Copyright 2004 The Southland Times Company Limited  
The Southland Times (New Zealand)
June 23, 2004, Wednesday
SECTION: FEATURES; EDITORIAL; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 677 words

HEADLINE: Claiming moral low ground

BODY:
JUST a week away from the scheduled handover of power to an interim Iraqi government the wheels are falling off the United States' campaign to impose its blinkered form of freedom and democracy on that strife-torn country, if they have not actually fallen off already.

Nothing is ever as clear as it seems but in simplistic terms the US is reaping what it sowed after the attacks of 9/11 -- its self-styled bubble of moral justification for declaring a worldwide war on terror now popped in a hail of international condemnation about the atrocities of Abu Ghraib.

And though US President George Bush and his co-conspirators have thrown up their hands in horror and will deny culpability to their graves, direct lines are finally being drawn by some US media between factions of the administration and the low-ranked service men and women who carried out the abuses.

The military judge conducting pre-trial hearings for two of the US soldiers charged with maltreating Iraqi prisoners, Colonel James Pohl, has already struck two major blows for the soldiers' defence that they were only following orders. He has ruled that three top US generals -- including Major General Geoffrey Miller, the former head of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp who is now in charge of US detention facilities in Iraq -- be called to the stand for questioning and that the Abu Ghraib prison itself be treated as a crime scene and not be demolished, as Mr Bush had pledged to do. The testimony of all three will be compelling, as much for what they try not to say as what they do.

A major investigation published last month by American magazine Newsweek cites evidence that after the attacks on American soil of September 11, 2001, senior Bush administration lawyers formulated a legal opinion that the war on terror was not a conventional war and therefore the Geneva Convention rules governing fair treatment and rights of prisoners did not apply to Taliban "terrorists" loyal to Osama bin Laden. Newsweek says the opinion formed the basis of a policy signed off by Mr Bush, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft. Secretary of State Colin Powell, it says, was not involved and was horrified when he found out.

The policy was first put into practice when US forces extradited captured suspected Taliban from Afghanistan and took them to the secretive and effectively lawless prison complex at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where it is claimed interrogators appplied many of the deprivation, fear and humiliation techniques that later surfaced at Abu Ghraib.

Newsweek says Mr Rumsfeld was so impressed by the rapid gathering of intelligence using these techniques that he urged CIA operatives to employ similar methods at Abu Ghraib, although the low-level military police who actually carried out the abuses were never trained in the techniques and were left free to improvise.

The Newsweek report details a policy of American disregard for international law and conventions governing conflict, condoned but not officially authorised by the president himself. That such an attitude, if not actual written policy, of contempt for international legal opinion prevails in the Whitehouse is eminently believable.

The very existence of the Guantanamo Bay prison, operated covertly without international monitoring, is evidence enough that the US treats its war prisoners differently in the aftermath of 9/11. Then Mr Bush himself defied world opinion when he invaded Iraq on the flimsiest of, as yet unproved, pretexts. He has been on the back foot ever since, unable to produce evidence of the weapons of mass destruction he cited as a main justification for attacking Saddam Hussein.

The ghastly pictures from Abu Ghraib are the defining images that destroy Mr Bush's hopes of ever reclaiming the moral high ground for the way he chose to avenge the attacks on America. To mitigate the political damage scapegoats for Abu Ghraib will be found and their heads will roll. From how high up the chain of command they roll remains to be seen.

LOAD-DATE: June 24, 2004