27 August 2004
Prison abuses being "energetically" investigated, Rumsfeld says
Defense Department Report, August 27: Rumsfeld on Abuse Reports
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was not in Washington when two new reports investigating responsibility for abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody in Iraq, but he responded by saying his department is energetically investigating wrongdoing and prosecuting those who failed in their duties.
In an August 26 interview in Arizona, Rumsfeld said the important message stemming from both the Schlesinger Panel Report and the Fay Report is "that when some wrongdoing took place and was discovered, which it was, ... that immediately steps were taken to deal with it." He told news radio KTAR's David Leibowitz "that's how the process is supposed to work."
Asked if the secretary of defense should take responsibility for any of the abuse that occurred, Rumsfeld pointed out that he told Congress recently that the senior person does have responsibility for what happens during his tenure at the Pentagon. But he went on to say: "I don't think anyone with any judgment expects the person in my position to know what's going on in the nightshift 6,000 miles away over a period of a few weeks."
Rumsfeld said the Defense Department "is proceeding energetically to see that wherever there was wrongdoing ... that it's investigated and if it's ... factual ... that it's prosecuted and that's the way it's always been and that's the way it should be."
He said the prison abuses that occurred "seem not to have anything to do with interrogation at all." Those who were abused, Rumsfeld said, were mostly criminals "and not people that anyone was trying to extract any information out of."
In an effort to put the number of U.S. military criminal cases in perspective, the secretary noted that in any random year the Defense Department processes some 3,000 courts-martial and 17,000 criminal investigations.
Rumsfeld said the Schlesinger Panel indicated that the reported abuses involved criminal detainees in Iraq who were not part of any interrogation process. Still he said, anyone found guilty of misconduct "will be penalized."
President Bush decided that the Geneva Conventions covered all of the prisoners of war held in Iraq, Rumsfeld said. Military service personnel deployed to Iraq "were told that by me. They were told that by their senior officers," he said.
In his initial reaction to the August 24 report issued by the independent panel that he appointed to investigate abuse allegations, Rumsfeld said: "We have said from the beginning that we would see that these incidents were fully investigated, make findings, make the appropriate corrections, and make them public."
The Schlesinger Report is available for viewing on the Web at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Aug2004/d20040824finalreport.pdf
The Fay Report on military intelligence is available at http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/dod/fay82504rpt.pdf
On another subject, Leibowitz asked Rumsfeld about recent Pentagon announcements concerning the ongoing U.S. global defense posture review, including the characterization in some press reports that this might represent a U.S. withdrawal from the world. It is not a withdrawal, Rumsfeld responded; the United States "is more engaged in the world than we've ever been, and the nations of the world are more closely interlinked." Even as the United States realigns its forces, the secretary said, "we will be increasing our activities around the world in terms of rotational deployments and exercising with other countries" and carrying out bilateral and multilateral training opportunities.
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
This page printed from: http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2004&m=August&x=20040827133309sjhtrop0.6356928&t=livefeeds/wf-latest.html
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