WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 (UPI) -- The Pentagon set the stage for the abuse of prisoners in Iraq by failing to prepare for the chaos that followed the invasion of Iraq or to provide adequate forces, and by issuing confusing directives on how to treat enemy prisoners, states a new report from an independent panel.
"We found fundamental failures throughout all levels of command from the soldiers on the ground to Central Command to the Pentagon. These failures of leadership helped to set the conditions which allowed these abusive practices to take place," said former Florida Republican Rep. Tillie K. Fowler, one of four members of the Independent Panel to Review Department of Defense Detention Operations.
"We have chronicled these leadership failures and the missed opportunities for effective and aggressive leadership and exercise of duty, that could have prevented the abuses from ever happening. The warning signs were there, but went unnoticed or were ignored," she said.
There was a direct responsibility on the part of commanders on the scene up to brigade level. And there was indirect responsibility at high levels in that the weaknesses at Abu Ghraib were well known and corrective action could have been and should have been addressed," said Panel Chairman James R. Schlesinger.
The panel said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should not be forced to resign, and praised him for creating the panel and giving it unfettered access to commanders up and down the chain as well as to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
"His resignation would be a boon to all of America's enemies -- and consequently I think it would be a misfortune if it were to take place," said Schlesinger.
"The uniformed military bear most of the responsibility," said Harold Brown, another panel member and a former defense secretary. "If the head of a department had to resign every time anyone down below did something wrong, it would be a very empty Cabinet table."
The panel asserts that the abuse of detainees was not limited to the one cell block at the notorious prison. There are about 300 ongoing investigations into the abuse of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Abuses of varying severity "were widespread and, though inflicted on only a small percentage of those detained, they were serious both in number and in effect," the report states.
"This was not just a few individuals," said Schlesinger.
According to Schlesinger, the abuse scandal has had a chilling effect on interrogations of prisoners in the global "war on terrorism," a worrying prospect because most of the intelligence garnered in that war comes from interviewing prisoners, rather than from technological eavesdropping.
Schlesinger said the abuse and possible torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was not sanctioned or ordered but was the result of "'Animal House' on the night shift," a reference to the 1978 movie about an obstreperous college fraternity.
Abu Ghraib was seriously overcrowded -- with as many as 8,000 prisoners at one time against a staff of just about 90 military police -- and constantly under mortar attack.
The military police arrived with little training and in many cases without their equipment and not as a unit but as individuals, setting the stage for chaotic operations.
The poor condition of the MP battalion was well known but was not addressed by the U.S. military commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, a commander who bears a large part of the blame for the scandal in the report.
"Senior leaders should have moved to meet the need for additional military police forces. Certainly by October and November ... commanders ... all the way to the Joint Chiefs of Staff should have known about and reacted to the serious limitations of the battalion of the 800th Military Police Brigade. (U.S. Central Command) and the JCS should have at least considered adding forces to the detention/interrogation operation mission."
Moreover, Sanchez allowed a power struggle at Abu Ghraib between a colonel who commanded a military intelligence battalion and the brigadier general in charge of the military police. Ultimately, he gave control of the prison to the colonel, despite the general's seniority. Both the colonel and the general are singled out for strong criticism by the panel, particularly since they failed to react to an October report from the International Committee of the Red Cross which reported abuses at the prison prior to the actions by the military police that precipitated the crisis.
The panel notes, however, that Sanchez was inadequately staffed for his responsibilities: For at least six months into the post-war period when the insurgency was gaining steam, he had just a third of the people he needed.
The Pentagon and the White House did not foresee the chaos of Iraq and did not have adequate polices or personnel ready to respond.
"The Defense Department leadership, along with most of the rest of the administration, (expected) that following the collapse of the Iraqi regime through coalition military operations, there would be a stable successor regime that would soon emerge in Iraq. Some contingencies were planned for, but they didn't include what happened," said Brown.
Matters were further tainted by a string of policy decisions from the Pentagon and the White House regarding the treatment of prisoners in the "war on terror." President Bush determined in February 2002 that the protections of the Geneva Conventions for enemy prisoners of war did not apply to the conflict with al-Qaida and did not apply to Taliban fighters.
Following this a series of memos from the Justice Department and Pentagon outlined the loopholes in anti-torture laws and treaties, setting the stage for an expansion of interrogation techniques that could be used only on recalcitrant prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The memos and guidelines proved to be a slippery slope for the effort in Iraq. As the insurgency in Iraq gained steam, interrogators and lists of techniques used in Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan were circulated to Iraq as suggestions to consider, despite the fact that Iraq's prisoners were fully covered by the Geneva Conventions prohibitions. Without official sanctioning, some of the interrogation practices migrated in their complete form to the Iraq operation.
"It is important to note that techniques effective under carefully controlled conditions at Guantanamo became far more problematic when they migrated and were not adequately safeguarded," the report states. "The existence of confusing and inconsistent interrogation technique policies contributed to the belief that additional interrogation techniques were condoned (in Iraq)."
The advocacy group Human Rights Watch contends the panel missed the boat. The problem, according to the group, is not that there were management problems at Abu Ghraib but that the Pentagon had approved a list of interrogation techniques not sanctioned by the Geneva Convention.
"The report talks about management failures when it should be talking about policy failures," said Reed Brody, special counsel with Human Rights Watch. "The report seems to go out of its way not to find any relationship between Secretary Rumsfeld's approval of interrogation techniques designed to inflict pain and humiliation and the widespread mistreatment and torture of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo."
A highly anticipated Army report on the military intelligence unit involved in the abuse will be released Wednesday.
