Another Body Blow

By David Sirota and Christy Harvey and Judd Legum, The Progress Report. Posted May 17, 2004.

In a massive blow to the stabilization effort, the head of the Iraqi Governing Council was assassinated in a bombing near a U.S. checkpoint in Baghdad today. "Abdel-Zahraa Othman, also known as Izzadine Saleem, was the second and highest-ranking member of the U.S.-appointed council to be assassinated. He was among four Iraqis killed in the blast." This is the latest development in a war hobbled by setbacks, a lack of strategy and rampant mismanagement. The death signifies that one year after the end of "major combat operations," the country is still beset by violence and instability.

New reports in The New Yorker and Newsweek allege the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison wasn't triggered by a handful of errant reservists; it was the direct result of decisions made all the way at the top, by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Newsweek reports, President "Bush, along with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door" to the abuse. "It was an approach that they adopted to sidestep the historical safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, which protect the rights of detainees and prisoners of war." Specifically, Seymour Hersh writes, Rumsfeld, as part of his "long-standing desire to wrest control of America's clandestine and paramilitary operations from the CIA," approved a plan in Iraq which encouraged the "physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence."

The Pentagon has been quick to disavow the charges made by The New Yorker and Newsweek as part of a larger attempt to limit blame to low-level soldiers. But the denials are actually a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. Hill Columnist Joshua Marshall points out, if you read the official denial statement by Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita, "This is not a denial of anything. It's a classic non-denial denial -- a bunch of aggressive phrases strung together to sound like a denial without actually denying anything."

The latest case in point: the NYT reports, "About 100 high-ranking Iraqi prisoners held for months at a time in spartan conditions on the outskirts of Baghdad International Airport are being detained under a special chain of command, under conditions not subject to approval by the top American commander in Iraq." In this situation, so-called "high value detainees" have been held in strict solitary confinement "in small concrete cells without sunlight, according to a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross." The conditions have been described by the ICRC as "a violation of the Geneva Conventions, the international treaty that the Bush administration has said it regards as 'fully applicable' to all prisoners held by the United States in Iraq." According to the rules, American commander Ricardo S. Sanchez must give his approval to all prisoners held in solitary for more than 30 days. However, "on Sunday, a senior military officer said that statement did not apply to the prisoners being held at the airport, because 'we were not the authority' for the high-value detainees." The military was unable to say who was in charge, and the U.S. has taken no steps to call a halt to the procedure.

Coalition forces are locked in battle with radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr's militia in southern Iraq. The Washington Post reports, the fierce fighting is "presenting U.S. officials with a more serious political challenge than the insurgency's still potent strongholds farther north." The ongoing battle "reflects the U.S. strategy of squeezing Sadr militarily while allowing a group of local Shiite leaders to broker a deal, much as Sunni Muslim leaders did this month in the western city of Fallujah." The U.S., however, may want to use a different model of success; the LAT reports this morning that, in fact, the deal that ostensibly brought stability to Fallujah actually handed power over to the guerrillas. Instead of a coalition victory, "Fallujah is for all intents and purposes a rebel town" which serves as "an inspirational ground zero for anti-Western militants in the Middle East, the place that beat back the Marines."

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