Red Rag

Good old Uncle. I haven’t watched the watcher for quite some time now, but since I’m hard up for blog fodder I might as well take one of the free kicks he so regularly offers.

His latest post is about allegations that an Australian officer in Baghdad, Major George O’Kane, heard about the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse late last year.

Uncle gets off to a bad start:

Small problem for the Henny commune. It’s not true.

The army has now interviewed over 290 personnel, according to tonight’s PM programme, and concluded that no-one had heard of any reports of the abuses that have been the subject of recent headlines.

If you look at the PM transcript, it specifies that the 298 personnel interviewed were those “whose duties may have involved contact with Iraqi prisoners.” Nobody has suggested that Major O’Kane might have come into contact with the prisoners, just that he was privy to a Red Cross report written by people who had.

Next, Uncle tries to tell us what it’s really about:

What the army knew was what we all knew earlier this year: the Red Cross had reported prisoner complaints to the Red Cross about discomforts in Iraq prisons. (Original emphasis.)

This comment is based on the ludicrous view that the ICRC’s February report was somehow fundamentally different to the reports it had been making on a regular basis since March 2003. We know that’s a ludicrous view because the Red Cross told us it was a summary of the information they had already passed to the Coalition:

This report summarizes a series of working papers handed over to coalition forces. ICRC delegates’ findings were based on their observations and on private interviews with prisoners of war and civilian internees during the 29 visits the ICRC conducted in 14 places of detention throughout Iraq between 31 March and 24 October 2003.

So what kinds of “discomforts” might the ICRC have been reporting on by October 2003? Well, a quick scan of the February report (pdf) shows that several extremely serious incidents of the kind portrayed in the infamous photos had been logged by the Red Cross in September and October:

16. One allegation collected by the ICRC concerned the arrest of nine men by the CF [Coalition Forces] in a hotel in Basrah on 13 September 2003. Following their arrest, the nine men were made to kneel, face and hands against the ground, as if in a prayer position. The soldiers stamped on the back of the neck of those raising their head. … The suspects were taken to Al-Hakimiya, a former office previously used by the mukhabarat in Basrah and then beaten severely by CF personnel. One of the arrestees died following the ill-treatment ([Name deleted], aged 28, married, father of two children). Prior to his death, co-arrestees heard him screaming and asking for assistance. … An eyewitness description of the body given to the ICRC mentioned a broken nose, several broken ribs and skin lesions on the face consistent with beatings…

17. During a visit of the ICRC at Camp Bucca on 22 September 2003, a 61-year-old person deprived of his liberty alleged that he had been tied, hooded and forced to sit on the hot surface of what he surmised to be the engine of a vehicle, which had caused severe burns to his buttocks. The victim had lost consciousness. The ICRC observed large crusted lesions consistent with his allegation.

[…]

27. In mid-October 2003, the ICRC visited persons deprived of their liberty undergoing interrogation by military intelligence officers in Unit 1A, the “isolation section” of “Abu Ghraib” Correctional Facility. Most of these persons deprived of their liberty had been arrested in early October. … During the visit, ICRC delegates directly witnessed and documented a variety of methods used to secure the cooperation of the persons deprived of their liberty with their interrogators. In particularly they witnessed the practice of keeping persons deprived of their liberty completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness, allegedly for several consecutive days…

The ICRC documented other forms of ill-treatment, usually combined with those described above, including threats, insults, verbal violence, sleep deprivation caused by the playing of loud music or constant light in cells devoid of windows, tight handcuffing with flexi-cuffs causing lesions and wounds around the wrists. Punishment included being made to walk in the corridors handcuffed and naked, or with women’s underwear on the head, or being handcuffed either dressed or naked to the bed bars or the cell door.

So the ICRC knew about the Abu Ghraib abuse by late October.

Now let’s turn to the specific claims made by the SMH:

Major O’Kane worked at US military headquarters with the office of the US staff judge advocate, Colonel Marc Warren, the senior legal officer in Iraq, for six months to February.

[…]

Major O’Kane was involved in drafting a letter responding to the concerns of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which argued that some prisoners were not subject to the full protection of the Geneva conventions.

The ICRC said in a November report that during visits to Iraqi jails in October its staff had witnessed and documented ill-treatment including physical violence, verbal abuse, enforced nudity and prolonged shackling in uncomfortable positions.

It is almost certain, then, that he knew about the abuse in November. It is highly plausible that he would have known about it sooner, because “the ICRC conveys its findings and recommendations to the detaining authorities by making an immediate report to the authorities on the spot and then presenting its findings and recommendations in writing to their superiors”. If I had received the initial, verbal report, I would certainly have contacted the Coalition’s lawyers, knowing that they would want to start preparing their response before the written report arrived.

But hey, all this guesswork is unnecessary, because Uncle kindly points us to this defence from Howard:

Mr Howard acknowledged that Major O’Kane had seen a Red Cross report in October, but he said it was “quite nonsensical” to suggest that he or the Australian Government were aware of the more serious claims made by the ICRC in a February report.

It’s a good line, because most people won’t hear that the February report is a summary of its previous reports, including the one from Abu Ghraib in October.

But for Uncle, denying the plausible suggestion that an Australian had heard about the abuse allegations is not enough. He goes on to suggest that the abuse itself might never have happened. He quoted this passage:

“Defence has publicly stated that no Australian Defence Force member witnessed any mistreatment of detainees,” he thundered.

Hello? No one said they were involved or that they witnessed it - just that they were told about it. (Uncle’s emphasis.)

… and then asked, “do you see how the allegation, about which “doubts remain”, has become a simple fact - ‘it‘.”

The allegation (”it”) is, of course, “any mistreatment of detainees”. I thought any remaining doubts about whether that occurred were dispelled by photos like this:

Apparently not — at least in the vortex of Uncle’s parallel universe.

Update: In his previous post, Uncle tells us we should have left the Timorese at the mercy of the Indonesian military and a genocidal militia.