after May 11, 2004 meeting of Senate Foreign Intelligence comm. meeeting on Abu Graib pictures

Dear Editor of the Rome News,
I finally believe I should take the time to write to you to express my opinion on the Abu Graib prison abuse. The Army and others claim the system works, that abuse was noticed, investigated, and recommendations are already in process. I really question whether the managers of the investigation can investigate, what amounts to an investigation of themselves impartially.
If the prison abuse at Abu Ghraib is the result of only “a few�, what kind of condition could a few low level guards, and officers cook up to warrant a 6000 page report by Major General Taguba? If it is truly the result of only a few why is it still taking so long (I wrote this in 22 May 2004) to uncover and examine? According to Undersecretary for Intelligence Cambone, a report of the International Society of the Red Cross complained at least from the middle of 2003. Senator McCain asked Major General Taguba about an item in his report of “the moving of prisoners around to avoid International red Cross Inspections�. Think about it, “How could a few soldiers carry out this kind of organized deception?�
Next, look at how the Army defined the problem for Major General Taguba to investigate and implement his results. In Major General Taguba’s words, “ ..the scope of my investigation dealt principally with detention operations and not intelligence-gathering or interrogations operations.� Doesn’t common sense say that these interrogations are part of the problem. What is the end result of separating them? And so, in one of his final recommendations, “ a separate investigation be initiated under the provisions of ….concerning imporper interrogation practices in this case.� The Army would commission another investigation beginning whenever and continue for how long? Meanwhile we can pretty much see that the cats are already out of the bag and the average soldier on the front lines is going to pay for it. The bottom line is that in wartime no red blooded American should care for an enemy’s human rights. You and I assumed that if they could eventually be implicated in the September 11 2001 attack, they deserve anything we can dish out to make them talk. But we now appear to be making some unwarranted assumptions. We assumed that their arrest conditions and any intelligence (a prisoner has) is so strong that their guilt is only a matter of time. If this is true then what is the real proof of this efficiency in conviction, and the results of this intelligence? If the results are so obvious then why did both Sec. Powell and Ambassador Bremer make comments in public about both the number of people in custody and their movement through the system (being less than desirable)? As undersecretary Cambone said that the conditions in the prison were in such a disorganized condition that Gen. Miller was brought in August of 2003. And it appears that instead of conditons getting better they only got worse. Of course that depends on one’s point of view.
One of my conclusions from studying the May 11, US Senate Armed Services Committee report is that ruthlessness is being encouraged in Iraq because things aren’t going as expected. There doesn’t appear to be any human right that can stand in the way of getting those directly or indirectly responsible for the attack of September 11. This has become a basic motivation to cut through basic protections of basic human rights that brought about the Geneva Conventions. In times like this we should appreciate the wisdom of our founding fathers in civilian oversight of the military. But what happens when both are blinded by revenge?