Toxic consequences. Consider the scandal of Abu Ghraib—which, as is becoming apparent, is the scandal of an entire gulag—from another angle: as a toxic, but logical, policy consequence of the assumptions with which the Pentagon took us to war.

Why was Geoffrey Miller, the Gitmo commandant, sent to Iraq last August to consult on the prison system? The likeliest possibility, to my mind, is that a decision was taken at a high level to start grinding down hard on "security detainees" in the CPA gulag: that there was high-level impatience with the quantity of intelligence product coming from Abu Ghraib (another possibility would be a decision to re-orient the detention regime toward intelligence production) and that Miller was the the go-to guy, the Pentagon's star screw-turning technocrat. Certainly a number of factors were in play that might have produced impatience. Months after the end of "major combat," our troops and our supply lines continued to be vulnerable to attack. The country was awash in weapons, up to and including RPGs, anti-tank weapons and shoulder-fired SAMs. Worse might conceivably have been out there, given the virtually entire lack of security for weapons sites (even for sites with nuclear material) in the weeks following the collapse of the Hussein regime. Added to which, the clock was ticking: we were going to have to cede formal control of the country within a year, and with it at least a significant amount of our ability to operate Abu Ghraib and the rest of the gulag unimpeded.

Notice that every item in that description of the security situation results directly from the decision to go into Iraq quick and cheap and trust to luck for the aftermath. But let's flesh it out with one thing more, this one related to the TerraWar and the Administration's continued, delusory insistence on the connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. I've tended to figure, when confronted with the latest Pentagon hype about "foreign fighters" or "Baathist dead-enders," that I'm looking at nothing more than PR product—strictly for the rubes. But what if they disseminate that stuff because they believe it, and always have? How much more cause for urgency is there if you're working under the assumption that it's only a matter of time before Baathists (with access to some of Saddam's stolen billions) and Al Qaeda operatives hook up and really set the shitstorm to brewing? And what are your investigative tactics going to be, knowing that in a tribal society you have virtually no opportunity (and no time) to work your way into the terror or proto-terror networks you're sure must be forming?

These, then, are the conditions under which Gen. Geoffrey Miller makes his appearance. Representing, perhaps, yet another quick-and-cheap Pentagon solution: systematic (and bureaucratically "correct") brutality as the royal road to security. Probably wasn't even a tough sell.

posted by michael  7:00:44 PM  
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The torture pros. Ultimately, the story of Abu Ghraib is not the story of a single prison, or of the abuses committed there. It's the story of a gulag—a system of prisons, permanent and ad hoc, supporting a program of widespread, arbitrary detention of Iraqi nationals, with the purpose not of maintaining social peace but of imposing political control on a subject population. From the Washington Post:

Interviews with former Iraqi prisoners and human-rights advocates present a picture of the U.S. prison system here as a vast wartime effort to extract information from the enemy rather than to punish criminals. Former prisoners say lengthy interrogation sessions, employing sleep depravation, severe isolation, fear, humiliation and physical duress, were regular features of their daily regimen and remain so for the estimated 2,500 to 7,000 people inside the jails.

The system comprises 16 prisons, four of which hold prisoners accused of being part of the anti-occupation insurgency. But there are countless other holding cells on U.S. bases, many once used by former president Saddam Hussein's government, where young Iraqis spend their first fearful hours in captivity.

[Numbers are a little confusing here: Dexter Filkins' article yesterday mentions a current prisoner population of 3,800, down from "as many as 8,000," in Abu Ghraib alone. I'm uncertain how or whether the WaPo's 16 prisons maps onto the "14 'tactical' prisons on military bases," some of them mobile, that Filkins' article noted. But the numbers aren't really the point.]

To the extent that the press focuses on prisoner abuse—ineluctably drawn by the expanding catalog of visual evidence—it risks missing the deeper story, the story of the gulag, of the policies that created it and govern its use, and of the people responsible for those policies. Fortunately, there's a relatively easy path from the abuse allegations to that deeper set of questions, and some hope of that path being followed. Here's Sy Hersh, on O'Reilly's show, of all things, correcting Big Blowhard Bill on the history of Army investigations prior to the Taguba report:

HERSH: This guy Taguba is brilliant. He could have made a living doing—it's a credit to the Army that somebody with that kind of integrity would write this kind of—it's a 53-page report.

O'REILLY: OK, but Sanchez the commander put him in charge fairly quickly. They mobilized fairly quickly.

HERSH: No, look, I don't want to ruin your evening, but the fact of the matter is it was the third investigation. There had been two other investigations.

One of them was done by a major general who was involved in Guantanamo, General Miller. And it's very classified, but I can tell you that he was recommending exactly doing the kind of things that happened in that prison, basically. He wanted to cut the lines. He wanted to put the military intelligence in control of the prison.

[Thanks to Kevin Drum for the transcript.] Hersh's comments are anticipated by Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt yesterday in the Times, who note that "the worst abuses at Abu Ghraib took place in November, after Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, then in charge of the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, recommended changes in procedures intended 'to rapidly exploit internees for actionable intelligence.'"

I have a strong hunch that Miller, who relieved Janis "Colonel Klink" Karpinski as overseer of the Iraqi gulag, is going to turn out to be the linchpin of this story. (Which, because Miller was formerly the Grand Inquisitor of Gitmo, may eventually blow back to the abusive regime there.) His employment as warden of Abu Ghraib was preceded by this gig as what amounts to a prison consultant, which seems to be what Hersh is referring to above:

In late August and early September, 2003, a team from the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, visited Iraq to see whether it could help U.S. forces there obtain better information from detainees. That team was overseen by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, commander at Guantanamo.

Among its recommendations were that military police guards act as "an enabler for interrogation," Taguba's report found.

LA Times, "Report on Iraqi Prison Found 'Systemic and Illegal Abuse'"

[Thanks to Billmon for the article link.] Why was Miller brought in from Gitmo last August to consult on the detention program? Who sent him, and how was the decision arrived at? I haven't seen anyone address those questions yet. Most important: was Miller asked for a report that would correct abuses in the Iraqi gulag—or was he asked for a report that would rationalize and formalize abuse? Unintentionally, no doubt, Dexter Filkins' interview with Miller yesterday weights things strongly toward the latter option. Read it for the satisfied self-portrait of our own homegrown torture bureaucrat:

Interrogations [at Abu Ghraib], General Miller said, are by so-called Tiger Teams, each consisting of one or two interrogators, a linguist and an intelligence analyst. First, the Tiger Team typically draws up what the general called an "interrogation plan." In it, they must specify any of the 50 special interrogation techniques they intend to use. The use of the techniques must be approved, he said.

Interrogation sessions, the general said, may last from one to six hours. Ordinarily, he said, the intelligence analyst observes from another room. Longer interviews require additional approval.

General Miller said that while interrogations often took the form of "aggressive conversations," coercive techniques like sleep deprivation and the use of hoods were not currently being used. Physical contact between interrogator and detainee is prohibited, he said. ...

"Could they, if they requested, use sleep deprivation as a technique?" the general said. "It could be done. I'll tell you that that decision is held at a very high level."

Surely Miller was a known quantity within the Pentagon; surely the recommendations he and his team would arrive at might have been easily predicted. That has to have been the point, right? And he was placed in charge, at last, to see his recommendations carried out, not dismantled. So: just who called in the torture pros to Iraq, and when are their heads gonna roll?

posted by michael  1:43:35 PM  
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