Troubling Treatments

The New York Times on Sunday has two similar stories, both cutting to the heart of the question of whether Administration officials have taken any good lessons from the Abu Ghraib scandal. First, Neil Lewis and Eric Schmitt report that an investigation conducted by the Pentagon into prisoner abuses at Guantanamo Bay detention facilities - to be released in a couple of weeks - "has concluded that several prisoners were mistreated or humiliated, perhaps illegally, as a result of efforts to devise innovative methods to gain information." And second, Don Van Atta writes "there is growing evidence that the United States has sent terror suspects to Uzbekistan for detention and interrogation, even as Uzbekistan's treatment of its own prisoners continues to earn it admonishments from around the world, including from the State Department."

Lewis and Schmitt say the forthcoming report by Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt will address several memos from FBI agents who witnessed Gitmo prisoners being "subjected to several forms of harsh treatment" by interrogators and guards. What is unclear, the Times says, is how far up the chain of command Schmidt's investigation will go in assigning responsibility for the abuses - up to this point, Pentagon officials have "contended that abuses at Guantánamo were aberrations for which soldiers have been disciplined."

Citing a "Pentagon official, "some interrogators devised plans that they thought were legal and proper, but in hindsight and with some clearer judgment might have been found to violate permissible standards" (i.e. "we did bad things, and we probably shouldn't have) - to correct this, the Army is set to release a new, clearer interrogation manual sometime in the near future, reports last week said.

Van Atta exposes a rather unnerving relationship between the U.S. and Uzbekistan, a country the State Department in early 2001 called "an authoritarian state with limited civil rights." Since 9/11, the Bush Administration has buddied up with the Karimov government in the former Soviet satellite, partly in order to use airfields there for basing in the conflict against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Ties are no longer limited to airfields, Van Atta suggests: his report reveals that "dozens" of terror suspects in CIA custody have been "renditioned" to Uzbekistan for interrogation, and, quite possibly, torture.

Citing flight logs obtained by the Times, Van Atta says that two CIA planes arrived at the international airport in Uzbekistan's capital on September 21, 2003 - one coming from Baghdad, the other from the Czech Republic. Further flight records [incomplete] indicate at least seven arrivals by those CIA planes in 2002 and 2003. Of course, U.S. officials maintain "the United States does not engage in or condone torture. It does not send people anywhere to be tortured. And it does not knowingly receive information derived from torture." But, say human rights organizations and former diplomats, everyone knows that torture is routine in Uzbekistan, "even in run-of-the-mill criminal cases."

Craig Murray, formerly the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, wrote a confidential memo in July 2004 (which the Times has a copy of) arguing that by renditioning prisoners to Uzbekistan, the CIA is "violating the United Nations' Prohibition Against Torture." Murray says he "urged his colleagues to stop using intelligence gleaned in Uzbekistan from terrorism suspects because it had been elicited through torture and other coercive means." In the memo, he argued to his superiors "We should cease all cooperation with the Uzbek security services - they are beyond the pale."

Van Atta notes that as late as this February, the State Department criticized Uzebekistan for its interrogation practices: in its most recent human rights report, State writes "Torture was common in prisons, pretrial facilities, and local police and security service precincts." And yet from JCS Chairman Richard Myers, who visited Uzbekistan in August of 2004, we get "In my view, we shouldn't let any single issue drive a relationship with any single country. It doesn't seem to be good policy to me."

What doesn't seem like good policy to me is basing our national security on information obtained by torture - psychological, physical, or otherwise - whether it's at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, or in Uzbekistan (or Syria, or Egypt, or Pakistan ...). Yes, by all means we should capture and detain those engaged or planning to engage in terrorist attacks - of that there is no question.

But allowing the reputation of our military and our nation to be stained by the shame of prisoner abuses (and I fear those that have been reported so far are but the tip of the iceberg), whether they come at the hands of Americans, Uzbeks, or interrogators from any other nation, is totally irresponsible and reckless. And the fact that such practices may continue even to this day is a sad proof that no, our leaders have not learned from Abu Ghraib.

[Update: CBS' "60 Minutes" aired a report on interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay. The transcript is available here. -- 7:02 p.m.]