Powell: Scandal Has Hurt U.S. Image
Associated Press
May 18, 2004

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday the abuse of Iraqi prisoners has had a "terrible impact" on America's international image and President Bush is committed to correcting the problem.

Powell said in a commencement address at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. that the furor over American abuse of Iraqi prisoners was a recurring theme at an international economic conference he attended in Jordan over the weekend.

He said told the foreign leaders: "Watch America. Watch how we deal with this. Watch how America will do the right thing."

He said the Defense Department will launch "multiple investigations to get the facts." Above all, Powell said, President Bush is "determined to find out where accountability and responsibility lie."

Powell said Sunday there were high-level discussions within the Bush administration last fall about information from the International Committee of the Red Cross alleging inmate abuse at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

His comments came as the scandal shifted to the question of whether the administration erected a legal foundation that opened the door for the mistreatment.

Regarding Red Cross complaints last fall of abuse at Abu Ghraib, "we knew that the ICRC had concerns, and in accordance with the matter in which the ICRC does its work, it presented those concerns directly to the command in Baghdad," Powell said on "Fox News Sunday." "And I know that some corrective action was taken with respect to those concerns."

Congressional critics suggested the administration may have unwisely imported to Iraq techniques for prisoner interrogation used in the war on al-Qaida.

In early 2002, the White House announced that Taliban and al-Qaida detainees would not be afforded prisoner-of-war status, but that the United States would apply the Geneva Conventions to the war in Afghanistan.

"There is a sort of morphing of the rules of treatment," said Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del. "We can treat al-Qaida this way, and we can't treat prisoners captured this way, but where do insurgents fit? This is a dangerous slope."

The New Yorker magazine reports in this week's issue that the roots of the scandal lay in a decision approved last year by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to expand a classified operation for aggressive interrogations to Iraqi prisoners, a program that had been focused on the hunt for al-Qaida terrorists.

A Pentagon statement said the New Yorker story was "filled with error and anonymous conjecture" and called it "outlandish, conspiratorial." National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said in a German television interview, "As far as we can tell, there's really nothing to the story."

CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said Monday, "The New Yorker story is fundamentally wrong. There was no DOD/CIA program to abuse and humiliate Iraqi prisoners. Despite what is alleged in the article, I am aware of no CIA official who would have - or possibly could have - confirmed the details of the New Yorker's inaccurate account."

But Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the reports that Rumsfeld approved the secret interrogation operation in Iraq raise "this issue to a whole new level."

The Armed Services Committee said, meanwhile, it is scheduling a hearing for Wednesday morning to question Gen. John Abizaid, top commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East; Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the senior U.S. officer in Iraq, and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, current commander of detainee operations in Iraq.

Within months of the Sept. 11 attacks, Newsweek magazine reported, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales sent President Bush a memo about the terrorism fight and prisoners' rights under the Geneva Conventions.

"In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions," Newsweek quoted the memo as saying. Powell "hit the roof" when he read it, the story said.

A White House statement said, "It is the policy of the United States to comply with all of our laws and our treaty obligations."

Asked Monday about the memo that Gonzales purportedly wrote, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Dick Lugar said, "Well, I would hope he didn't write it." "On the other hand, if he did, he was wrong," Lugar said in an interview on C-SPAN. Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.