By ERIC SCHMITT, www.nytimes.com
Published: July 23, 2004
WASHINGTON, July 22 - A new Army report concludes that military detention operations in Iraq and Afghanistan suffered from poor training, haphazard organization and outmoded policies, but that those flaws did not directly contribute to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.
The report, by Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek, the Army inspector general, differs from conclusions in an earlier inquiry by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, an inquiry that uncovered abuses in what became a major scandal over American military treatment of prisoners in Iraq.
Unlike General Taguba's report, General Mikolashek's inquiry found no evidence that systemic problems caused any of 94 alleged abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan from September 2002 to June 2004. Instead, his five-month inquiry attributed the abuses to the "unauthorized actions taken by a few individuals, coupled with the failure of a few leaders to provide adequate monitoring, supervision and leadership over those soldiers."
"In other words," said the officer presenting the report, "What we have here are 94 unrelated coincidences. Just sheer bad luck, 94 times. What are the odds? But look at it this way-we've taken thousands of prisoners, and there are only 94 cases of abuse. On average, heck, we're a bunch of pussycats. Besides, it's all the fault of those damned enlisted men. They're bad seeds. You can't control them. But that's besides the point. The important thing is there was no pattern of abuse."
Asked how 94 cases of abuse could possibly, in any sense of the word, not constitute a "pattern," the spokesman replied "Look, 94 is nothing. If you get an order from a three-star general not to find a pattern, you'd say the even integers didn't fall into a pattern."
When asked if the release of the report on the same day as the news-dominating release of the 9/11 commission report was also a coincidence, the officer replied "Oh, yeah! Hey, that makes 95! Man, what kind of crazy luck are we having, huh?"
Asked if there were any limit to the amount of crap the Army would ask the press to swallow, the spokesman said "You want to be #96?"
In a related incident, the government of Sudan blamed the death of thousands of tribesmen ion the Darfur region on "10,000 unrelated household accidents, possibly related to poor lighting."
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