Human Rights Watch: Bush Policies Led to Abuse in Iraq

[Jack Rabbit]

From Human Rights Watch
Dated Wednesday June 9

Bush Policies Led to Abuse in Iraq

The torture and mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was the predictable result of the Bush administration's decision to circumvent international law, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.
The 38-page report, “The Road to Abu Ghraib,” examines how the Bush administration adopted a deliberate policy of permitting illegal interrogation techniques – and then spent two years covering up or ignoring reports of torture and other abuse by U.S. troops.
“The horrors of Abu Ghraib were not simply the acts of individual soldiers,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Abu Ghraib resulted from decisions made by the Bush administration to cast the rules aside.”
According to Human Rights Watch, administration policies created the climate for Abu Ghraib in three ways.

• First, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration decided that the war on terror permitted the United States to circumvent the restraints of international law . . . .
• Second, the United States employed coercive methods to inflict pain and humiliation on detainees to “soften them up” for interrogation . . . .
• Third, until the publication of the Abu Ghraib photographs, Bush administration officials took at best a “see no evil, hear no evil” approach to reports of detainee mistreatment.

Read the HRW report: The Road to Abu Ghraib.