Senate committee still missing key documents in prisoner abuse case

[Robbien]

By Sumana Chatterjee and Shashank Bengali

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The Senate Armed Services Committee is still missing key documents from the Army investigation into the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, including information on interrogation procedures that could clarify whether soldiers thought they were acting under orders. More than a week after the Pentagon said it inadvertently gave the committee an incomplete copy of the report, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said the missing pages could reveal whether top Defense Department officials endorsed aggressive interrogation tactics at Abu Ghraib prison.

Among the missing documents is a report to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the head of prison operations in Iraq, on rules for interrogating prisoners. Miller toured the prisons in Iraq last summer, when he was commander of the prison camp at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and recommended changes to interrogation procedures.

Among Miller's recommendations was using military police "to support interrogations," said a Senate aide who had access to the classified Army report and who spoke on condition of anonymity. It's unclear what Miller's other recommendations were or whether Rumsfeld ever received them.

Also missing are a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which concluded that U.S. soldiers were systematically violating Iraqi detainees' human rights, and a document that interrogators were to sign attesting that they understood and would abide by rules of engagement on interrogations, according to the Senate aide.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/8842112.htm

[aquart]

1. Pentagon lost them? Guard dog ate them? Just forgot?

[mom cat]

3. All of the above. It looks like the lies are being exposed faster than

the Bushies can cover them up.

[cornermouse]

2. My crystal ball says they won't ever get them either.

That and Bush's actions to date when faced with these matters.

[Disturbed]

4. The Cover Up continues.

What is a war crime?
By Tarik Kafala
BBC News Online


Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention defines war crimes as: "Willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including... willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile power, or willfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial, ...taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."


This, international lawyers say, is the basic definition of war crimes.

The statutes of The Hague tribunal say the court has the right to try suspects alleged to have violated the laws or customs of war in the former Yugoslavia since 1992. Examples of such violations are given in article 3:

* Wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity
* Attack, or bombardment, by whatever means, of undefended towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings
* Seizure of, destruction or willful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, historic monuments and works of art and science
* Plunder of public or private property.

The tribunal defines crime against humanity as crimes committed in armed conflict but directed against a civilian population. Again a list of examples is given in article 5:

* Murder
* Extermination
* Enslavement
* Deportation
* Imprisonment
* Torture
* Rape
* Persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1420133.stm

*Do you need a degree in Intl. Law to know that War Crimes have been commited by the US Govt.?

[Eloriel]

5. Can't they get them from Taguba himself? n/t

[Rose Siding]

7. Taguba is supposed to get it for them

because this is so much...er....easier for him, over there in *Kuwait* than making a copy right there at the Pentagon and sending it across the river.

snip>
The Pentagon called the omission an oversight. Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Joseph Yoswa said Taguba, who's in Kuwait, would send Congress a certified copy.

There would *have* to be a "certified" copy on a DISK somewhere that could be printed out in about a half hour! Or is Taguba travelling around with 2 forty pound boxes of paper?

[Rose Siding]

6. We don't have the whole story here

A document this size, run off in a govt shop, would likely have had a minder. There would be a cover sheet, which the Senators appear to have rc'd as well, as they can cite which documents are missing. The copier (or printer) would have worked closely from that cover sheet for qc and collating purposes.

500 printed sheets measure about 3 1/2". To omit 2,000 sheets accidentally would be clown-like -virtually impossible. Either there were instructions not to print them, or they were removed from the sets after they left the printer.

The only explanation I can conceive of, is that all the missing pgs are consecutive and bound or boxed separately and they are all sitting in one overlooked place. With the kind of oversight that would have followed the report around, that's sort of laughable.

Further, it's really unlikely that anyone familiar with large documents wouldn't be able to tell right away that they were short, yet how many aides accepted incomplete sets? These folks spend their *lives* dealing with paper and how many haven't done their share of working with printers?

I worked in reprographics many years ago and this is really basic. Didn't it take McCain a day or so to sound the alarm? I remember he said that his staff had "counted the pages" and discovered the omission. That's NOT how someone used to dealing with large documents would figure this out.

Maybe the reports were all delivered in closed boxes- multiples to each office. Still, it being the hot potato it is, it's hard for me to believe that whoever *signed* for them didn't check them out before they signed for them.

The Dems aren't making much noise, are they? I believe the last news articles were at least a week ago. A Xerox copier spits out 10,000 pages an hour.

We aren't getting the whole story.

[dsc]

9. they figured it out

by comparing the report to 5000 pages of blank paper. Only then did they count to find out exactly how many were missing.

[gratuitous]

8. This has been going on for over two weeks now

Those missing pages were noticed a couple of weeks ago, and golly if they just can't quite find a messenger service to truck those 2,000 pages across the Mall to the Capitol! Darn the luck.

It seems someone on the Hill is reading what's there, though. This is the first I remember seeing that the missing pages might "clarify whether soldiers thought they were acting under orders" when the torture occurred.

Suddenly, their absence moves from the aggravating to the suspicious.

[Bandit]

10. Scrub scrub scrub a dub

These guys are very good at scrubing things, that's for sure.