Chicago Sun-Times

May 7, 2004 Friday

SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 53

LENGTH: 774 words

HEADLINE: Bush's treatment of prisoners set stage for Abu Ghraib

BYLINE: Cokie Roberts; Steven Roberts

HIGHLIGHT:

The Bush administration's disdain for the Geneva Convention is both

shortsighted and self-destructive.

BODY:

President Bush voices outrage at "those few people" he holds

responsible for the barbaric treatment of Iraqi prisoners. But any

attempt to blame this disaster on a handful of misguided underlings

simply won't wash.

We're sure the president felt "deep disgust" when he saw the photos

from Abu Ghraib prison, but his own policies bear some responsibility

here. He has repeatedly ignored international rules and legal

procedures in dealing with prisoners seized since 9/11, and that

attitude helped create the climate in which the lawless actions of

American soldiers were permitted and even encouraged.

Listen to Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick, who wrote home on Jan. 19

to express concern about what he'd seen while serving as a guard in

Abu Ghraib: "I questioned some of the things I saw . . . and the

answer I got was this is how military intelligence wants it done."

In fact, he adds, intelligence officers "told us, great job, that they

were now getting positive results and information."

By any moral code, civilian or military, Frederick and his fellow

guards should have known better, but their commanders concede that

they received no training in the international norms for prisoner

treatment. In fact, Frederick was so distraught that he looked up the

Geneva Convention on the Internet on his own.

How is it that an American soldier, placed in charge of enemy captives

during a highly controversial conflict, has to research the rules of

war for himself? What does that say about his commanders -- including

his commander in chief -- and their regard for those rules?

Like many others, we've warned before that the Bush administration's

disdain for the Geneva Convention is both shortsighted and self- destructive, and those warnings have proved true. America's moral

authority has diminished, while the risk to America's soldiers has

multiplied. How will they be treated now, should they fall into enemy

hands?

Democracy, as the maxim goes, is not a suicide pact. Terrorism poses a

profound threat that must be met with power and determination. And new

rules of engagement are necessary in fighting a new kind of enemy.

But the administration doesn't want new rules; it wants no rules. The

treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib is not an isolated incident, it's

part of a clear pattern based on a simple precept: The nation is at

war, and whatever the president does to fight that war is justified.

Consider the hundreds of captives seized on the battlefields of

Afghanistan and shipped off to the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba. This

administration has adamantly refused to recognize them as prisoners of

war. They can be held indefinitely, goes the argument, with no chance

to challenge their status or condition.

Lawsuits by British, Australian and Kuwaiti detainees have finally

reached the Supreme Court, claiming the right to file habeas corpus

petitions with domestic judges. The Bush position: U.S. courts have no

jurisdiction over prisoners held outside of U.S. territory.

On another legal front, two American citizens suspected of aiding

terrorist organizations have been declared enemy combatants and jailed

without facing formal charges. The Bush position: Because Congress has

given the president virtually unlimited powers to fight terrorism,

even American citizens have no standing to challenge those powers.

The source of that power, maintains the administration, is the USA

Patriot Act, passed in great haste right after 9/11 and up for renewal

at the end of 2005. In a recent survey of 65 legal experts, three out

of four said that some provisions of the Patriot Act violate

individual rights, but the president is campaigning for even stiffer

provisions and seems likely to win that fight, in part because

Democrats are reluctant to oppose him.

At least American soldiers are subject to a military chain of command.

The possibility for lawlessness in Iraq has been greatly expanded by

the use of civilian contractors for sensitive jobs such as prisoner

interrogation. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch,

rightly warns that "allowing private contractors to operate in a legal

vacuum is an invitation to abuse."

Soldiers like Chip Frederick should be punished for their actions. But

they were sent into a volatile situation that they were not prepared

for and guided by a command structure that took its cues from the top:

In the war on terror, anything goes.

That war needs to be fought, and won. But it needs to be won in the

right way. America cannot preach human rights to the rest of the world

if it ignores those rights when they become inconvenient.

LOAD-DATE: May 20, 2004