Rohan Pearce
On June 1, PM John Howard finally admitted that Australian soldiers had known that US soldiers were torturing Iraqi prisoners. Up until then, his government had insisted that Australian officials had found out about illegal US brutality through the media. We now know this was just another lie to add to the list of porkies this government has used to justify an unjustifiable war and occupation.
A May 27 expose by Sydney Morning Herald defence reporter Tom Allard revealed that at least one defence department official, Major George O'Kane, had intimate knowledge of the torture scandal as early as October 2003. Allard claimed that O'Kane had even had a hand in liaising with the International Committee of the Red Cross, which revealed that torture was employed at Abu Ghriab.
In October 2003, the ICRC submitted a report to the US military that criticised the use of torture at Abu Ghraib. O'Kane helped draft a reply that dismissed many of the ICRC's concerns.
When initially responding to the Sydney Morning Herald's report, the government claimed that the ICRC's October report revealed only that some prisoners were housed in unsatisfactory conditions (overcrowded cells, etc.), not torture.
On May 27, Howard claimed in federal parliament that the October report of the ICRC "covered general concerns about detainee conditions and treatment" and the Sydney Morning Herald had "inadvertently or deliberately conflated" the ICRC's October 2003 and February 2004 reports.
"To suggest that because Major O'Kane drafted a response to the October report, he or the Australian government were in some way aware of the more serious allegations to follow in a separate report some months later is quite nonsensical... Let me repeat that ... the first time I became aware of the scale of the alleged abuses was ... sometime in April when the photographs emerged."
But while the ICRC's October report remains confidential, a leaked February ICRC report makes reference to uncovering the use of torture techniques at Abu Ghraib during the October inspection.
This included practices designed to "soften up" Iraqi prisoners in the isolation section, including keeping them "completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness, allegedly for several consecutive days".
"The ICRC also visited other persons deprived of their liberty held in total darkness, others in dimly lit cells who had been allowed to dress following periods during which they had been held naked. Several had been given women's underwear to wear under their jumpsuit (men's underwear was not distributed), which they felt to be humiliating...
"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. Some persons deprived of their liberty presented physical marks and psychological symptoms, which were compatible with these allegations."
On May 7, ICRC director of operations Pierre Krahenbuhl confirmed that "what appears in the report of February 2004 are observations consistent with those made earlier on several occasions orally and in writing throughout 2003. In that sense the ICRC has repeatedly made its concerns known to the coalition forces and requested corrective measures prior to the submission of this particular report."
Bad advice?
Howard and defence minister Robert Hill have attempted to dodge responsibility for their lies — blaming the defence department for giving them bad advice. But the claim that Coalition MPs did not know of the scandal is suspect.
At least three government departments — the attorney-general's, foreign affairs, and defence — were aware of claims that Iraqi prisoners were being mistreated before the scandal made headlines.
Suspiciously, Hill has announced that O'Kane will not appear before the Senate's defence estimates committee to answer questions about the torture scandal. Hill claims that O'Kane is too junior an officer.
O'Kane might have some interesting things to say. He made five visits to Abu Ghraib between August 2003 and January, some to investigate torture allegations. Half-a-dozen other Australian military lawyers also visited Abu Ghraib.
A Roy Morgan poll released on June 4 found that most Australian electors believe that Howard knew about the abuse, despite his attempts to blame the defence department. This is hardly surprising: Howard and Co tried to blame "intelligence failures" to escape blame for their lies about Saddam Hussein's regime's possession of weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the war. But the government's WMD claims were refuted, not confirmed, by most intelligence reports.
Political interference
There was ample evidence of political interference by the government that led to the tailoring of intelligence assessments to suit Howard's needs. A March 1 report of the parliamentary inquiry into the WMD scandal revealed that between February 2000 and September 2002, "In general ... the [Australian intelligence] agencies' view on the existence of Iraq's WMD is that, while there is a capacity to restart programmes, chemical weapons and biological weapons, if they exist at all, would be in small quantities and that the existence of nuclear weapons is doubtful".
While the assessment of the Defence Intelligence Organisation remained mostly unchanged, the views of the Office of National Assessments underwent significant changes over the space of a single day. On September 12, the ONA's view was that "the case for the revival of the WMD programs [by the Iraqi government] is substantial, but not conclusive".
On September 13 the ONA changed its tune — Iraq almost certainly had WMD and WMD production programs. The apparent reason for the about-face? A "request" by foreign minister Alexander Downer for information for a speech making the case for "regime change" in Iraq.
The federal government also tried to blame bureaucrats for its outrageous, and thoroughly exposed, lie that refugees fleeing to Australia had thrown children overboard. That lie helped to get the government elected, but when it was revealed as such, there were no politicians' heads rolling.
This time, many believe it should be different. Sydney's Stop the War Coalition is calling for Hill to resign — a call supported by 40% of electors, according to the June 4 Morgan poll.
Anna Samson, a spokesperson for the group, explained: "The Howard government has again been caught out trying to fool the public into believing it bears no responsibility for the growing scandal surrounding human rights atrocities committed against Iraqis by the US-led invasion and occupation forces.
"At best we are seeing more evidence of the sheer incompetence of the defence department headed by Senator Hill. At worst, it is another attempt to get away with lying to the Australian people. We had the lies about children being thrown scandal, about the SIEV-X disaster [the sinking of boat full of refugees that killed 353 people, which former diplomat Tony Kevin argues the Australian military could have prevented], weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and now lies about whether the government knew about despicable treatment of Iraqi prisoners. When will it end?"
Pip Hinman, another member of the anti-war group and a member of the Socialist Alliance, told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly that she believes the scandal may give impetus to anti-war protests. Protests will be held on June 30 in Australia and around the world to coincide with the "handover of power" to a puppet government in Baghdad.
"It's not so much that the government's been exposed lying about Iraq again; most people were already pretty cynical after it turned out that Iraq never had WMD", Hinman explained, "it's that the reality is sinking in that Australia's not part of an effort to bring democracy to Iraq or the Middle East, but part of a very brutal, very violent occupation regime".
"Many people are looking at these torture photos and thinking that if this is the kind of liberation we're bringing to Iraq then why the hell are we there. It's the idea that maybe the WMD and torture scandals weren't the only lies — the claim that Australia and the US are going to liberate Iraq is another lie."
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, June 9, 2004.
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