inside the glass house

The real villains: Geneva Convention and digital cameras
NEW YORK - As the prisoner abuse scandal in Baghdad continues to unfold in the US, the photographs of the torture and humiliation of detainees in American military custody have put the Bush administration on the defensive.

The apologies have come from every nook and cranny of the White House and the Pentagon. But no senior administration official has had the courage to take eventual responsibility for the appalling military atrocities, and do the right thing: resign from office.

The overwhelming demand has been for the resignation of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, one of the architects of the US war on Iraq and civilian head of the US military.

The irony of it is that while Rumsfeld has publicly apologised for the lousy job he has done, President Bush has held him up as model.

And adding injury to insult, Bush said last week: "You are doing a superb job. You are courageously leading our nation in the war against terror. You are a strong secretary of defence and our nation owes you a debt of gratitude."

These are obviously political platitudes by an administration which is trying to survive an upcoming election in November in a country which is increasingly of the view that the war on Iraq was a futile military exercise.

Meanwhile, right wing conservatives in the Bush administration are frantically looking for answers to cover up the scandal - and also divert responsibility away from the White House and the Pentagon.

In a tongue-in-cheek piece last week, one of America's best known humourists Art Buchwald produced a fictitious "damage-control list" - as conceived by right wing supporters of the administration - to counter the widespread criticisms.

If asked about the torture, a typical hypothetical response, according to Buchwald, would be: "We were not using Saddam's torture methods in Abu Ghraib prison. We had our own, and they were far more sophisticated." So, why complain?

Impact on the international community? "Most of the countries in the world that hate us now, hated us before the pictures were published". So why worry?

Was the US military really brutal? "I am sure the French army does things a lot worse". Remember Algeria?

Are US soldiers the real villains? No, says Buchwald, rather sarcastically. "The real villains are the digital cameras the soldiers are permitted to travel with."

The political spin by conservative politicians also extend to blaming the media for the extensive coverage of the prison abuse scandal which has been front-page news in virtually all American newspapers - not to mention the extensive coverage on television.

There is also a cruel paradox in the unfolding saga in Iraq. Just after the US invasion of Iraq last March, Rumsfeld was indignant that the Iraqis had put on public display some of the American prisoners of war.

''You know," Rumsfeld said on the tv programme 'Meet the Press', "under the Geneva convention, it's illegal to do things with prisoners of war that are humiliating to those individuals."

The Geneva conventions, which govern the treatment of prisoners during military conflicts, have come back to haunt Rumsfeld. The US, which has consistently condemned other countries for human rights violations and torture, apparently had devised its own list of "approved techniques" for questioning prisoners.

The document, titled "Interrogation Rules of Engagement", included a list of "approved approaches for all detainees" and a second list that required prior approval from higher officials before being enforced.

These included "dietary manipulation", "environmental manipulation", "sleep adjustment", "sleep manipulation", "stress positions", "presence of military working dogs", "sensory management" and "isolation for longer than 30 days."

At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington DC last week, an opposition Democratic Senator turned the equation around to visualise a US soldier being humiliated and tortured by Iraqis.

Questioning General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat of Rhode Island, asked: "If you were shown a video of a US marine or an American citizen in the control of a foreign power, in a cellblock, naked, with a bag over their head, squatting with their arms uplifted for 45 minutes, would you describe that as a good interrogation technique or a violation of the Geneva Convention?" "I would describe it as a violation, Sir," General Pace responded.

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