[NYTr] Racism in Iraq

[nytr at tania.blythe-systems.com]

sent by andy pollack

[Only one quote really worthwhile here, but it says it all about the
responsibility of all pro-war, anti-"terrorism" propagandists (including the
Times) for the torture:

"But one member of the 377th Company said the fact that prisoners in
Afghanistan had been labeled as 'enemy combatants' not subject to the Geneva
Conventions had contributed to an unhealthy attitude in the detention
center.

"'We were pretty much told that they were nobodies, that they were just
enemy combatants,' he said. 'I think that giving them the distinction of
soldier would have changed our attitudes toward them. A lot of it was based
on racism, really. We called them hajis, and that psychology was really
important.'"]

The New York Times - May 29, 2004
http://nytimes.com/2004/05/29/international/middleeast/29ABUS.html

INTERROGATIONS 
Cuba Base Sent Its Interrogators to Iraqi Prison

By DOUGLAS JEHL and ANDREA ELLIOTT
 
WASHINGTON, May 28 — Interrogation experts from the American detention camp
at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, were sent to Iraq last fall and played a major role
in training American military intelligence teams at Abu Ghraib prison there,
senior military officials said Friday.

The teams from Guantánamo Bay, which had operated there under directives
allowing broad latitude in questioning "enemy combatants," played a central
role at Abu Ghraib through December, the officials said, a time when the
worst abuses of prisoners were taking place. Prisoners captured in Iraq,
unlike those sent from Afghanistan to Guantánamo, were to be protected by
the Geneva Conventions.

The teams were sent to Iraq for 90-day tours at the urging of Maj. Gen.
Geoffrey D. Miller, then the head of detention operations at Guantánamo.
General Miller was sent to Iraq last summer to recommend improvements in the
intelligence gathering and detention operations there, a defense official
said.

The involvement of the Guantánamo teams has not previously been disclosed,
and military officials said it would be addressed in a major report on
suspected abuses by military intelligence specialists that is being
completed by Maj. Gen. George W. Fay.

The report by General Fay will be the second major chapter in the Army's
examination of the prisoner abuses in Iraq. Military officials said he would
determine whether tactics used by military interrogators at Guantánamo and
in Afghanistan were wrongly applied in Iraq, including at Abu Ghraib.

Over the last month, General Fay and his 29-member team have conducted
scores of interviews in Iraq, Europe and the United States, and the general
is now expected to brief Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top American
commander in Iraq, on his findings sometime in the next week, a senior Army
official said.

The involvement of the Guantánamo teams in Iraq marks the second major
instance in which interrogation procedures at Abu Ghraib appear to have been
modeled on those in place earlier in Guantánamo or in Afghanistan, at
facilities where the United States had declared that the Geneva Conventions
did not apply.

In Iraq, Bush administration officials have insisted that the provisions of
the Geneva Conventions were "fully applicable" to all prisoners, whether
they were prisoners of war or civilians waging an insurgency against the
United States. But since the abuses at Abu Ghraib have become public, some
American officers have acknowledged that there may have been confusion there
about whether certain tactics used on prisoners — including hooding,
chaining, isolation and sleep deprivation — required approval from the
American command in Baghdad.

Confirming an account from military intelligence soldiers who served in
Iraq, a senior military official in Iraq said Friday that five interrogation
teams, or about 15 interrogators, analysts and other specialists, were sent
in October from Guantánamo Bay to the American command in Iraq "for use in
the interrogation effort" at Abu Ghraib. A defense official in Washington
said that only three teams had been sent, but there was no immediate
explanation for the discrepancy.

General Miller, who is now in command of all detention sites in Iraq, played
a central role in recommending an overhaul of interrogation procedures at
Abu Ghraib, including changes to bring about closer coordination between
guards and interrogators. But the general's report on that issue remains
classified, and it is not clear whether either his report or the Guantánamo
teams explicitly recommended a toughening of interrogation procedures at Abu
Ghraib.

To date, there have been no accusations of serious prisoner abuse in
connection with interrogations at Guantánamo. Most of the criticisms have
generally focused on the lack of legal rights and due process and the
indefinite nature of the detentions.

According to a military officer on the Miller delegation to Iraq,
interrogation teams from Guantánamo took part in interrogations at Abu
Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq. The interrogators demonstrated the "tiger
team" concept that was developed at Guantánamo, integrating interrogators
with an intelligence analyst and an interpreter to focus on particular
groups of detainees and pieces of information being sought.

To date, seven enlisted soldiers from a military police unit are the only
Americans charged in connection with abuse at Abu Ghraib, but with the
report by General Fay, the investigation's focus is turning to the role
played by interrogators and other military intelligence soldiers.

The 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Fort Bragg, N.C., also
played a major role in setting up the new interrogation unit at Abu Ghraib
last fall. In its ranks was Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, who had led an
interrogation team at the Bagram Collection Point in Afghanistan.

Two Afghan prisoners died in Bagram in December 2002 in what investigators
have ruled were homicides, during the time Captain Wood's unit was in charge
of interrogations. An Ohio-based Army Reserve unit, the 377th Military
Police Company, was guarding Bagram at the time, and Army investigators are
now pursuing what they have said are indications that enlisted soldiers from
one or both units abused the Afghan prisoners before they died.

The 377th is based in Cincinnati, Army officials said Friday. An Army
Reserve spokesman confirmed that among the unit's duties was guarding
prisoners at Bagram Collection Point. In interviews, some members of the
unit acknowledged that they were interviewed by criminal investigators in
the last three months, but said they had no knowledge that the prisoners who
died had been abused.

But one member of the 377th Company said the fact that prisoners in
Afghanistan had been labeled as "enemy combatants" not subject to the Geneva
Conventions had contributed to an unhealthy attitude in the detention
center.

"We were pretty much told that they were nobodies, that they were just enemy
combatants," he said. "I think that giving them the distinction of soldier
would have changed our attitudes toward them. A lot of it was based on
racism, really. We called them hajis, and that psychology was really
important."

At least six members of the 377th Company who were reached by telephone
declined comment on the investigation, saying they had been directed by
their commanders not to talk to the news media about it.

The top American officers in charge of the interrogation effort at Abu
Ghraib, including Brig. Gen. Barbara Fast, General Sanchez's top deputy for
intelligence, have all declined requests for interviews since the scope of
the abuses there became evident. They include Col. Thomas M. Pappas, who
commanded the 205th Intelligence Brigade, and Lt. Col. Steven Jordan,
director of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib,
which was established in September.

Both officers were named in the first major Army report on the abuses,
issued by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, as having been either "directly or
indirectly responsible" for the misconduct.

In interviews, two military intelligence soldiers who served at Abu Ghraib
as part of the 205th Brigade described the unit from Guantánamo as having
played a notable role in setting up the interrogation unit in Iraq, which
they said was modeled closely after the one that General Miller put in place
in Cuba.

"They were sent to Iraq to set up a Gitmo-style prison at Abu Ghraib," a
military intelligence soldier said of the unit. None of the soldiers knew
what military unit the group from Guantánamo had been drawn from, but one of
them said he understood that it had also served earlier in a detention
facility in Guantánamo.

[Eric Schmitt and Leslie Wayne contributed reporting for this article.]

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company