The accounts show that abuses resulted from civilian and military failures of leadership and confusion about interrogation standards and the application of the Geneva Conventions. They contradict claims by the Bush administration that detainee abuses by U.S. forces abroad have been infrequent, exceptional and unrelated to policy.

The Pentagon, trying to sell the belief that a few rogue soldiers engaged in abuse without the knowledge of their superiors, labored to keep the truth from reaching the public.

The officer who spoke to Human Rights Watch made persistent efforts over 17 months to raise concerns about detainee abuse with his chain of command and to obtain clearer rules on the proper treatment of detainees, but was consistently told to ignore abuses and to “consider your career.” He believes he was not taken seriously until he approached members of Congress to raise his concerns. When the officer made an appointment this month with Senate staff members of Senators John McCain and John Warner, he says his commanding officer denied him a pass to leave his base.

While the administration wants the world to believe that abusive treatment of prisoners is contrary to policy, the officer who spoke to Human Rights Watch disagrees:

“[In Afghanistan,] I thought that the chain on command all the way up to the National Command Authority [President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld] had made it a policy that we were going to interrogate these guys harshly. . . . We knew where the Geneva Conventions drew the line, but then you get that confusion when the Sec Def [Secretary of Defense] and the President make that statement [that Geneva did not apply to detainees] . . . . Had I thought we were following the Geneva Conventions as an officer I would have investigated what was clearly a very suspicious situation.”

Forced to confront this latest scandal, now that it's been made public, the Army has launched a criminal investigation. Will its object be to limit the exposure of top Pentagon officials while casting the entire blame on soldiers in the field?