Editorial: Abuse rooted in policy?

Tuesday, May 18, 2004 | 9:24 a.m.

Stories in the current issues of The New Yorker and Newsweek magazines are poking gaping holes in the Pentagon's explanation of how the abuse of Iraqi prisoners could have happened. The official line that the abuse was perpetrated by eight or nine low-ranking military police officers, and perpetuated by a Reserve brigadier general because she failed to properly supervise them, is getting weaker by the day.

The articles are dissecting a dangerous policy embraced after Sept. 11 by the Bush White House and the Justice and Defense departments. Understanding that the offensive in Afghanistan would begin a "new kind of war," the Bush administration came to see the Geneva Conventions as obsolete. The conventions, worked out among most of the world's major nations between 1864 and 1949, and fully supported by the United States, established rights for prisoners of war and detainees and protected them from murder and cruel treatment.

Members of the Taliban and al-Qaida were the first ones denied full rights under the conventions. Despite furious objections from Secretary of State Colin Powell, this became a seductive policy, as harsh treatment of the prisoners by military intelligence officials was producing information thought to be valuable. The New Yorker and Newsweek have documented that by fall 2003, with the Pentagon desperate in the face of mounting insurgency, the policy was extended to Iraq. As it worked its way down from the highest levels of the chain of command, the policy went from ink on memos to blood on the prison floor.

The White House and Pentagon are promising thorough, aggressive investigations, while denying that the abuses at Abu Ghraib can be traced back to Washington. The more we read, however, the more we have to ask: Are we seeing the beginning of the unveiling of a coverup?