Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [297]
On May 29, 2004, at the height of the controversy, I attended the dedication of the World War II Memorial on the Washington Mall. A number of people came up to me to offer encouragement. The most unusual was a gray haired former president and husband of the junior senator from New York who was castigating the administration over the scandal at the same time.
Bill Clinton walked across the large reception tent and shook my hand. He said something to the effect of “Mr. Secretary, no one with an ounce of sense thinks you had any way in the world to know about the abuse taking place that night in Iraq.” He added, “You’ll get through this.”18 I appreciated the gracious gesture.
The abuse at Abu Ghraib and illegal acts committed elsewhere in U.S. military detention facilities are part of the story of detention operations in wartime, to be sure. But they are only part of the story. Between 2001 and 2006, more than eighty thousand captured personnel passed through Defense Department custody. Of those, there were only a small number of documented cases of abuse. Each time there was an allegation of wrongdoing, it was promptly investigated and prosecuted when appropriate. The rare instances of abuse should not blind the world to the professionalism and skill of the tens of thousands of Americans in uniform who were entrusted with detainee operations.
CHAPTER 38
The Least Worst Place
“At the top there are no easy choices.”
—Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation
In the heat of war, human frailty can undermine discipline and corrupt behavior even among well-trained soldiers. World War II, for example, saw instances of war crimes committed against captured soldiers on both sides of the conflict.* Detention operations in war have also suffered from misjudgments. President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment of more than one hundred thousand Japanese Americans in desolate camps across the western United States although they were not enemies.
Even in nonmilitary, peacetime situations, detention is a difficult task, as the staggering statistics of murder, rape, and abuse in federal, state, and local prisons across the United States attest.† Whenever and wherever abuse of prisoners occurs—from Bagram to San Quentin—it is an evil deed and a shameful disservice to our country, our society, and the huge majority ofcivilian and military guards who perform their difficult duties with professionalism.
When it came to captured terrorists, I knew that housing and interrogating them would require close attention and inevitably arouse controversy. Each step of the way toward crafting a coherent policy, we confronted complicated legal and policy dilemmas. Some critics cast these issues as simple questions of right and wrong. On matter After matter, however, we found ourselves facing decisions for which the options available were all imperfect.
We were dealing with individuals capable of horrific acts of murder and destruction. Yet they were human beings in the custody of a nation that properly holds itself to high standards. Belief in human dignity is the underpinning of Western civilization and one of the chief differences between Americans and our enemy. I knew our government had to create a legal architecture that afforded detainees due process while protecting our national security. I also believed that we needed to reinforce the incentives embodied in the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions are treaties with the broad purpose of protecting innocent life by deterring violations of the laws of the war, such as targeting civilians, not just for ensuring