In an example of "it-must-be-coincidental" timing, Inspector General Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek tried to slip in his report on Iraqi detainee torture while everyone was paying attention to the 9/11 Commission's report.
He also minimizes the problem by aggregating incidents - Abu Ghraib, for instance, is counted as one case even though there were multiple incidents.
And in his "hastily scheduled" presentation, he said that he did not actually investigate the individual cases of torture.
Even Republicans don't like it.
Army Calls Abuses 'Aberrations'
Report Cites 94 Detainee-Mistreatment Cases in Iraq and AfghanistanThe report by Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek — presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee at a hastily scheduled hearing yesterday morning — concluded that cases of abuse such as those at Abu Ghraib prison were "aberrations" that did not result from flawed Army doctrine.
He did not investigate individual cases of abuse, relying instead on the findings of previous Army investigations. His team looked at the records of 125 reported cases of detainee abuse and found that no abuse occurred in 31 cases. Of the rest, 54 cases remain "open or undetermined."
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he was not satisfied with Mikolashek's report or its findings. "If you didn't look at the gross and egregious violations, what else didn't you investigate?" McCain asked.
A lawyer for one of the seven soldiers implicated in the Abu Ghraib case labeled as a "whitewash" the finding of no systemic abuse.
After the hearing, McCain said he does not believe the report was a whitewash, but he added "there are certainly questions." [Washington Post 7/23/2004]
Is he going to get away with it?
Write your Senators and House Representative and tell them what you think.
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