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Pentagon seeks to quash Iraq abuse report
The Pentagon tried to quash a report that abuse of Iraqi prisoners grew out of a secret plan approved by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.
The Pentagon on Sunday tried to quash a report that abuse of Iraqi prisoners grew out of a secret plan approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to toughen interrogation methods to fight a growing insurgency.
Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said that abuses shown in pictures published around the world had "no basis in any sanctioned program, training manual, instruction or order in the Department of Defense."
The Bush administration is struggling to damp down outrage over the abuse and insists a number of low-level guards were to blame for the harsh tactics used to soften up those interrogated at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
The New Yorker magazine said Rumsfeld authorized expanding to Abu Ghraib the methods used in Afghanistan against suspected members of al Qaeda, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks.
Citing current and former U.S. intelligence officials, The New Yorker said the interrogation methods were part of a secret "special access program" that gave advance approval to kill, capture or interrogate so-called high-value targets in the war against terrorism.
As the Iraqi insurgency grew and more U.S. soldiers died, Rumsfeld and Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen Cambone expanded the scope to bring the interrogation tactics to Abu Ghraib, the article said.
Charges 'Outlandish'
A former intelligence official told the magazine Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, approved this but may not have known about the abuse.
Di Rita said: "Assertions apparently being made in the latest New Yorker article on Abu Ghraib and the abuse of Iraqi detainees are outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture."
"No responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any program that could
conceivably have been intended to result in such abuses as witnessed in the recent photos and
videos," he added in the statement on the Pentagon's Web site.
"This story seems to reflect the fevered insights of those with little, if any, connection to the activities in the Department of Defense," Di Rita said.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, interviewed on German television during a visit to Berlin, said: "As far as we can tell there is really nothing to the story."
Seven military police reservists have been charged after pictures showed grinning troops beside detainees piled atop one another, forced to engage in sex acts and photographed in other poses aimed at humiliating them in the prison late last year.
Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked on Sunday if Abu Ghraib prison, a torture chamber under ousted President Saddam Hussein, should be razed or if he believed Rumsfeld should resign, as has been demanded by many Democrats.
"We'll have to decide what's the best action," he said in an interview from Jordan on the ABC program This Week. "But there's no question that this incident has given us a black eye throughout the world."
Cause Of Abuse
Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CBS's "Face The Nation" the latest New Yorker report added a "very significant subject" to be investigated by the panel.
Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican also on the Armed Services Committee, said he did not think the reservists accused of the abuse acted without being instructed. "We need to take this as far up as it goes and we need to do it quickly," he said on the NBC program "Meet the Press."
Rumsfeld returned on Friday from a surprise trip to Iraq and Abu Ghraib prison, calling the scandal a "body blow."
The United States recognizes that the Geneva Conventions outlawing prisoner abuse apply to the war in Iraq. But it has said al Qaeda "terrorism" suspects do not qualify as prisoners of war under the terms of the treaty.
Newsweek on Sunday disclosed a memorandum by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales written in Jan. 25, 2002, that said "the war against terrorism is a new kind of war."
"In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions," he said.
