More Paper Trails To Torture

Unit Says It Gave Earlier Warning of Abuse in Iraq:

Military officials said the assessment branch was created to help speed the flow of detainee releases. The unit screened prisoners in a process that fell somewhere between an exit interview and an interrogation. The purpose of the screening was to determine whether a detainee was no longer of 'intelligence value' --- that is, whether other interrogators had forgotten to ask important questions, or failed to notice inconsistencies in the answers.

In preparation for the screening, interrogators read through the detainees' files, which consisted mostly of notes by other interrogators and any intelligence reports written about the detainee. Detainee Assessment Branch personnel then asked detainees the same basic questions other interrogators had asked, like biographical queries and whether the detainees knew where Saddam Hussein was hiding.

Starting in mid-November, one member of the unit began asking detainees, 'How have you been treated since you have been in U.S. custody?' It was intended as a tactic meant to make the detainee feel like the interrogator cared, military intelligence personnel said. But the question soon began eliciting vivid and disturbing answers.

"One guy said he was thrown on the ground and stepped on the head," said one soldier. "That's when I started paying attention to it."

As more abuse reports emerged, members of the unit made the question a formal part of the screening process. In early December, the question was added to a Microsoft Word document of questions for the unit's interrogators to ask detainees, several military intelligence personnel said in interviews.

"We couldn't believe what we were hearing," said one soldier. Two detainees reported having been given electric shocks at other holding facilities before arriving in Abu Ghraib, according to the interviews. One prisoner's file included photographs of burns on his body. "We didn't want people to know that we knew about it and didn't report it," the soldier said.


First of all, whether the Torture Working Group deemed it legal or not, if electric shocks and burns aren't at least called torture rather than "abuse" then we really have gone down the rabbit hole. The press needs to start using plain english. This is getting ridiculous.

These guys reported these incidents of torture, as part of their normal process, to a three person panel consisting of Generals Janis Karpinski and Barbara Fast and a lawyer, who then decided who could be released.

Karpinski has claimed Fast was responsible for overcrowding in the prison because she refused to let prisoners who had been cleared go:

...another female general says Fast was largely to blame for the overcrowding at Abu Ghraib.

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who ran Iraq's prison system until February, said Fast refused to release prisoners who were no longer security threats and ordered them "back in the box" for more questioning.


This new article says that the panel voted on who was to be released, so I don't know what the real story is. However, it looks fairly obvious that Fast was in charge of the prison --- Karpinski has said that Fast spent more time there than she did --- so I wouldn't be surprised if her vote was a bit more important than the other two.

Why do you suppose Fast wouldn't want to release these useless prisoners from an overcrowded and understaffed facility?