Sept. 28, 2005 – In new reports detailing United States troops’ serial abuse of Iraqi detainees, three soldiers allege that many of the cruel punishments were ordered and approved by superiors and at least partly inspired by the comments of high-ranking administration officials who suggested some detainees had no rights.
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Released Monday by Human Rights Watch, the report recounts the testimony of three anonymous members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. The soldiers detail the horrific, regular abuse of detainees, including new reports of the now-infamous pyramid-stacking action that took place at US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and came to the public’s attention over a year ago through photographs.
The soldiers’ testimony points to statements by President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that Geneva Convention protections do not apply to detainees as a main source for confusion among officers.
In addition, the soldiers noted, the invasion of Iraq was originally billed as part of the "war on terror," leading to many dubious and incorrect decisions on the part of lower-level officers.
According to the anonymous statements, members of the division regularly beat detainees, known as persons under control (PUCs), as a means of stress relief. Abuse was so widespread that two terms arose to categorize it, the report notes. Abusing a detainee by making him overexert himself was known as "smoking a PUC," while beating was popularly known as "fucking a PUC."
In testimony, the lone officer of the three soldiers told Human Rights Watch that superiors refused to act to halt the abuse at the base, known as Forward Operating Base Mercury (FOB Mercury) and exhorted him to keep quiet about it. Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey even declined to offer guidance, he said.
All three told of the daily beating of detainees and said "other-governmental agents," widely assumed to be operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency, often issued orders to withhold food or water from some prisoners and would even recommend fair treatment on occasion.
Defense Department spokesman Lieutenant Colonel John Skinner charged that opponents of the war were using the report to "advance an agenda through the use of distortions and errors in fact," in an interview with the Associate Press and said the Department of Defense has "looked at all aspects of detention operations under a microscope."
The Bush administration has undertaken several investigations into prison abuse allegation, though none has been independent.
The Bush administration has repeatedly denied endorsing torture, despite stating that prisoners taken in the "war on terror" have no rights under the rules of warfare and tasking White House lawyers with crafting legal rationales supporting the use of harsh interrogation techniques prohibited under both the Geneva Conventions and Army rules.
Many of those legal opinions have been disavowed, Human Rights Watch noted in the report, but the administration continues to fight efforts to grant detainees prisoner of war status, which would provide many protections they currently lack.
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The Pentagon said Friday it was looking into the allegations of one of the soldiers, but did not put much credence in the report.
