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Detainee Abuse Widespread

Details about mistreatment of Iraqi detainees continue to emerge from the documents obtained by the ACLU. Wednesday's Washington Post reports the abuse was widespread. It also occurred over a three year time period -- blowing out of the water Administration claims of a few bad apples at a particular place like Abu Ghraib or even a particular point in time.

New documents released yesterday detail a series of probes by Army criminal investigators into multiple cases of threatened executions of Iraqi detainees by U.S. soldiers, as well as of thefts of currency and other private property, physical assaults, and deadly shootings of detainees at detention camps in Iraq.

In many of the newly disclosed cases, Army commanders chose noncriminal punishments for those involved in the abuse, or the investigations were so flawed that prosecutions could not go forward, the documents show. Human rights groups said yesterday that, as a result, the penalties imposed were too light to suit the offenses.

The complaints arose from several thousand new pages of internal reports, investigations and e-mails from different agencies, which, with other documents released in the past two weeks, paint a finer-grained picture of military abuse and criminal behavior at prisons in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan than previously available.

Some administration officials claim to be surprised. That's what happens when you wear blinders. Among the most objectionable practices - criticized even by the FBI: Using dogs to intimidate prisoners and having military interrogators pretend to be FBI agents when questioning detainees. Bottom line: As ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh said,

"What the documents show so far was that the abuse was widespread and systemic, that it was the result of decisions taken by high-ranking officials, and that the abuse took place within a culture of secrecy and neglect."

< New Asylum Law Takes Effect Next Week | Details Released of Iraqi General's Suffocation >
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