Saturday, May 01, 2004
Sy Hersh on Abu Ghraib
An excellent article reviewing what we know.
We know American soldiers tortured, and in some cases killed, prisoners in their care. We can only wonder where the idea to do this came from. It looks pretty clear that military intelligence officers ordered at least some of this. We know that the Arab and Muslim worlds know what we have done, can see that it is calculated to offend Muslim beliefs and sensibilities, and suspect (perhaps rightly) that we have committed yet more atrocities.
I think we are now past the turning point in Iraq; I don't think a good outcome can be guaranteed if we just make the right decisions (though perhaps we will yet get lucky). But it's time we did something to clean up our image.
We need to get out of the secret prison business. This is supposedly the (currently principle) reason we invaded Iraq in the first place. Now we need to close down Guantanamo and transfer the prisoners to a real justice system, either in the US or in the Hague. We need to have other nations run Iraq's prisons, because our credibility in that department is zero, and can't be recovered. And we need to thoroughly investigate what happened at Abu Ghraib, and punish those responsible, including any higher ups. We should make sure the punishment is stiff---maybe as stiff as it would be if we turned over the guilty to the (yet to be created) courts of Iraq itself.
We know American soldiers tortured, and in some cases killed, prisoners in their care. We can only wonder where the idea to do this came from. It looks pretty clear that military intelligence officers ordered at least some of this. We know that the Arab and Muslim worlds know what we have done, can see that it is calculated to offend Muslim beliefs and sensibilities, and suspect (perhaps rightly) that we have committed yet more atrocities.
I think we are now past the turning point in Iraq; I don't think a good outcome can be guaranteed if we just make the right decisions (though perhaps we will yet get lucky). But it's time we did something to clean up our image.
We need to get out of the secret prison business. This is supposedly the (currently principle) reason we invaded Iraq in the first place. Now we need to close down Guantanamo and transfer the prisoners to a real justice system, either in the US or in the Hague. We need to have other nations run Iraq's prisons, because our credibility in that department is zero, and can't be recovered. And we need to thoroughly investigate what happened at Abu Ghraib, and punish those responsible, including any higher ups. We should make sure the punishment is stiff---maybe as stiff as it would be if we turned over the guilty to the (yet to be created) courts of Iraq itself.
