chance that having staff legal council might inhibit fun and games) is just another indication that the whole thing was planed with an eye only to the happiest and most rosie scenario.

To be fair, the 800th MP Brigade did has a Judge Advocate. However, the Investigative Report said (at p. 40-41):

Moreover, the Brigade Command Judge Advocate, LTC James O’Hare, appears to lack initiative and was unwilling to accept responsibility for his actions

[Spavined_Gelding]

Billdo I have just browsed the report. You are right. There was a judge advocate assigned at brigade. Not a very effective one, apparently, but there was one.

The report is horrific. How this could have been submitted and not gotten to the highest levels of Command and Dept of Army and Dept of Defense is hard to imagine. I have heard that the Red Cross report that has equally awful stuff was handed to the CG Iraq and to Mr. Bremer. That it was not circulated and acted on is simply unbelievable. Look at the Army report. Look at the number of people recommended to be relieved of command. Look at the number of reprimands given in the brigade up until the time of the report. Look at the general level of training and discipline in the brigade. This is worse than I had ever imagined.

Thanks for the link Billdo.

[alaricthegoth]

[QUOTE=Billdo
b, and prevented Rep. Buyer from serving as such without sending a replacement. I can’t really blame them for not sending a Congressman, but I can for not filling the hole that they created.

Until now, I hadn’t seen any way the Bush administration could have prevented the torture scandal. However, I now feel Bush political appointees directly hindered an important thing that could have addressed the torture problems at the earliest stage, adequate on-scene legal guidance. I now lay the scandal at Bush’s feet.[/QUOTE]

it’s worse.

If memory serves, Buyer is not just any republican.

Was he not one of the impeachment managers?

In other words, a team player, and they didn’t even want HIM anywhere near the interrogations.

[manhattan]

I’m not sure what to think about this whole thing (except that it’s a management problem as much or more than it was the individuals involved), but I think here you’re likely just seeing bureaucracy at work. In the individual case involved, Buyer’s appeal to serve would have gone to the same people who would have made the same decision no matter what he did. I suspect they were very heavily focused on “no, I’m not sending a sitting Congressman into the field” and not focused at all on his particular area of expertise and whether they were fully staffed up for it. It almost certainly never occurred to them that the addition of one person, even a really, really good person, would be a make-or-break item for the 800th.

[Spavined_Gelding]

Manny, if you haven’t read MG Ghraib’s report you need to. It answers many questions. Billdo’s post above has the link. I’m perfectly serious, it answers questions. It raises one big question – why wasn’t it acted on?

[David_Simmons]

I would like to point to my thread of a month or so ago asking GW supporters to explain why the Iraq adventure isn’t just another GW SNAFU.

The only GW supporter who responded, as I recall, was Brutus who complained about the way the question was posed (I left out a ‘not’ in one sentence which changed its meaning, but that was cleared up later.)

[Billdo]

@manhattan

I suspect they were very heavily focused on “no, I’m not sending a sitting Congressman into the field” and not focused at all on his particular area of expertise and whether they were fully staffed up for it.

I saw an interview with Rep. Buyer on CNN yesterday. (Here’s a related [url="http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/08/iraq.abuse.main/index.html"story on cnn.com.) In it he made clear that there was a military requirement for his particular area of experience, a military lawyer to act as a staff judge advocate for prison administration with knowledge about POW treatment issues. That was the role Rep. Buyer had in the first Gulf War. It was a requirement that they were having trouble filling, and it was for the very unit that ran the Abu Ghraib prison.

Rep. Buyer described how he had a detailed discussion with Charles Abell, the deputy to Undersecretary Chu about the importance of having a judge advocate officer at this prison. He also received assurances that the position would be filled.

Through the interview Rep. Buyer was very careful about describing facts and his experiences, and did not engage in name-calling or conjecture things he did not know first-hand. He was supportive of the war and President Bush. He seemed confident, however, that a judge advocate corps officer there would have avoided many of the problems that occurred at the prison,

As I understand it, Rep. Buyer is a loyal Republican Congressman. However, it was clear that he was very unhappy that, despite his clear warning, the Army dropped the ball on this with severe consequences.

[RTFirefly]

Go here, though you’ll have to watch an ad first.

How did the “permissive environment” that encouraged rampant criminality and cruelty arise at Abu Ghraib? According to the JAG senior officers who spoke with Horton, Pentagon civilian officials removed safeguards that were designed to prevent such abuses. At a detention facility like Abu Ghraib, those safeguards would include the routine observation of interrogations from behind a two-way mirror by a JAG officer, who would be empowered to stop any misconduct.

The JAG officers told Horton that those protective policies were discontinued in Iraq and Afghanistan. They said that interrogations were routinely conducted without JAG oversight – and, worse, that private contractors were being allowed unprecedented participation in the interrogation process. Moreover, the contractors who participated in the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners were operating in a legal twilight zone, says Horton.

<snip>

Horton says that career military officers at the Pentagon were “greatly upset” by what they regarded as the deliberate destruction of traditions and methods that have long protected soldiers as well as civilians. Those officers, and others who may have evidence to offer, are obviously reluctant to step forward and speak because they fear reprisal from the Pentagon and the White House. They have been instructed not to talk to anyone about these issues.

Aside from the lawyers, there’s plenty of other evidence suggesting that the responsibility goes all the way up. Here’s a few not-so-fun links:

Hersh gets the story into Afghanistan
R2I - resistance to interrogation
[205th Military Intelligence Brigade members interviewed](205th Military Intelligence Brigade) (although this one really doesn’t say more than: it wasn’t just the MPs)

[Spavined_Gelding]

Billdo, I’m off on a new track, here. If you look at MG Taguba’s report (page 15) you will see that while the MP Brigade was providing the guard force the prison was run by the 205th MI Brigade and that the Mi asked the MPS to “soften up” the prisoners for interrogation. God knows I am an admirer of TJAGCA, I’m a Vietnam alumni, but I’m not sure an in house lawyer, even one experienced in POW issues would be much help IF the torture of people in preparation for interrogation was the plan. It seems to me that there is a fair chance that these abominations did not spring from the fevered imagination of some junior MP officer or NCO.

I would like to think that all this is just a big screw up featuring untrained people and lax supervision, in two words – bad discipline, but I fear it is not.

[PatriotX]

@RTFirefly

[205th Military Intelligence Brigade members interviewed](205th Military Intelligence Brigade) (although this one really doesn’t say more than: it wasn’t just the MPs)

Phukt link

[Billdo]

@Spavined Gelding

I’m not sure an in house lawyer, even one experienced in POW issues would be much help IF the torture of people in preparation for interrogation was the plan. It seems to me that there is a fair chance that these abominations did not spring from the fevered imagination of some junior MP officer or NCO.

The problem with the whole thing is that there seemed to be no adult supervision. I feel sorry in a way for the junior enlisted people that are getting prosecuted, but it should have been the senior NCO’s and officers that said that this is no way to run a railroad. It really bothers me that the Lieutenants and Captains that should have been supervising these young men and women are not facing much more severe punishment then their troops.

Failing that, a lawyer with experience in operational law and a detailed understanding of the Geneva Convention and other relevant documents (the exact requirements that Rep. Buyer or the replacement they should have sent met) would have taken one look at what was going on, said a military “OH SHIT”, and if he or she couldn’t make immediate corrections, raised alarm up and down the line. Obviously there’s no guarantee that a lawyer would have stopped the problem, but having the troops in the prison (whether in the MP or MI units) without legal guidance was a recipe for disaster.

[pantom]

More evidence that it goes to the top, and that it’s SOP, as the problems aren’t just in Iraq, and when the US government can get away with it, it tries as hard as it can to get away with it:

There is also evidence of a possible Pentagon cover-up. According to Taguba’s report, which was first revealed in The New Yorker, a previous Army investigator, Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder, somehow failed to note last fall that MPs were being asked to facilitate interrogation. In addition, a mounting body of other evidence around the world suggests that abuses did not stop there or even in Iraq, that the Geneva Conventions protecting prisoners of war from beatings and humiliation were being routinely flouted in an environment where, as at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, almost anything can happen because almost no one is held accountable. In Afghanistan, the abuse of prisoners seems to have led to at least three deaths at U.S. interrogation facilities. According to U.S. military pathologists, two Afghan detainees died of “blunt force injuries” to “the lower extremities” and “legs” at Baghram in December 2002 and another Afghan prisoner died at a U.S. military camp in Kunar province in June 2003. Yet 18 months after the first deaths, a military investigation is still incomplete, and no broad inquiry like the Taguba probe has been launched into conditions at Baghram, according to a military spokesman in Kabul.
Rumsfeld insisted last week that the U.S. military has observed the Geneva Conventions regarding POWs and civilians in Iraq. But in his public statements (at least until last week), Rumsfeld has also declared that Geneva Conventions rules do not necessarily mean that all detainees?especially so-called unlawful combatants?will get all the rights and privileges normally accorded prisoners of war. And in recent months, NEWSWEEK has learned, some senior members of Congress have been given highly classified briefings, indicating, in the words of one official, that U.S. interrogators were not necessarily “going to stick with the Geneva Convention.” More stressful techniques were going to be used, the briefers indicated, apparently including some measure of physical discomfort.

from Abu Ghraib and Beyond

[eponymous]

Quick question - who is in charge of the civilian interrogaters? I can’t for the life of me explain why Rumsfeld, et al, would state that they have no control over them. SOMEONE has to be in charge - if not, then there has been a monumental breakdown of command and control. If the military wasn’t in charge of the interrogators, then why were military personnel involved in the interrogation process as well? Jeez, it’s as if a system was set up that would GUARANTEE something like this would happen.

[RTFirefly]

@SimonX

Phukt link

Oops! Try here.

WIESBADEN, Germany - The two military intelligence soldiers, assigned interrogation duties at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, were young, relatively new to the Army and had only one day of training on how to pry information from high-value prisoners.

But almost immediately on their arrival in Iraq, say the two members of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, they recognized that what was happening around them was wrong, morally and legally.

They said in interviews Friday and yesterday that the abuses were not caused by a handful of rogue soldiers poorly supervised and lacking morals but resulted from failures that went beyond the low-ranking military police charged with abuse.

The beatings, the two soldiers said, were meted out with the full knowledge of intelligence interrogators, who let military police know which prisoners were cooperating with them and which were not.

[RTFirefly]

@Billdo

The problem with the whole thing is that there seemed to be no adult supervision. I feel sorry in a way for the junior enlisted people that are getting prosecuted, but it should have been the senior NCO’s and officers that said that this is no way to run a railroad. It really bothers me that the Lieutenants and Captains that should have been supervising these young men and women are not facing much more severe punishment then their troops.

Failing that, a lawyer with experience in operational law and a detailed understanding of the Geneva Convention and other relevant documents (the exact requirements that Rep. Buyer or the replacement they should have sent met) would have taken one look at what was going on, said a military “OH SHIT”, and if he or she couldn’t make immediate corrections, raised alarm up and down the line. Obviously there’s no guarantee that a lawyer would have stopped the problem, but having the troops in the prison (whether in the MP or MI units) without legal guidance was a recipe for disaster.

I agree, Billdo. While I think the reservists being prosecuted deserve prosecution, it was the job of the military to train them to ensure that they’d have some idea of what the limits were when thrown into a situation far beyond their experience.

I wish they’d wait until they pursue this one all the way up the line before they prosecuted the MPs at the bottom of the food chain, and sentence them in a proportional manner to the sentences their higher-ups receive for creating an environment conducive to this sort of stuff.

[Reeder]

Bremer knew, minister claims

Iraq’s first human rights minister launched a blistering attack yesterday on America’s chief administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, saying that he had warned him repeatedly last year that US soldiers were abusing Iraqi detainees.

This just in! Bush views terrible torture pics…praises Rumsfeld!

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/10/iraq.abuse.main/index.html

Let’s hope this brings Bushco down.

[Evil_Captor]

@eponymous

Quick question - who is in charge of the civilian interrogaters? I can’t for the life of me explain why Rumsfeld, et al, would state that they have no control over them. SOMEONE has to be in charge - if not, then there has been a monumental breakdown of command and control. If the military wasn’t in charge of the interrogators, then why were military personnel involved in the interrogation process as well? Jeez, it’s as if a system was set up that would GUARANTEE something like this would happen.

It’s real obvious the brass is doing a major CYA job and trying to get the grunts to take the full brunt of responsibility for their failures. Sadly, I think it’ll work.