I'm very glad to see that the story of Oregon guardsmen witnessing torture and being ordered to stand down and return the tortured prisoners to their abusers is on the front page.
I came across an interview with Mike Francis, the reporter who broke the story in the Oregonian. Here's my best attempt at a transcription of the interview (or you can listen here):
LW: The Portland Oregonian will report in its Sunday editions that Oregon Guardsmen in Iraq witnessed abuse of prisoners and were ordered to walk away. Mike Francis wrote the story for the Oregonian. He's returned from Baghdad and he joins us now from Portland.
Mike Francis, this happened in June the first day of Iraqi sovereignty. The members of the Oregon guard witnessed Iraqi guards beating Iraqi prisoners. What exactly did they see?
MF: Well, through a scout who was nearby, could see into this walled compound that you couldn't see over from street level and saw people who had blindfolds on, they had their hands cuffed and seated in the ground, lying on the ground, and guards walking around with metal rods, it looked like, or sticks of some kind, and actually hitting them and apparently shouting at them and that sort of thing. It seemed to be a clear case of abuse.
LW: This was an Interior Ministry compound, and the National Guardsman then called for backup and his commander came with a convoy of Humvees to investigate. Is that right?
MF: That's right. The scout said, "Here's what I'm seeing, and it's very alarming, and it appears to be excessive, and somebody better intervene."
LW: And what did these troops do when they arrived at the compound and went in?
MF: Well apparently, they went in with little resistance, and that's not too surprising. I don't know that the Iraqis even necessarily felt they were doing anything that wrong. But the guys went in, pushed them away, separated them, started moving some of the prisoners into the shade, gave some water bottles to them, uncuffed them, took some of the weapons from the guards, and then they were reinforced by a group of military police they had called in to sort of help them there.
LW: So they were trying to make everybody a little more comfortable I guess.
MF: Absolutely.
LW: And then what happened?
MF: We have a picture of a guardsman rendering, giving an IV feed to one of the more dehydrated prisoners.
LW: And then what happened?
MF: Actually what they saw initially was just the sort of the outer yard, which was out in
the outdoors. Then they went inside another building and found more of the same, something like 78 additional prisoners apparently undergoing some sort of interrogation. They found implements that the prisoners said were used to torture them, rubber hoses, exposed electrical wires and things like that. And at that point radioed their superior officers, generals at other camps, and said, Here's what we're finding, now what? And at some point soon thereafter the order came back, Stand down. Leave these guys to the Iraqis and leave that detention facility.
LW: You have some very gruesome pictures on your website of the injuries that these men sustained, and we're providing on npr.org a link to your web site. Who took the pictures?
MF: Well, you can see the crosshairs in a couple of them, and those were taken through a rifle scope at a great distance. Those were the initial views. Once the guardsmen entered into the compound they had cameras too and they were documenting what they saw.
LW: You say in your story that this is one of the uncomfortable aspects of nation-building that these troops have had to come to terms with.
MF: Well, that's right. The dilemma is that the United States doesn't want to be there running the country and it needs to turn over the government to the Iraqis in order for it to have any legitimacy. And that implies letting the Iraqis do things the way they wish. And of course the government has done a lot of things to sort of help supervise that process.
The constitution was drawn up a few months ago and it explicitly forbids torture, so at least the Iraqis are on record as saying that it shouldn't be business as usual in Iraq. But here it is on the very first day of this newly sovereign country, Paul Bremer has flown away, and Iraqis are in charge, and this is the first thing that happens. I think that was troubling to them. The US Embassy said it did lodge a protest and demand some answers and I have not heard what kind of response they've gotten to that.