Whether some of the tactics employed--apparently as policy--by interrogaters amount to torture is debatable, true; but since some of those tactics resulted in the death or maiming of prisoners, some of the tactics surely must be considered torture. The ICRC report describes seeing the bodies of prisoners beaten to hamburger; I somehow doubt that that was the result of some psychological interrogation gambit.

On the question of responsibility, the ICRC report confirms that Abu Ghraib was not an isolated incident, and it states that the Red Cross has repeatedly informed CF officials of the "consistent pattern" of abuse. It's beyond doubt that high US officials in Iraq were aware and seemingly condoned it.

There have also been reports that late last year Red Cross officials tried to get an audience at the White House to try and bring it to the attention of the highest levels of our government. They apparently got nowhere. Reportedly Rumsfield received Taguba's report in February, yet he doesn't claim that he took any action at the time. It's hard not to conclude that if the photos hadn't been leaked, the situation would be continuing, with the knowledge of people at the very top levels of our government. It was only the threat of a scandal that could damage Bush's political prospects that's provoked any action at all.

There's lots of other evidence suggesting that people at the very top were aware of the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners and tacitly condoned it. This is from a UPI editorial:

The damage to the United States is incalculable, but the administration's new MO is that the defense buck no longer stops at either the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's or the Defense Secretary's desk. There are sacrificial wolves between the Abu Ghraib prison and the theater commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez; a whitewash between Sanchez and CentCom commander Gen. John Abizaid; a herd of scapegoats between Abizaid and JCS Chairman Richard Meyers; and then no daylight between Myers, his deputy Chairman Gen. Peter Pace, his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, his Commander-in-Chief President Bush, and Vice President Dick Cheney, as they faced reporters phalanx-like at the Pentagon in a no-questions mode.

The fact that "Pentacon" topsiders - shorthand for the neo-conservative leadership of the Defense Department -- were alerted, first last spring and then again in the fall of 2003, about ill-treatment of Iraqi prisoners gets lost in the blame shuffle. The U.S. proconsul in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, had repeatedly expressed concern about "abuses" in U.S. "detention centers" where some 50,000 Iraqis were held. Beginning a year ago, International Red Cross reports waved yellow flags verbally and in writing at the highest levels at State, DOD and the White House.

Conveniently forgotten is the offhand remark of Defense Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith, who is quoted by subordinates - in a 110-page report by the New York City Bar Association -- saying "the Geneva Accords" on the treatment of prisoners are laws "in the service of terrorists." Which may explain why the National Guard prison guards knew squat about these international treaty obligations.

Long before official reports and journalistic exposes revealed the horrific abuse of Iraqi prisoners, high-ranking American officers in the Judge Advocate General (JAG) expressed their deep concern that the civilian officials at the Pentagon were undermining the military's detention rules and regulations, and ignoring interrogation procedures, even citing cases of torture. The Pentagon's civilian leadership was apprised in late spring of 2003 and again in October.

The Financial Times' John Dizard has dug up the New York City Bar Association's report that leaves no doubt the practices revealed at Abu Ghraib violated both U.S. and international law. JAG officers are quoted as telling Scott Horton, the chair of the Committee on International Law of this particular Bar Association, that Feith had "significantly weakened" the military's rules and regulations governing prisoners of war.

JAG informants also blamed the Defense Department's General Counsel William J. Haynes II (recently appointed by President Bush to a Federal Appeals Court), along with Feith, for creating "an atmosphere of legal ambiguity that allowed mistreatment of prisoners..."

One deputy counsel at the Pentagon, a staunch Republican, recently resigned because, as he explained not for attribution, "right-wing ideologues are putting at risk the reputation of the U.S. military."

JAG officers who spoke to Horton said civilian officials, directed by Feith, removed safeguards that were designed to prevent the abuses the world has now witnessed. At Abu Ghraib, these safeguards should have included observation of interrogations behind a two-way mirror by a JAG officer, who would then be authorized to stop any misconduct on the spot.

Shortages of qualified personnel frequently left prisoners alone with civilian contractors who instructed guards on how to "soften them up." Thus, atrocities were outsourced, and Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade in charge of Abu Ghraib, acquired plausible deniability.

An internal Army report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba last February cited "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib. But Gen. Myers told a national TV audience on May 2 that he hadn't read the report. A few days before, Myers personally called CBS' 60-Minutes II producer to request the incriminating pictures not be aired.

The blame shuffle in Iraq

It's interesting to see the neocon "cabal" implicated at the heart of this problem too. When I step back and think about the last couple of years, the neocons are an obvious common thread. Accounts of how we were misled to war place "Pentacons" at the heart of the deception. It seems to have been neocon dogma that drove Rumsfield to dogmatically hack away at the war plans, and neocons who most fiercely resisted urgings to make realistic plans for the postwar period. Neocons who wouldn't come clean with Congress about the cost of the war.

I can't credit Bush with being the leader of the cabal; I'm willing to allow as how he's being used by them. In that light, the election really isn't so much about Bush as a person, as it is about removing the corrupting neocon influence from the heart of our government. They are the enemy.