On 14 May 2004 10:25:07 -0700, (Emmanuel
Gustin) wrote:

That not all prisoners were treated in this way does not make
it less bad that some of them were.

That's not my point, either. I am not seeking to excuse the undoubted
abuses and crimes that have been committed. What I do doubt is the
accuracy of your characterisations of US policy: you cannot make
accurate or proportionate judgements about US policy as a whole by
ignoring the evidence of the majority of cases of the implementation
of that policy. Can you understand that point?

A policy that singles out
some individuals for bad treatment is still a bad policy.

Yes. I have never disputed this. A policy of assumptive judgement
which ignores the treatment of the entireity of the detainee
population is still a flawed judgement, however. Otherwise the mere
fact that any law-enforcement agency or armed force experiences cases
of physical abuse would render every armed force and every police
force in the entire world guilty of *bad policy*. What matters are
what steps are taken to avoid such things in the first place, then
deal with them afterwards, and a proportionate and objective judgement
based on a realistic assessment of the circumstances at the time. In
most cases in Iraq, the latter factor is entirely absent.

A policy that carries with it a very high risk that soldiers
will stoop to unacceptable treatment of prisoners is still
a bad policy, even if not all of them do.

Again, I would like to ask you to address the points I have actually
made in this thread, rather than introducing straw men of your own.

Good, now demonstrate the Rumsfeld was a party to the breaking of the
law by soldiers in Abu Ghraib.

Now you ARE behaving as the stereotypical American --

Frankly, I'm unsuprised by your assumptive judgements of American
stereotypical behaviour. It seems to inform the understanding of many
who share your position, and demonstrates my point about how debate
over Iraq has become entirely subservient to the servicing of
prejudical assumptions and axiomatic totems. For your information, I
am neither American, nor a gung-ho supporter of the Bush
administration.

attempting to narrow down the issue to the breaking
or not of the letter of the law.

No, that's what you're doing. Meanwhile, my actual views - should you
accept the challenge of addressing *them*, rather than your
assumptions about the stereotypical pro-American views I must *surely*
hold if I disagree with you, are that the letter and spirit of the law
has been clearly violated at Abu Ghraib, and the soldiers involved and
their immediate superiors have a clear legal case to answer.

The biggest question hanging over Rumsfeld's head is his
political responsibility, not his legal responsibility.
The two are substantially different. There is not direct
link between guilt of a crime and the political and moral
responsibility for the fact that it occurred.

The problem with that is the flexibility of judgement when it comes to
extending the one responsibility into the other. That derives from
your subjective personal political opinion. This is also true for me,
but at least I'm prepared to admit that upfront. Meanwhile, I do
actually think Rumsfeld does have some level of responsibility for the
systematic disregarding of the Geneva convention at the insitutional
level. However, what Rumsfeld has not done is specify or instruct the
suspect guards at Abu Ghraib in their crimes, and if you want to make
an argument about his institutional leadership and responsibility for
US behaviour towards detainees in military operations, that argument
must encompass the totality of the evidence for that, and no just
selective examples where individuals have manifestly exceeded DoD
policy.

As for legal responsibility, that is another matter,
depending on exactly what Rumsfeld approved of as "special
interrogation techniques", what legal standards are
applicable, and how much he knew or decided he did not
want to know. It is for the courts to decide after an
investigation into this... I can only hope there will be
one, but it isn't likely at all.

I'm entirely convinced that, as the pendulum of US public opinion
swings back against the legal excesses and violations of due process
that we have seen in the "War Against Terror" in the long-term,
evidence will accumulate against Rumsfeld. Particularly in the case
of unarmed, non-combatant suspects held by the CIA and exported to
compliant foreign regimes for torture far above what even the most
excessive Military Intelligence grouping have managed in Iraq.

The problem is proving that. Public judicial proceedings are an
essential element towards that end. An internal and invisible army
process is unacceptable.

I agreed to an internal investigation -- not an invisible
one.

That's exactly what produced the Abu Ghraib pictures, and the known
evidence of abuse. Frankly, that remains a powerful argument that the
US forces are, at least to some extent, capable of keeping their house
in order. That itself discounts a lot of the "insitutional" and
"policy" dynamics to such behaviour.

The outcome of Belgian investigations in the events in
Somalia was made publicly available. The outcome of US
CID investigations into cases of possible abuse in Iraq
and elsewhere (Afghanistan, Guantanamo) should be made
publicly available as well -- AFAIK it would be illegal
to classify it.

I don't disagree with that. I think there should be extensive
investigations into lethal incidents involving Coalition forces. What
I would also like to see is the some account taken of the
circumstances, as well as the same level of *public notoriety* being
generated in the media where the assumptions of the anti-war
consitutuency are questioned. Today has seen the second example of
fake photographs of prisoner abuse being acknowledged. I'll be
waiting a long time for the headlines associated with that to equal
the coverage they got when they were first published.

Gavin Bailey

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