(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The images of how American soldiers have humiliated, degraded and tortured Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad are as shocking as they are not surprising. Just the knowledge of the warring effect of warriors should be enough to guess that such things must eventually happen. What is perhaps surprising is that it comes so quickly, even before feelings of defeat and fear have begun to ravage the American soldiers in earnest. This is not Vietnam at the end of the war the United States lost. This is Iraq only shortly after the invasion – while the soldiers still feel superior to their opponent. Looking for the cause of the evil in the soldiers' psychology alone becomes insufficient. More is needed to turn reservists into such brutal thugs.
The explanation is to be found in the picture that is now emerging: The abuses at Abu Ghraib Prison occurred as part of a planned strategy to obtain intelligence information for use in the fight against Iraqi resistance groups, and they were approved in high regard in Washington. Whether scope of the abuses – be it in the number of prisoners who were subjected to them, or the nature of the abuses – were explicitly sanctioned in the US Department of Defense is difficult to know. What seems increasingly clear, however, is that US intelligence personnel have had a blank power of attorney to use methods on and across the border for torture. Whether the soldiers in Abu Ghraib have gone "too far" in relation to the Pentagon's intentions is relatively insignificant in relation to the location of responsibility. Donald Rumsfeld's ministry – and most likely Rumsfeld himself – has established a system created for abuse, and free of mechanisms that could potentially curb brutality.
Renowned American journalist Seymour M. Hersh, who received the Pulitzer Prize for his reports on the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, is behind a very thorough review of the history of the abuses at Abu Ghraib Prison in the latest issue of weekly newspaper The New Yorker (www.newyorker.com). According to Hersh, the Pentagon created a special access program (SAP) at the very beginning of the war in Afghanistan. The purpose of the secret program was to be able to make decisions and obtain information in a more efficient way than was possible via ordinary command lines. The special program that was implemented just opened up for the use of torture-like methods and humiliation – including sexual harassment. It was, according to Hersh, this program that reached Saddam Hussein's old torture prison in Iraq. And, again, according to Hersh, it happened after Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's approval and after President Bush was informed.
The abuses perpetrated by a country's soldiers, especially when they do not seem to be a random result of individual soldiers' lack of empathy, are on every occasion the responsibility of the political leadership. In this case, however, all indications are that Rumsfeld's and Bush's responsibilities extend beyond that: the torture and abuses in Abu Ghraib apparently took place with the knowledge and will of the political leadership. Perhaps the abuses were cruder and more extensive than Donald Rumsfeld envisioned, perhaps Iraqi civilians with limited knowledge of the rebel groups were not meant to be the target of the torture. The methods of abuse were nevertheless sanctioned in the Pentagon, we must believe Hersh and other journalists.
The young reservists depicted in the abusive images bear a personal responsibility for what they have been allowed to use. The same personal responsibility lies with those who not only allowed, but apparently judged, the abuses.
