Report from Human Rights Watch
Getting Away with Torture?
Command Responsibility for the U.S. Abuse of Detainees
Executive Summary
It has now been one year since the appearance of the first pictures of U.S. soldiers humiliating and torturing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Shortly after the photos came out, President George W. Bush vowed that the "wrongdoers will be brought to justice."
In the intervening months, it has become clear that torture and abuse have taken place not solely at Abu Ghraib but rather in dozens of U.S. detention facilities worldwide, that in many cases the abuse resulted in death or severe trauma, and that a good number of the victims were civilians with no connection to al-Qaeda or terrorism. There is also evidence of abuse at U.S.-controlled "secret locations" abroad and of U.S. authorities sending suspects to third-country dungeons around the world where torture was likely to occur.
To date, however, the only wrongdoers being brought to justice are those at the bottom of the chain-of-command. The evidence demands more. Yet a wall of impunity surrounds the architects of the policies responsible for the larger pattern of abuses.
As this report shows, evidence is mounting that high-ranking U.S. civilian and military leaders — including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, formerly the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Major General Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — made decisions and issued policies that facilitated serious and widespread violations of the law. The circumstances strongly suggest that they either knew or should have known that such violations took place as a result of their actions. There is also mounting data that, when presented with evidence that abuse was in fact taking place, they failed to act to stem the abuse . . . .
Unless those who designed or authorized the illegal policies are held to account, all the protestations of "disgust" at the Abu Ghraib photos by President George W. Bush1 and others will be meaningless. If there is no real accountability for these crimes, for years to come the perpetrators of atrocities around the world will point to the U.S.’s treatment of prisoners to deflect criticism of their own conduct . . . .
This report provides a new look at the evidence made public to date about the role played by senior leaders most responsible for setting U.S. interrogation policies, including Secretary Rumsfeld, CIA Director Tenet, Gen. Sanchez, and Gen. Miller . . . .
Recommendations
Recommendation to the U.S. Attorney General
Appoint a special counsel to investigate any U.S. officials — no matter their rank or position — who participated in, ordered, or had command responsibility for war crimes or torture, or other prohibited ill-treatment against detainees in U.S. custody . . . .
Recommendation to the U.S. Congress
Create a special commission, along the lines of the 9/11 commission, to investigate the issue of prisoner abuse . . . .
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We have to be pessimistic about implementing HRW's recommendations. Any investigation by the AG would lead to Mr. Gonzales himself, since it is he who, as White House council, wrote much of the legal documentation that supported the use of torture. And Congress can't even investigate the Republican leader's ethics violations, although they are in plain sight of everyone to see. As long as Congress is under contol of Bush's allies, any Congressional investigation will be a whitewash.