WASHINGTON — The top U.S. military commander in Iraq told Congress on Wednesday that a lack of clear rules from the highest levels of his command may have created the climate for abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.
It was the U.S. military's most explicit acknowledgment to date that command failures may have contributed to conditions giving rise to the abuse of Iraqi detainees.
Since the scandal broke last month, the Bush administration has blamed the abuse on a small number of rogue prison guards. But at a tense hearing, Army Gen. John Abizaid and some of his top commanders in Iraq went further, detailing an array of flaws in the prison system that went undetected by commanders for months while incidents of physical and sexual abuse and humiliation of prisoners apparently flourished.
Abizaid said reports by the International Committee of the Red Cross in July and November that warned about abuses at the prison were not seen by senior U.S. commanders until months later.
Rules on treatment of detainees were so misunderstood that low-level officers devised their own, with no oversight from superiors, said Col. Marc Warren, the top legal counsel for Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq.
Abizaid, Warren, Sanchez, and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the new head of U.S. prison facilities in Baghdad, sat elbow to elbow in an unusual array of military brass before members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The committee has scheduled weeks of hearings to try to determine who was responsible for the abuse of Iraq prisoners.
Abizaid denied that a "culture of abuse" existed at U.S.-run prisons in Iraq or that military intelligence interrogators were given too much authority at Abu Ghraib.
Questioned about interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib, Sanchez said he had approved a list of controversial methods that allowed U.S. jailers to request his permission to use harsh techniques such as sleep and sensory deprivation, stressful positions, the presence of military guard dogs, dietary manipulation, and isolation for more than 30 days.
Isolation Approved
Sanchez said he signed off on requests to isolate 25 prisoners for extended periods, but never approved the use of the more severe measures. Last week, Sanchez issued an order banning jailers from seeking permission to use any coercive method except isolation.
