Seymour Hersh: U.S. Knew of Rampant Abuse in Iraqi Prisons Months Ago

On May 1st, 2003 President Bush, stood before a giant "Mission Accomplished" sign aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major military combat operations in Iraq.
One year later, a very different set of images shown around the world are being described as the pictures that lost the war.

This past week CBS'"60 Minutes II" broadcast images showing Iraqi prisoners stripped naked, hooded and being humiliated and tortured by their U.S. captors. The images quickly exploded onto the world stage and were shown on television and in newspapers across the globe.

For months, human rights groups and former prisoners had complained of mistreatment at detention centers but their protests were widely dismissed as politically motivated until U.S. command started an investigation in January.

This week, Pulitzer prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker obtained a copy of an explosive internal Army report that reveals what appears to be systematic torture of at least 20 Iraqi prisoners by six to 10 U.S. Army reservists.

The 53-page report, written in February by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba found Iraqi detainees in a cellblock of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad were subjected to "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at the hands of their U.S. jailers. The abuses included sodomizing of prisoners, pouring cold water and chemicals on naked bodies, threatening detainees with rape and dog attacks, hitting them with chairs and broomsticks and locking them in isolation without food, water or a toilet for three days.

The internal report also found a virtual collapse of the command structure in Abu Ghraib with Army reservists being urged by military intelligence and CIA employees to "set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses."

Appearing on three Sunday talk shows yesterday, Chairman of the Joint Cheifs of Staff Gen Richard Myers said, "Torture is not one of the methods that we're allowed to use and that we use. I mean, it's just not permitted by international law, and we don't use it."

Myers gave conflicting answers when asked if the problems at Abu Ghraib were systemic throughout detention centers in Iraq. First he insisted that the instances of mistreatment were not widespread and were the actions of "just a handful" of soldiers. But when pressed, he acknowledged that he had not yet read Taguba's report and left open the possibility the abuses could be broader.

Myers also acknowledged that he had asked the CBS News program "60 Minutes II" to delay broadcasting photographs of the abuses saying it would be particularly inflammatory at the time. CBS, which was originally scheduled to air the images on April 14, complied and delayed the broadcast by two weeks.

Taguba's report has led to a military investigation of the 372nd Military Police Company, which staffed the cellblock. Seventeen soldiers in the company have been suspended and six now face court-martial. The woman in charge of Abu Ghraib, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, was relieved of her command.


Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for the New Yorker.

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