Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, yesterday struggled to contain America’s prisoner abuse crisis as he faced allegations that the maltreatment of Iraqi detainees was widespread and systematic.
Amid allegations that he and other top officials in the Bush administration knew about the brutality of treatment meted out in military jails in Iraq since the occupation began, Rumsfeld faced fierce questioning at a congressional hearing and was accused of ”disregard” of the Geneva Conventions.
Though he issued an uncharacteristic and comprehensive apology for the ”brutal, cruel and inhumane treatment” the prisoners had endured, Rumsfeld seemed to hesitate when senators grilled him about who was in overall charge of the regime.
His appearance came hours after a leaked report from the International Red Cross detailed that the ”degrading” treatment of Iraqi prisoners was not isolated to Baghdad, and that the organisation had uncovered incidents in detention centres across Iraq.
The ICRC also expressed concern about British-run centres. The report was presented to the administration in February yet the extent of the abuses have just come to light.
During his evidence yesterday, Rumsfeld warned that further damaging evidence would come to light, in the form of more photographs and a video of prisoner abuse.
He admitted he had considered resigning and he also apologised to the president and to Congress for failing to keep them informed of the growing scandal before the news broke on television last week. ”If I felt I could not be effective I’d resign in a minute. I would not resign just because people were trying to make a political issue of it,” he said.
It was unclear last night whether Rumsfeld’s self-deprecatory performance would be enough to save his political career.
Senator Edward Kennedy accused Rumsfeld of showing a ”disregard for the Geneva Conventions” and Senator Robert Byrd, another senior Democrat, accused him of ”arrogance and disdain for Congress”.
Other committee members, including Republicans, lambasted him for not informing them of such a serious problem at a confidential Senate briefing last week, hours before pictures of the abuse at Abu Ghraib were broadcast.
”These events occurred on my watch. As secretary of defence, I am accountable for them and I take full responsibility,” Rumsfeld conceded. ”So to those Iraqis who were mistreated by members of the US armed forces, I offer my deepest apology. It was inconsistent with the values of our nation.”
”Second: to the president, the Congress and the American people, I wish I had been able to convey to them the gravity of this before we saw it in the media,” the defence secretary added. ”If you could have seen the anguished expressions on the faces of those in our department upon seeing those photos, you would know how we feel today.”
However, he insisted that the Pentagon had not conducted a cover-up. He pointed to a military press release issued on January 16, announcing the investigation, two days after it was launched. ”The idea that this was a story broken by the media is simply not the fact,” Rumsfeld said.
Reports also emerged in the US press that other administration officials had appealed to the Pentagon to do something about military prison conditions in Iraq. Paul Bremer, the US governor in Iraq, confronted Rumsfeld and the president’s national security aides directly on the issue.
”Officials described Bremer as ”kicking and screaming” about the need to release thousands of uncharged prisoners and improve conditions for those who remained,” the Washington Post reported.
A state department source also claimed that Colin Powell, the secretary of state, had raised concerns ”for months” at meetings of the national security ”principals”, senior officials including the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.
Ellen Tauscher, a Democratic congresswoman on the armed services committee said that it was clear Rumsfeld and other top officials were aware of the serious abuses long before the story broke last week.
George Bush continued to stick by his defence secretary in an interview with Egyptian television yesterday, calling Rumsfeld ”our secretary of defence, in whom I’ve got confidence and believe in”. – Guardian Unlimited Â