Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [293]
To my knowledge, no one in the Pentagon had forewarning of the issues that gave rise to the abuses at Abu Ghraib, but that was beside the point. Unacceptable acts had been visited upon human beings in U.S. charge. The ramifications were so great that, as the head of this department of three million people, I felt compelled to step forward to take responsibility for the institutional failure.1 As I began to come to terms with what had happened at Abu Ghraib, the events left me feeling punched in the gut.
It was the U.S. military command in Iraq that first announced publicly that it was conducting an investigation into instances of abuse of Iraqi detainees in January 2004. At the time there was little media interest in the story, but once it was accompanied by photographs three months later, that changed dramatically. In another unique feature of war in the twenty-first century, the photographs made their way across the world within minutes, inviting a reaction that was as angry as it was swift. Leaders of nations across the world issued condemnations. The Vatican’s foreign minister, invoking the word “torture,” called Abu Ghraib “a more serious blow to the United States than September 11.”2
I shared the sense of outrage, but the reaction to Abu Ghraib in some instances seemed to be exacerbated by motivations other than simply getting to the bottom of what had transpired and bringing to justice those who had engaged in the illegal acts. The shameful abuse at Abu Ghraib would be exploited by many: America’s enemies, of course, who skillfully used the outcry for their propaganda purposes; Arab governments that had an interest in making their populations think of the Iraqi liberation as dangerous and chaotic; opponents of the war, who used the abuse to justify their position that the efforts in Iraq were immoral; and, most obviously, political opponents of President Bush seven months before the 2004 election. In some quarters, the reaction quickly veered into overstatement.
“We’re not going to recover from this damage,” Congressman John Murtha announced. “This one incident destroyed our credibility in Iraq and in all the Arab world.”3 “Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam’s torture chambers reopened under new management—U.S. management,” Senator Ted Kennedy declared on the floor of the United States Senate.4 For a senior senator to equate the perverted escapades of a handful of guards on the midnight shift with the routine practices of rape, torture, and murder in Saddam’s prisons was appalling, even by the low standards of a political season. I was surprised when my colleague Colin Powell mentioned Abu Ghraib in the same context as the My Lai massacre—an appalling episode from the Vietnam War that involved the cold-blooded murder of hundreds of civilians. “I don’t know what to make of it,” Powell said. “I’m shocked. I mean, I was in a unit that was responsible for My Lai.”5
Also lost in the melee was any recognition that the military command in Iraq first brought these abuses to light. A soldier discovered the photos and handed them to senior military officials. A prompt investigation began, leading to the suspension of seventeen personnel.
Critics nonetheless expanded their attacks by taking the inexcusable acts at the Abu Ghraib prison as the basis of a systematic critique of the Bush administration’s war policies. An article in The New Yorker, citing anonymous sources, asserted that the abuses were part of official and systematic coercive interrogation methods.6 Those false