The Hindu : International : `Rules of war rewritten'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, May 20, 2004

International

International

`Rules of war rewritten'

By Suzanne Goldenberg

WASHINGTON, MAY 19. The commander of Guantanamo Bay, sacked amid charges from the Pentagon that he was too soft on detenus, said he faced constant tension from military interrogators trying to extract information from inmates.

Brigadier General Rick Baccus was removed from his post in October 2002, apparently after frustrating military intelligence officers by granting detenus such privileges as distributing copies of the Koran and adjusting meal times for Ramadan. He also disciplined prison guards for screaming at inmates.

In one of the general's first interviews since his dismissal, he told the Guardian: ``I was mislabelled as someone who coddled detainees. In fact, what we were doing was our mission professionally.''

Gen Baccus's unceremonious departure offers a rare insight into how the Pentagon rewrote the rules of warfare to suit the Bush administration's view of a radically changed world following the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

It also suggests what can happen to military personnel slow to sign on to the Pentagon's changed view of the world. Eighteen months after being removed from Guantanamo, Gen Baccus (51), and a commander of the Rhode Island National Guard, is still waiting for a new military assignment.

Meanwhile, the systems set in place at Guantanamo following his departure have come to govern detention facilities in Afghanistan as well as Iraq.

The connection between Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib grew clearer this month when Gen Baccus's successor at the camp, Major General Geoffrey Miller, was put in charge of the U.S. military's prisons in Iraq. Gen Miller's recommendations for Abu Ghraib — merging the functions of prison guard and interrogator as he did at Guantanamo — were cited in the Pentagon's internal report on abuse at the now notorious prison.

Yesterday, new evidence emerged that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was systematic, part of a policy instituted at U.S. military detention centres from Guantanamo and Afghanistan to Iraq, and not restricted to the seven low-ranking soldiers charged so far in connection with the scandal.

Colonel Thomas Pappas, who commanded the military intelligence brigade at the prison, said interrogators sometimes instructed the military police to strip detenus and shackle them before they were questioned, a report in the New York Times said.

Col Pappas said the practice was among the changes recommended by Gen Miller — and among those resisted by Gen Baccus. ``There is a dynamic tension that exists in that kind of situation,'' Gen Baccus said. —

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