- WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The
Pentagon on Sunday tried to quash a report that abuse of Iraqi prisoners
grew out of a secret plan approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
to toughen interrogation methods to fight a growing insurgency.
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- Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said that abuses
shown in pictures published around the world had "no basis in any
sanctioned program, training manual, instruction or order in the Department
of Defense."
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- The Bush administration is struggling to damp down outrage
over the abuse and insists a number of low-level guards were to blame for
the harsh tactics used to soften up those interrogated at the Abu Ghraib
prison near Baghdad.
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- The New Yorker magazine said Rumsfeld authorized expanding
to Abu Ghraib the methods used in Afghanistan against suspected members
of al Qaeda, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks.
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- Citing current and former U.S. intelligence officials,
The New Yorker said the interrogation methods were part of a secret "special
access program" that gave advance approval to kill, capture or interrogate
so-called high-value targets in the war against terrorism.
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- As the Iraqi insurgency grew and more U.S. soldiers died,
Rumsfeld and Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen Cambone expanded
the scope to bring the interrogation tactics to Abu Ghraib, the article
said.
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- CHARGES "OUTLANDISH"
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- A former intelligence official told the magazine Rumsfeld
and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, approved
this but may not have known about the abuse.
-
- Di Rita said: "Assertions apparently being made
in the latest New Yorker article on Abu Ghraib and the abuse of Iraqi detainees
are outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture."
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- "No responsible official of the Department of Defense
approved any program that could conceivably have been intended to result
in such abuses as witnessed in the recent photos and videos," he added
in the statement on the Pentagon's Web site.
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- "This story seems to reflect the fevered insights
of those with little, if any, connection to the activities in the Department
of Defense," Di Rita said.
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- National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, interviewed
on German television during a visit to Berlin, said: "As far as we
can tell there is really nothing to the story."
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- Seven military police reservists have been charged after
pictures showed grinning troops beside detainees piled atop one another,
forced to engage in sex acts and photographed in other poses aimed at humiliating
them in the prison late last year.
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- Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked on Sunday if
Abu Ghraib prison, a torture chamber under ousted President Saddam Hussein,
should be razed or if he believed Rumsfeld should resign, as has been demanded
by many Democrats.
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- "We'll have to decide what's the best action,"
he said in an interview from Jordan on the ABC program This Week. "But
there's no question that this incident has given us a black eye throughout
the world."
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- CAUSE OF ABUSE
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- Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the
Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CBS's "Face The Nation"
the latest New Yorker report added a "very significant subject"
to be investigated by the panel.
-
- Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican also on the Armed
Services Committee, said he did not think the reservists accused of the
abuse acted without being instructed. "We need to take this as far
up as it goes and we need to do it quickly," he said on the NBC program
"Meet the Press."
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- Rumsfeld returned on Friday from a surprise trip to Iraq
and Abu Ghraib prison, calling the scandal a "body blow."
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- The United States recognizes that the Geneva Conventions
outlawing prisoner abuse apply to the war in Iraq. But it has said al Qaeda
"terrorism" suspects do not qualify as prisoners of war under
the terms of the treaty.
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- Newsweek on Sunday disclosed a memorandum by White House
Counsel Alberto Gonzales written in Jan. 25, 2002, that said "the
war against terrorism is a new kind of war."
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- "In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete
Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders
quaint some of its provisions," he said.
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- White House spokesman Allen Abney said, "We are
a nation at war and we are a nation of laws. Our most important responsibility
is to protect the American people and we act in an appropriate manner to
meet that responsibility. It is the United States' policy to comply with
all our laws and our treaty obligations."
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