May 9, 2004

Impact of Dirty Photos Heightened by Partisans

The disgraceful behavior of American military and contract guards at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad – no matter the intent or provocation – is beyond words to denigrate adequately.

A year of noble effort and sacrifice on behalf of the United States, the Mideast and the World in the war on terrorism is belittled.

It has been made doubly worse by the glee with which certain media and political partisans pile on.

Hysterical senators and representatives rushed to the TV cameras and congressional rostrums. They demand that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld be "fired," President Bush "impeached" and the troops "brought home immediately."

This is shameful politics atop a shameful event.

The big beef seems to be that "they" – Congress and the media – weren’t told about the situation early on. Yet, it was disclosed Jan. 13 by Brig.-Gen. Janis Karpanski, officer in charge of the four Baghdad prisons.

She suspended the guards involved. Six Army personnel were incarcerated to await court martial. Four civilian guards were dismissed but charged with criminal misconduct and await civil justice.

A timeline makes clear that the U.S. Central Command in Baghdad issued a press release on Jan. 16 about "an investigation into reported incidents of detainee abuse at a coalition forces detention facility."

Before the end of January, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba was appointed to conduct a separate "administrative" probe of procedures at Abu Ghraib prison.

It is his report, complete with incriminating photos, that was turned over to Brig.-Gen. Mark Kimmitt. The latter announced in Baghdad that criminal charges had been filed against perpetrators.

The media paid no attention to the grubby story until the damning photos were leaked to CBS-TV, Washington Post and other Beltway media two weeks ago.  

Rumsfeld should have been more sensitive about the potential impact of the photos and given the president an early heads up.

Bush first learned of the photos by seeing them on CBS-TV. He publicly rebuked his secretary of defense. Nevertheless, Bush strongly asserts that Rumsfeld is a "great secretary" and will remain part of the cabinet.  

A picture is said to be worth a thousand words. It is worth even more if pumped up by salivating media types and left-wing opportunists.

Democrats seem determined to nail a Bush administration scapegoat. No need to go further that Gen. Karpanski and her prison commandant. She has been replaced by Maj.-Gen. Geoffrey Miller.  

Karpanski was in over her head -- supervising four prisons filled with 10,000 suspects of varying degrees of terrorism. She has a good performance record – but captains go down with their ships.

She should have made weekly, if not daily, surprise inspections of her prisons. As an experienced warden, she knows that prisons are tinderboxes for inmates and guards.  

Prison commandants are criminally negligent for allowing extraordinary abuses to go on. It is damning that there were perverts running around Abu Ghraib with digital cameras.

Some charged guards complain, "they had not been properly trained" about the Geneva Convention for treatment of prisoners. What more is there to know about perversion and sadism?  

Most perplexing is the conduct of female guards obviously enjoying posing with nude male prisoners.

Also curious is the reason for hand-held cameras in the Iraq prisons. Seeing-eye camera-microphone installations are appropriate for surveillance and interrogation, but these are not at issue.

The most pressing question to be answered is who made the pictures and why? Also, who leaked judicial evidence to the biased media, and why? Both are criminal acts.

Biased leakers, biased media, biased politicians, biased advocates and polarized citizens are self- destructing.

Let us pile up Abu Ghraib prison – Saddam’s even worse torture chamber – with confiscated terror weapons and blow the evil structure to Hell.

This will purge the souls of carpers on both sides of the conflict and symbolize a new beginning for everyone.

Lindsey Williams is a Sun columnist who can be contacted at linwms@lindseywilliams.org