May 13, 2004: General Admits Treatment of Prisoners at Abu Ghraib Violated Geneva Conventions

General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admits that interrogation techniques used by US guards and interrogators in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison violated the Geneva Conventions. Pace says he is not sure who approved those techniques. Pace, who a week before had blamed lower-ranking soldiers for carrying out the abuses (see May 5, 2004), contradicts Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has insisted that the techniques used on prisoners at Abu Ghraib meet international standards for humane treatment. In a hearing conducted by the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jack Reed (D-RI) asks Pace what he would think if he saw a US Marine in enemy custody, bound, naked, and forced into a painful position with a hood over his head. Would it violate the Geneva standards? Reed asks. “I would describe it as a violation, sir,” Pace replies. Reed notes that just that sort of treatment had previously been authorized by Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of US ground forces in Iraq. Pace says he knows of no military guidelines that would allow prisoners to be put in so-called “stress positions,” denied sleep, threatened with dogs, or kept in isolation for weeks on end. Committee Democrats contend with the committee chairman, John Warner (R-VA), who initially attempts to stop discussion of the Abu Ghraib torture allegations and focus only on the issue of the Bush administration’s new request for $25 million in funding for the military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Warner eventually gives way to the Democrats after Ted Kennedy (D-MA) says: “I’ve been in the Senate 42 years, and I have never been denied the opportunity to question any person that’s come before a committee, on what I wanted to ask for it. And I resent it and reject it on a matter of national importance.” The New York Times notes, “Outrage over the prison abuse has been near-universal, but in recent days Republicans have been quicker than Democrats to try to change the subject or insist on limiting release of the new prison photos.” House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) says that “[s]ome people are overreacting” to the prison photos and surrounding revelations of abuse. “The people who are against the war are using this to their political ends.” [New York Times, 5/13/2004]