[Mb-civic] Secrets of Baghdad Airport

[Harold Sifton]

The following story was reprinted in the International Herald Tribune (Opinion)


Secrets of Baghdad Airport

Boston Globe


The more revelations there are of detainee abuse by U.S. troops, the more evident it is that the guards who mistreated prisoners at Abu Ghraib were not just a few bad apples, as the Bush administration has described them. A New York Times report Sunday focused on a detention center at Baghdad airport where FBI, CIA and civilian Department of Defense officials complained to their superiors about the harsh tactics, including beatings, used by military interrogators. 

The military could not ignore the Abu Ghraib abuses after soldiers who disapproved of what happened released photos to the media. The Bush administration then did its best to minimize Abu Ghraib as an isolated case and the work of untrained reservists. But the Baghdad airport center was staffed largely by highly trained Special Operations troops, with about 1,000 present at any time. According to the Times, 34 have been disciplined for mistreatment. 

In late 2003, warnings of what was going on at the center came from medics who saw injuries on detainees that could have come from beatings. By 2004, relations between military and civilian officials were strained enough for reports to reach the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby. He informed the under secretary of defense for intelligence, Stephen Cambone, who instructed his deputy, Lieutenant General William Boykin, to "get to the bottom of this immediately." Boykin, who kept his Pentagon job despite having publicly disparaged the Islamic faith, concluded at the time there was no pattern of misconduct at the center. 

Since then, there has been a broader inquiry into allegations of prisoner abuse by Special Operations forces. Completed in 2005 by Brigadier General Richard Formica, it was sent to Congress, but the Pentagon has refused to release even an unclassified version. 

America is paying for prisoner abuse in the animosity it engenders throughout the Middle East and the world. And U.S. soldiers will pay for it in future conflicts when they are captured and subjected to similar mistreatment. The public deserves to know the findings of the Pentagon inquiry on what happened at the airport. President George W. Bush should order Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to release the Formica report
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