Something smells fishy in Guantanamo
By Andrew Tully

WASHINGTON - Private First Class Lynndie England of the United States Army Reserves pleaded guilty this week to her role in the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. The scandal arose a year ago with the disclosure of photos of England and other US soldiers conducting the abuse. US President George W Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have dismissed the mistreatment as the acts of a few rogue soldiers. But now there are news reports of similar behavior at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Kenneth Allard said he is certain the abuses by US military personnel at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are linked. "I think it's pretty clear that they're playing by the same playbook. I don't think there's any question about that whatsoever.".

Allard, who spoke with RFE/RL from Daphne, in the US state of Alabama, is a retired US Army colonel and former intelligence officer. He said that while the world first learned about the trouble at Abu Ghraib, and only later about Guantanamo, he believes it was the guards in Iraq who copied the methods of the jailers in Cuba.

American news reports say agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who were sent to Guantanamo to help interrogate prisoners captured in Afghanistan expressed shock at the abusive techniques used by military personnel.

These reports, citing FBI e-mails, describe prisoners who bound and left on cell floors and subject to sexual and religious humiliation - mistreatment similar to that at Abu Ghraib.

Allard said it may be possible to argue in favor of such harsh treatment at Guantanamo because many of those held there are believed to be ranking members of al-Qaeda, which is blamed for the attacks of September 11, 2001, and is probably planning even deadlier attacks.

But, Allard said, there can be no excuse for those techniques being used at Abu Ghraib.

"What we are facing [in questioning inmates at Guantanamo Bay] is the potential of a nuclear threat coming from al-Qaeda," he said. "And you have to ask yourself the question, 'Is there anything that we can do that would not be justified by trying to avoid that ultimate of all evils?' We ought to have that debate. Now, when you get to [consider] Abu Ghraib, what you have there is lousy supervision and people not doing what they were paid to do."

Allard said it is too early to say whether high-ranking officers are to blame for the reported abuses at Guantanamo. But he is convinced that General Janice Karpinski, the commanding officer at Abu Ghraib when the abuses occurred, bears responsibility, if only because she lacked the leadership necessary to prevent them.

Another former military intelligence officer, retired General Edward Atkeson, agreed that there is an unsettling parallel between the behavior at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. From his home in suburban Washington, Atkeson told RFE/RL that it's time for the Pentagon to mount a credible investigation: "I can only say that it smells bad and I think that it needs thorough investigation at a very high level. They've done an awful lot of that [investigating], but the aura is still not very sweet. I think it would have been much smarter if they had taken the deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs [of Staff] and sent him over to investigate."

The deputy chairman then was US Marine General Peter Pace, a four-star general who was recently named chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Atkeson said a man of his rank and his position at the Pentagon would have had no trouble getting even the highest-ranking American officer in Iraq at the time to submit to any questions he might have.

But Atkeson said it was George Fay, a three-star general, who was responsible for the Abu Ghraib probe. At the time the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, the commander of US forces in Iraq was Ricardo Sanchez, also a three-star general.

Atkeson said an investigating general could have trouble getting complete cooperation from a general of the same rank, but who also has a large command. He said it's akin to an employee investigating his boss: "It's asking you to investigate whatever your boss will let you see."

But US Air Force Major Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman, said one leader of the investigation of Abu Ghraib did, in fact, outrank Sanchez. "General Paul Kern was the appointing officer," said Shavers. "He was directing the conduct of that investigation. I also want to point out that General Kern is a four-star army general."

Shavers said an appointing officer is in charge of deciding who will be questioned, by whom, and what evidence will be examined. But he said Kern was not personally involved in the questioning in Iraq.

Copyright (c) 2005, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC 20036