"...
detainees often held for months without
ever being interrogated. Detainees walked around in knee-deep mud,
"defecating and urinating all over the compounds," said Capt. James
Jones, commander of the 229th MP Battalion. "I don't know how there's
not rioting every day," he testified.
Among the more shocking exchanges revealed in the Taguba classified
annexes are a series of E-mails sent by Major David Dinenna of the
320th MP Battalion. The E-mails, sent in October and November to Major
William Green of the 800th MP Brigade, and copied to the higher chain
of command, show a quixotic attempt to simply get the detainees at Abu
Graib edible food. Dinenna pressed repeatedly for food that wouldn't
make prisoners vomit. He criticized the private food contractor for
shorting the facility on hundreds of meals a day, and for providing
food containing bugs, rats, and dirt.
would that be Halliburton? "
"As each day goes by tension within the prison population increases,"
Dinenna wrote. "...Simple fixes, food, would help tremendously."
Instead of getting help, Major Green scolded him. "Who is making the
charges that there is dirt, bugs or what ever in the food?," Major
Green replied in an E-mail. "If it is the prisoners I would take it
with a grain of salt." Dinenna shot back: "Our MPs, Medics and field
surgeon can easily identify bugs, rats, and dirt, and they did."
Ultimately, the food contract was not renewed, an Army spokeswoman
says, although the contractor holds other contracts with the military
...
"
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [NYTr] 'US News' Obtains Classified Annexes to Taguba Report
Date: 10 Jul 2004 10:51:22 -0500
From:
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
US News & World Report - July 9, 2004
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/usinfo/press/prison.htm
reposted on Truthout:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/071104Z.shtml
U.S. News Obtains All Classified Annexes
to the Taguba Report on Abu Ghraib
"My first reaction was, 'Wow, there [are] a lot of nude people here'...
I, myself, have never been in a prison... So I had no experience at all
as far as a warden or that type of thing."-Army Captain Donald J. Reese,
a reservist and salesman in civilian life, installed in October 2003 as
warden of the hard site at Abu Ghraib
The most comprehensive view yet of what went wrong at Iraq's Abu
Ghraib prison, based on a review of all 106 classified annexes to the
report of Major General Antonio Taguba, shows abuses were facilitated
- and likely encouraged - by a chaotic and dangerous environment made
worse by constant pressure from Washington to squeeze intelligence
from detainees.
Daily life at Abu Ghraib, the documents show, included riots, prisoner
escapes, shootings, corrupt Iraqi guards, filthy conditions, sexual
misbehavior, bug-infested food, prisoner beatings and humiliations,
and almost-daily mortar shellings from Iraqi insurgents. Troubles
inside the prison were made worse still by a military command
structure that was hopelessly broken.
Taguba focused mostly on the MPs assigned to guard inmates at Abu
Ghraib, but the 5,000 pages of classified files in the annexes to his
report show that military intelligence officers - dispatched to Abu
Ghraib by the top commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez - were
intimately involved in some of the interrogation tactics widely viewed
as abusive.
Col. Henry Nelson, an Air Force psychiatrist who prepared a report for
Taguba on Abu Ghraib, described it as a "new psychological
battlefield," and detailed the nature of the challenge faced by the
Americans working in the overcrowded prison. "These detainees are male
and female, young and old," Nelson wrote; "they may be innocent, may
have high intelligence value, or may be terrorists or criminals. No
matter who they are, if they are at Abu Ghraib, they are remanded in
deplorable, dangerous living conditions, as are soldiers."
The documents provide new insights, as well as additional compelling
details on how Abu Ghraib was spiraling out of control, and how top
military commanders battled behind closed doors. General Sanchez and
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, a reservist who commanded the 800th MP
Brigade, did not see eye-to-eye. Her brigade was given the assignment
to run the prison, but last November Sanchez put military intelligence
in charge of the facility.
In her secret testimony, Karpinski, who was criticized for leadership
failures in the Taguba report, said Sanchez refused to provide her
with the necessary resources to run Abu Ghraib and other prisons. She
said that he didn't "give a flip" about soldiers, and she added this
biting criticism: "I think that his ego will not allow him to accept a
Reserve Brigade, a Reserve General Officer and certainly not a female
succeeding in a combat environment. And I think he looked at the 800th
Brigade as the opportunity to find a scapegoat..."
As the top commanders battled it out, soldiers at Abu Ghraib were
confused over who was in charge, the documents show. Weak leadership
in the prison meant soldiers couldn't accomplish basic tasks, like
feed their detainees, much less find someone to prosecute abuse. And
without a clear chain of authority, some soldiers just ran wild. "One
of the tower guards was shooting prisoners with lead balls and
slingshot," a company commander testified. Soldiers ran around wearing
civilian clothes, and covered latrines with so much graffiti that a
commander had them painted black, and then threatened to post a guard
at each location. An Army captain allegedly secretly photographed
female subordinates while they were showering in outside stalls.
The most serious riot, at Camp Vigilant, took place on the night of
November 23 when guards shot and killed four detainees. "The prisoners
were marching and yelling, 'Down with Bush,' and 'Bush is bad,'"
another Army review said. "They became violent and started throwing
rocks at the guards, both in the towers and at the rovers around the
wire..." Guards feared for their lives "the sky was black with rocks,"
the report saidand a mass breakout appeared imminent. The review of
the November riot cited the failure of guard commanders to post rules
of engagement for dealing with insurrections. Soldiers were hesitant
to shoot, and when they did shoot, they often didn't know whether they
were using lethal or non-lethal ammunition because they had mixed the
ammo in their shotguns.
Another classified annex reported that the prison complex was
seriously overcrowded, with detainees often held for months without
ever being interrogated. Detainees walked around in knee-deep mud,
"defecating and urinating all over the compounds," said Capt. James
Jones, commander of the 229th MP Battalion. "I don't know how there's
not rioting every day," he testified.
Among the more shocking exchanges revealed in the Taguba classified
annexes are a series of E-mails sent by Major David Dinenna of the
320th MP Battalion. The E-mails, sent in October and November to Major
William Green of the 800th MP Brigade, and copied to the higher chain
of command, show a quixotic attempt to simply get the detainees at Abu
Graib edible food. Dinenna pressed repeatedly for food that wouldn't
make prisoners vomit. He criticized the private food contractor for
shorting the facility on hundreds of meals a day, and for providing
food containing bugs, rats, and dirt.
"As each day goes by tension within the prison population increases,"
Dinenna wrote. "...Simple fixes, food, would help tremendously."
Instead of getting help, Major Green scolded him. "Who is making the
charges that there is dirt, bugs or what ever in the food?," Major
Green replied in an E-mail. "If it is the prisoners I would take it
with a grain of salt." Dinenna shot back: "Our MPs, Medics and field
surgeon can easily identify bugs, rats, and dirt, and they did."
Ultimately, the food contract was not renewed, an Army spokeswoman
says, although the contractor holds other contracts with the military.
Some officers told Taguba's staff that they believed the Abu Ghraib
mess had its roots in an earlier case at the Camp Bucca detention
center in southern Iraq last summer. The Army developed evidence that
MPs viciously attacked prisoners there, including one who had his face
smashed in. Four soldiers were given less than honorable discharges,
but were not prosecuted. Said one major who worked at Abu Ghraib: "I'm
convinced that what happened [at Abu Ghraib] would never have happened
if" the Camp Bucca case had been prosecuted.
*
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