Abu Ghraib, No Smoking Gun but Administration is to blame

Dahlia Lithwick takes a realistic look at the Abu Ghraib torture reports in a guest editorial in the NYT today; No Smoking Gun.
Although no one in the Pentagon or administration said torture prisoners the signals from the administration created the atmosphere that made it possible.

This week's report by the James Schlesinger panel offers the closest thing we'll get to a smoking gun. Connect the dots and it's all there: the sadism at Abu Ghraib stemmed from "confusion." Confusion sounds accidental - like maybe it just blew in off the Atlantic - but the report is clear that this confusion resulted from systemic failures at the highest levels. The report faults ambiguous interrogation mandates, an inadequate postwar plan, poor training and a lack of oversight. It notes that much of this confusion stemmed from the Bush administration's posture that the Geneva Conventions applied only where the president saw fit, and that the definition of "interrogation" was up for grabs at Guantánamo Bay, thus possibly at Abu Ghraib.

The early attempt to blame the Abu Ghraib torture on a "few bad apples" is discredited by the Schlesinger report.

But Abu Ghraib can't be blamed solely on bad apples anymore. It was the direct consequence of an administration ready to bargain away the rule of law. That started with the suspension of basic prisoner protections, because this was a "new kind of war." It led to the creation of a legal sinkhole on Guantánamo Bay. And it reached its zenith when high officials opined that torture isn't torture unless there's some attendant organ failure.

So, no memo from a member of the administration will ever be found telling soldiers to violate US and international law but the Bush administration's arrogance in regards to international law and incompetence in post Iraq war planning is responsible just the same.