US general blames prisoner abuse on 'leadership failure'

8.15am - By VICKI ALLEN

WASHINGTON - The abuse of Iraqi prisoners reflected a failure of leadership and discipline in the US armed forces, the general who investigated the mistreatment testified on Tuesday, but he said he found no evidence that American soldiers had acted on direct orders of higher-ups.

Asked directly in "your own soldier's language" what had caused the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, once the feared symbol of Saddam Hussein's dictatorial rule, US Army Maj Gen Antonio Taguba recited a litany of ills.

"Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down, lack of discipline, no training whatsoever and no supervision. Supervisory omission was rampant," Taguba, the author of a Pentagon report on the abuse, told the latest Senate hearing on the scandal, which has drawn worldwide outrage.

Taguba told the Senate Armed Services Committee he did "not find any evidence of a policy or a direct order given to these soldiers to conduct what they did. I believe that they did it on their own volition."

However, he also said Brig Gen Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of the prison when the abuses took place last year, was the highest ranked officer he had interviewed.

"So what may have happened above General Karpinski is an open book?" said Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat.

The hearing followed an all-day grilling of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Friday, at which Rumsfeld apologised for the abuse but said he would not step down simply to appease his political enemies.

At the Pentagon's insistence, Under Secretary of Defence Stephen Cambone, who is in charge of intelligence, and other Pentagon officials appeared with Taguba to testify on the scandal that has sparked calls for Rumsfeld's resignation.

Rumsfeld picked up support from a Republican who had been withholding judgment, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who said: "I think it would be unfair for him to take a fall if this is just a limited activity of a few people or of a prison poorly run."

Democrats on the committee were irked that the Pentagon baulked at plans for Taguba to testify by himself, calling it an "attempt to dilute Taguba's testimony," a Democratic aide said. "Taguba is known as a straight-talker."

In sometimes testy exchanges, Cambone said US soldiers were under direction to treat prisoners according to the Geneva Conventions.

He also said the prison was put under "tactical control" of an intelligence brigade to give a senior officer authority over security and other operations, but that officer did not control the military police operations.

Taguba's report and photographs shown around the world of naked prisoners stacked in a pyramid or positioned to simulate sex acts at the prison near Baghdad have shocked Americans and set off an international furor that has posed a serious setback to US efforts to stabilise Iraq.

While his 53-page report completed in March castigated the prison operation for abuses from October through December 2003, Taguba told the committee he saw no evidence it resulted from a deliberate policy to extract information from detainees.

"I think it was a matter of soldiers with their interaction with military intelligence personnel who were perceived or thought to be competent authority ... influencing their action to set the conditions for successful interrogations," he said.

However, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee's top Democrat, said "the despicable acts" shown in the report "not only reek of abuse, they reek of an organised effort and methodical preparation for interrogation."

Congress is now preparing to see a new set of photographs and a video that Rumsfeld warned may be even more shocking.

Coalition military intelligence officers estimated that about 70 per cent to 90 per cent of the thousands of prisoners detained in Iraq had been "arrested by mistake," according to a report by Red Cross given to the Bush administration last year and leaked this week.

The report said the mistreatment of prisoners apparently tolerated by US and other coalition forces in Iraq involved widespread abuse that was "in some cases tantamount to torture."

With close US ally Britain battling its own abuse scandal, Amnesty International accused British soldiers in Iraq of killing civilians, including an 8-year-old girl and a wedding guest, who posed no apparent threat.

Already, a British judge has ruled that 12 Iraqi families whose loved ones were killed should be given permission to argue that the European Convention on Human Rights applied to their cases.

The scandal broke in America as public support for the Iraq war was already declining.

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released on Monday found only 44 per cent believed the war was worthwhile. In a poll taken a month ago, 50 per cent said it was worth going to war in Iraq. A year ago, 73 per cent thought the war was worthwhile.

President George W Bush's own approval rating dipped to 46 per cent, down from 52 per cent a month earlier.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq