Prison abuse

Private Lynndie England’s guilty plea on charges she abused Iraqi prisoners is the most recent of several from soldiers most immediately responsible for what happened at Abu Ghraib. But there has been no independent outside inquiry into the role that directives from higher officials played in the mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and other detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the US wants to be a leader in defending human rights, Congress must appoint an independent commission that will spell out the full extent of the abuse and name names of those responsible for it.

Military officials have investigated at least 28 suspicious detainee deaths as well as beatings and other abusives. Lieutenant General Stanley Green earlier completed a review of American treatment of prisoners in Iraq that exonerated all four whose involvement had come under question in other investigations, including an inquiry last summer led by former defence secretary James Schlesinger. So far, the only high-ranking officer who has been punished for the breakdown of order at Abu Ghraib is reserve Brigadier General Janis Karpinski.

Congress must appoint a blue-ribbon commission to prove to a world increasingly cynical about US ideals that the nation can examine and correct its own human rights abuses. — The Boston Globe