Army Abuse report

Friday, the Army released a new report on Prisoner Abuse. New York Times:

A new Army report concludes that military detention operations in Iraq and Afghanistan suffered from poor training, haphazard organization and outmoded policies, but that those flaws did not directly contribute to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. The report, by Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek, the Army inspector general, differs from conclusions in an earlier inquiry by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, an inquiry that uncovered abuses in what became a major scandal over American military treatment of prisoners in Iraq. Unlike General Taguba's report, General Mikolashek's inquiry found no evidence that systemic problems caused any of 94 alleged abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan from September 2002 to June 2004. Instead, his five-month inquiry attributed the abuses to the "unauthorized actions taken by a few individuals, coupled with the failure of a few leaders to provide adequate monitoring, supervision and leadership over those soldiers." The report concluded "these abuses, while regrettable, are aberrations."

From what I have read on this, and my own gut feelings I think that the situation is pretty much that the Army put into place some new policies about how to deal with prisoners. Providing the guards, interrogation personnel etc. were competent and not malicious these new policies would have been fine. Hence the conclusion that there was no systematic abuse. Unfortunately, as we saw in the Abu Ghraib scandal, many of these personnel were not competent. There also seemed to be, at least in the case of Abu Ghraib, a severe lack of ordinary discipline. In my opinion a system that allows untrained personnel and commanders who do not properly enforce discipline, to be placed as prison guards and interrogators is very broken. I do not think this report properly addresses that fact. One of the problems, as emphasized by the partisan sniping surrounding the 9/11 commission report, is that we as a society seem to be unable to say “Ok, we messed up, what should we do in the future?” rather we say “Who can we blame for this and how will that help me advance my agenda?” This is not a serious way to fight a war.