Abu Ghraib deputy faces charges
It is being reported that the Pentagon are to bring charges against the second highest ranking intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib, the most senior figure yet to be charged over the scandalous abuse cases that took place there.
The seven formal charges against Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Jordan, who was in charge of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Centre at the prison near Baghdad during the second half of 2003, come two years after the scandal first became public. The 12 counts against him include cruelty, maltreatment of prisoners, dereliction of duty and three counts of lying to Major General Antonio Taguba, who conducted the first official probe into the events at the prison, and to a subsequent Pentagon investigation in 2004.
Lt-Col Jordan is accused of maltreating prisoners by subjecting them "to forced nudity and intimidation by military working dogs". He is said to have failed to train and make sure soldiers met military requirements on interrogation - a failure which led directly to the abuse of detainees.
However, even this welcome development, raises more questions than it answers.
Are we seriously expected to believe that this conduct took place as a result of "a few bad apples" rather than being official US policy?
The truth is that the US position regarding torture has come to seem as if it is officially approved.
Why would the US have any need to fly suspected persons in special rendition flights to country's that are known to implement the torture of prisoners, if the US does not condone torture?
Why does Vice President Dick Cheney refuse to outlaw US interrogators engaging in "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners if he does not intend that they engage in those very acts?
Why would White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales remove the protection of the Geneva Conventions from prisoners and write a memo stating that "acts inflicting, and specifically intended to inflict, severe pain or suffering, mental or physical, must be of an extreme nature to rise to the level of torture": if not to justify acts that the rest of the sane world would most certainly conclude were acts of torture?
When the US reports to the UN that acts of torture have taken place in US detention centres in Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, one has to ask how such an aberation could take place simultaneously in so many US detention centres, in so many different parts of the world, without this being officially sanctioned policy.
So, whilst it is to be welcomed to see the charges slowly making their way up the food chain, I still hope for the day when Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto R. Gonzales and Dick Cheney account for what part they played in laying the groundwork that made torture seem such an acceptable part of US policy.
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