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Unreleased photos of prisoners beaten to death Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4855930/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4855930/
Rumsfeld apologizes to abused Iraqis
Defense secretary warns that worse photos, videos are yet to come
NBC, MSNBC and news services
Updated: 10:00 p.m. ET May 07, 2004
WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld extended his “deepest apology” Friday to Iraqi prisoners abused by U.S. military personnel, telling Congress that he accepted full responsibility for the shocking events. But he warned that worse was yet to come.
The apology did not keep lawmakers from harshly questioning Rumsfeld, who was criticized by Republican John McCain of Arizona for not having answers about “who was in charge of the interrogations” at Abu Ghraib, the prison on the outskirts of Baghdad where the abuse took place.
Rumsfeld said in his opening statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee that “these events occurred on my watch. As secretary of defense, I am accountable for them. I take full responsibility.” Insisting that the abuses were at the hands of very few soldiers, Rumsfeld also vowed to bring those guilty to justice and to ensure that such abuses did not happen again.
But Rumsfeld warned the committee that the worst was yet to come. He said he had looked at the full array of unedited photographs of the situation at Abu Ghraib for the first time Thursday night and found them “hard to believe.”
“There are other photos that depict incidents of physical violence towards prisoners, acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane," he said. “... It’s going to get a good deal more terrible, I’m afraid.”
Rumsfeld did not describe the photos, but U.S. military officials told NBC News that the unreleased images showed U.S. soldiers severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi female prisoner and “acting inappropriately with a dead body.” The officials said there was also a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys.
Commission being formed
Rumsfeld said he would appoint a commission of “several senior former officials” to investigate the Defense Department’s handling of the scandal. As for the abused prisoners, Rumsfeld said, the Defense Department would look into offering them “appropriate compensation.”
Several protesters briefly interrupted his testimony, demanding that he be fired and that other allegations of abuse be investigated.
Rumsfeld took the witness chair after a week of controversy over the photographs of U.S. captors’ abusing their prisoners, often forcing them to assume sexually humiliating poses. Several Democratic lawmakers have demanded his resignation.
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the committee, said members needed to know “who knew what when, what they did about it, and why were members of Congress not properly and adequately informed.”
Rumsfeld did not, however, offer a direct apology for failing to keep lawmakers informed about the investigation, a lapse that upset many members of both parties. Instead, he said, “I wish we had known more sooner and could tell you more sooner.”
Before the Senate committee and later at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, he maintained that the defense officials with direct responsibility for the investigation had acted swiftly and by the book in launching an investigation in January and then bringing legal action against soldiers who were accused of abuse.
Rumsfeld said he did not know more himself because the investigation had not been completed and because it was just one of hundreds going on at any given time in the military.
“I don’t believe I ought to be running around looking for scapegoats to throw somebody over the side, and I’ll be damned ...,” he said, his voice trailing off, as the House hearing wound down late in the day.
“That’s not the way we do business in this country,” he said. Then he paused a good five seconds. “That’s all I have to say.”
‘Who knew what when?’
Warner opened the hearing, which was called earlier this week as the scandal grew. “The facts that I now have ... represent to me as serious an issue of military conduct as I have ever observed,” he said, adding that the abuses would complicate ties abroad and jeopardize U.S. troops. But Warner called it a “rare chapter” in U.S. history, reflecting on only a few soldiers.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., noted with “deep dismay” that Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had briefed the panel about Iraq in a classified session last week but did not mention the scandal, which the government knew was about to break in the news media.
Myers, for his part, acknowledged that he had called Dan Rather of CBS News to ask that the network delay broadcasting the photographs on “60 Minutes II,” saying he did so to protect U.S. troops from retaliation. Myers and Rumsfeld then got into a heated discussion with Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., who said such action had no place in a democracy, to which Rumsfeld responded that there were precedents.
The hearing was televised live in the United States and in the Arab world. Both Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, the most popular television news stations in the Middle East, showed the proceedings with simultaneous Arabic translation.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters that President Bush, who was widely reported this week to have scolded Rumsfeld for not alerting him to the photographs, telephoned Rumsfeld as he was traveling in Iowa and Wisconsin to tell him he “did a really good job” in his testimony.
Rumsfeld: I won’t quit
Rumsfeld brushed aside Democratic demands for his resignation. Asked whether he could remain effective in his post, he told senators that if he believed he could not, “I’d resign in a minute.”
“I would not resign simply because people try to make a political issue out of it,” he said in a pointed rebuttal that he repeated almost word for word when challenged later in the House hearing.
Bush said Thursday that Rumsfeld would remain in his job, and the secretary responded calmly nearly every time his ouster was suggested during more than six hours of detailed questioning before both panels.
Republican congressional staffers said beforehand that it was crucial for Rumsfeld to keep his famous temper in check, no matter the provocation, and he appeared to slip only once, late in the day, when Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Fla., bore in.
“There’s going to be great difficulty, sir — with all due respect — under your leadership leading the Pentagon in this very trying time,” Meek told Rumsfeld.
At one point, Meek prefaced a question by noting that U.S. troops were “in a forward area,” but he could not continue because Rumsfeld interrupted him. “You don’t have to tell me where the troops are, sir,” he said brusquely.
During another observation by Meek, Rumsfeld interjected sarcastically, “There’s the understatement of the morning.”
Meek rebuked Rumsfeld for suggesting that lawmakers who were calling for his resignation were playing partisan politics, reminding Rumsfeld that he had voted for many of the Defense Department’s requests for funding and support. “This goes far beyond Democrat and Republican,” Meek said. “It goes far beyond that right now.”
Rumsfeld replied softly, “I know it’s not all politics.”
Warner, one of the most respected experts on defense in Washington, said after the hearing Friday that he would “support my president’s decision” to leave Rumsfeld in charge of the Pentagon.
But Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., called on Bush to fire Rumsfeld and replace him with Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first Gulf War, knows how to win a war in Iraq, Kennedy said.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said she was “not satisfied by many of Rumsfeld’s answers,” which she called “often incomplete or unresponsive.” While she stopped short of calling for his removal, Clinton said, “Secretary Rumsfeld has to take a hard look at his effectiveness, and based on the hearings, he has some serious thinking to do.”
Red Cross alleges pattern of abuse
The International Committee of the Red Cross took exception Friday, stating that it had warned U.S. officials of abuses repeatedly from March 2003 through November. The Wall Street Journal disclosed Friday that the group had sent a 24-page report to U.S. authorities, describing prisoners who were kept naked in total darkness in empty cells at Abu Ghraib and male prisoners who were forced to parade around in women’s underwear.
The Red Cross confirmed that the report was sent to U.S. officials in February, calling it a summary of earlier reports.
Answering a question many lawmakers have posed, Red Cross Operations Director Pierre Kraehenbuehl said the abuse went beyond a few soldiers and detainees held at Abu Ghraib. “We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts,” he said. “There was a pattern and a system.”
Myers testified that an investigation of four prisons under the command of the unit in charge of Abu Ghraib had not turned up other problems. But the Army’s own probe, an executive summary of which was obtained by NBC News, detailed numerous instances of abuse at Camp Bucca, the U.S. detention center in Umm Qasr in southern Iraq.
More photos disclosed
The controversy grew this week when The Washington Post reported that it had obtained more than 1,000 digital photos from Iraq that ranged from snapshots depicting everyday military life to graphic images of various kinds of abuse.
One showed a female soldier holding a leash around a naked man’s neck at Abu Ghraib. Friends and relatives of the soldier said the photo must have been staged, the Post said.
The woman in that photo and others, Pfc. Lynndie England, 21, was charged Friday by the military with assaulting the detainees and conspiring to mistreat them.
The Defense Department said the photos were taken by a small number of soldiers for their own pleasure. But military officials told NBC News that nude photos were often used as an interrogation technique, saying interrogators would threaten to release the photos of prisoners unless they cooperated.
Six military police officers were charged with criminal violations on March 20. Seven other officers, all of them military police, have been given noncriminal punishments — in six of the cases, letters of reprimand.
The Bush administration is also dealing with the Army’s acknowledgment that at least a dozen deaths at prisons and detention camps in Iraq remained under scrutiny by criminal investigators.
The CIA’s inspector general also was looking into three deaths that may have involved agency officers or contractors, intelligence officials said. It was unclear how many of those investigations involved the same prison deaths as those under scrutiny by the military, although Army officials said at least one did.
Meanwhile, the Defense Department said Friday that it had punished two Army Reserve soldiers who assaulted prisoners while working as guards at the U.S. prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski, Andrea Mitchell and Victoria Blooston; MSNBC.com’s Miguel Llanos and Alex Johnson; The Associated Press; and Reuters contributed to this report.
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