G’day. The latest Iraq scandal to engulf the government is bloody difficult to get your head around so I thought I’d set out my preliminary understanding and seek your input. Calling all legal experts on the Geneva Conventions and what our obligations are under them!!! For a great Aussie timeline, see southerlybuster. We need to blend a timeline of events in America with those in Australia too. Then, the transcript of Howard’s press conference yesterday, where, for once, the press gallery wiped the floor with a bloke who is very close to being exposed, finally, as a Prime Minister without shame leading a bureaucratic hierarchy without honour. For my first take on the scandal, see Did our government lie to us to protect America?
To begin, the fact is that The Sydney Morning Herald’s Tom Allard’s breaking story on Thursday inArmy knew months ago has proved accurate in almost every detail, including Australia’s involvement in drafting interrogation technique protocols in Abu Ghraib, investigating abuses and drafting replies to the Red Cross. Layer upon layer of denials of his story by Howard, Hill, Cosgrove and Smith have been stripped away in the days since, partly because the Herald later revealed the official reply to the Red Cross last year, the draft of which the government also had in its possession. You’d think Tom would have got such a detailed, accurate story from someone in government who knew what he or she was talking about, which would mean Australia has its Abu Ghraib whistleblower, like the junior US soldier who blew the whistle at Abu Ghraib and the person who leaked General Taguba’s devastating report to Seymour Hersh. So you’d assume that whoever leaked the truth to Allard knew there was disgusting stuff happening in government to cover it up. Could the Herald know and the government, the defence force and the defence department not know? We’re supposed to buy this?
1. The Red Cross – the authority authorised by the United Nations to act as custodian of the Geneva Conventions against torture of prisoners of war – reported to Baghdad military HQ in October last year that serious breaches of 12 articles of the Conventions were taking place, detailing men being forced to walk the corridors naked wearing women’s underwear on the their heads and being handcuffed to cell doors. Robert Hill now admits this. Yet on the day of Tom’s story, Howard denied it in Parliament, saying the October report referred only ‘food clothing and communication opportunities’ and that Australian officers in Baghdad military HQ knew nothing of serious breaches until January.
2. Several Australian military officers were involved in preparing a response to the October report. Australia’s Major George O’Kane and an unnamed Colonel visited Abu Ghraib several times after the report was received in 2003 to investigate the allegations. In fact, Australian military legal officers acted as the liaison between the Red Cross and the Coalition of the Willing on its report, and O’Kane drafted the response to its October report, which denied that the Geneva Conventions were completely applicable to prisoners in Iraq and insisted that the Red Cross cease making unannounced inspections. And the worst of the torture, from what we know so far, occurred in November, 2003, AFTER Australia knew breaches of the Geneva Conventions were rife at Abu Ghraib.
3. Australia, as a signatory of the Geneva Conventions, is legally and morally bound to abide by them. An agreement between the invading powers – The US, The UK and Australia – confirmed that the Geneva Conventions would apply to prisoners of war in Iraq. Question: Once Australia was aware of breaches, were its legal obligations triggered? If so, is that why the government pulled out all stops to deny knowledge of the breaches before the photos were published in April? And if so, WHY did O’Kane and his superiors in Baghdad not send a red light warning to Australian immediately? Or did they?
4. To me, the crucial piece of evidence indicating that we’re not talking about mere stuff up here is that after weeks of a purported investigation after the torture photos were publicly released, ADF chief Cosgrove and defence department chief Smith certified in a joint statement last Friday that “No Defence personnel were aware of the allegations of abuse or serious mistreatment before … January” and that “it is understood from Major O’Kane that the October report raised general concerns,” NOT abuses (in retrospect, the “it is understood” weasel words give the game away). Therefore, Australia did NOT have a copy of the October Red Cross report, which DID document serious abuses detailed serial abuses of the Geneva Conventions.
Yet Defence Department chief Ric Smith testified yesterday that he was told that same Friday night of “two working papers” prepared by the ICRC (the International Red Cross) which had been in the hands of a senior ADF officer since early May since their delivery to him by O’Kane himself. In these circumstances, ALL department secretaries and ALL defence chiefs, unless there are hidden agendas yet to be revealed – would IMMEDIATELY inform the Prime Minister through the Defence Minister that he may have misled Parliament. Failure to do so would normally result in instant dismissal, for good cause. TWO DAYS LATER, John Howard repeated the false story onSunday Sunrise, repeatedly, falsely, denying that Defence had the October report. He said the Red Cross had refused a government request for a copy, and so Howard’s ambassadors would now ask the USA and the UK for a copy. He was super, super meticulous in saying, over and over, that he was relying on the Smith/Cosgrove advice. For example, “I haven’t seen the report and I’m told once again – and I’m relying on what the Defence Department tells me – that they don’t have a copy of it either.” In retrospect, classic weasel words used routinely by politicians covering themselves.
Placing a Prime Minister in such a humiliating position would, in normal circumstances, be a clear dereliction of duty by Smith and Cosgrove unless, as I say, there were undercurrents which have not yet come to light. If John Howard is telling the truth – that he knew nothing of war crimes in Abu Ghraib until he saw the photos along with the rest of us and that he learned only late Sunday that he’d been misinformed about the knowledge of the government – he’d have dealt with the unacceptable behaviour of Smith and Cosgrove, whether by design or ludicrous incompetence, by sacking them if they failed to resign.
But no. At his press conference yesterday he said: “If you’re asking me whether I have confidence in them, yes of course I do. I have great confidence in the three of them.” (Hill, Cosgrove and Smith).
It gets worse. Smith now claims more than 10 officers worked all weekend to work out the exact status of the “working documents” (And yes, they did include the damning October Red Cross report). Why the hell didn’t they just ask O’Kane???
Smith claims they’d finally worked it out by Sunday, so he and Cosgrove would, of course, immediately issue a correction. NO. They waited until lunchtime Tuesday, after more than a day of exhaustive questioning by Senate Estimates kept dragging truth out of obfuscation and misleading evidence and forced revelations of the involvement of yet more Australian officers in the Red Cross visits to Abu Ghraib and their aftermath last year, to do so. Sorry guys, it won’t wash.
This saga stinks to high heaven. I’d bet my bottom dollar that there’s much more to this than meets the eye. I’d really appreciate stuff from lawyers who know about the Geneva Conventions to tell Webdiary what THEY think is going on.
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THE PRIME MINISTER THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP, PRESS CONFERENCE, PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA, MONDAY, MAY 31, ON THE EVE OF HIS TRIP TO SEE HIS MATE GEORGE BUSH
JOURNALIST: Mr Howard, will you apologise to the Parliament and the Australian public for misleading them over Australian knowledge of the extent of serious abuses of prisoners in Iraq?
PRIME MINISTER: I did not mislead the public or the Australian public or the Australian Parliament. The advice that I gave the Parliament and the public was based on the advice I’d received from the defence department.
JOURNALIST: The Defence Department now concedes that advice was wrong.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, that’s what I will be indicating, as I have already, that everything I’ve said was based on the advice of the Defence Department. I did not set out to mislead anybody. It is impossible in a situation in which I am placed for me to have direct personal knowledge. I wasn’t in Baghdad. I have to rely on the advice of the department. I regret very much that I was given the wrong advice, I regret that very much.
JOURNALIST: Mr Howard, why didn’t you insist on being better briefed, especially when the man involved who had all the knowledge was just down the road? (Major O’Kane.)
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I’m sorry, Michelle, it is simply not possible for somebody in my position to talk to every single person in a department. Its just that is an unreasonable proposition. It is not unreasonable for a prime minister to rely on a written brief from a department in relation to a matter, I do it every day. And if in future I have to personally sit down and talk to each person in a department who provides that written brief and to interrogate the people in that department my job becomes quite impossible.
JOURNALIST: – at least one minister have known before April?
PRIME MINISTER: Not according to the advice that I have, no.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, what do you think about the quality of that advice? I mean, what does it say about the competency of defence, given they had these reports with a senior defence official on May 11 and what does it say about the motives of defence that they didn’t bring it to the attention of the Government until Sunday as I understand?
PRIME MINISTER: Let me say this I am very unhappy that I was misinformed by the Defence Department, so is the Defence Minister. I have, as you know, an extremely high regard for the men and women in the Australian Defence Force. We’re dealing here with what was clearly an inadequate briefing, not only of me, but bear in mind that the Chief of the Defence Force and the Secretary of the Defence Department themselves were equally poorly served by the advice they received from the Department.
JOURNALIST: Are you confident that it won’t happen again?
PRIME MINISTER: Jim, I can’t give a guarantee that a department in the future wont give inaccurate advice to a Minister. I can’t, I can’t.
JOURNALIST: What are you doing to ensure that it doesn’t happen again?
PRIME MINISTER: Well the Minister will be, at my request, making a detailed statement to the Senate when it meets again about the chain of events, the knowledge of and involvement in and communication with the ICRC (Red Cross) , the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority), communications back to Australia and the timelines involved in all of that. I have asked the Defence Minister to make that detailed statement to the Senate. But I’m plainly unhappy because the information I gave, I believed to be correct, and it was based on a brief I had from the Defence Department. And this proposition that I have to sit down with individuals who originate that advice, particularly when I have to preposition any advice I give with the comment that this has come from the department, I mean no Prime Minister has the capacity, given the other demands on his time, to do that.
JOURNALIST: If you had known then, would you have expressed your concerns…
PRIME MINISTER: Had I known what?
JOURNALIST: If you had known about this earlier, would you have expressed your concerns at the time to the Americans?
PRIME MINISTER: Well if I had known, if I had known what back in October? Well I didn’t know about it until April. That remains…
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PRIME MINISTER: Well I mean, look I would have done the right thing, and of course if I had have known about it, of course I would have expressed my concern. Of course I would have.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible) didn’t go up the chain and back to Canberra in October when it was first clear that there were serious problems and allegations being raised about the conduct of the coalition in Iraq…
PRIME MINISTER: Well the response…
JOURNALIST: …so we could have done the right thing?
PRIME MINISTER: Well ok, well one question – can we have questions and not speeches? The response that has been given to that question, and it has been asked, is that it wasn’t passed up the chain because it didn’t involve Australians. It was believed that the issue was being responded to and dealt with by the Americans, particularly in relation to the January report. And as I understand it, and I choose my words carefully, as I understand it, the working papers that were referred to in the Senate in October, which clearly contained references to unacceptable behaviour and unacceptable treatment of prisoners, that they fed into the February report. The February report, as I am told, has been commented upon in the Senate by Senator Hill and General Cosgrove and Mr Smith. The February report, when presented to the relevant people, caused a great deal of concern, and that the response of the British and the Americans was satisfactory to the Red Cross, and that is another reason why it is claimed, it is said, that the material was not passed up the line.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, will you apologise to the Sydney Morning Herald after you said that we conflated reports and were involved in a despicable slur?
PRIME MINISTER: Well I withdraw the claim that you deliberately conflated the report, if you feel I made that claim. I do not withdraw what I regarded as the more serious allegation or implication in the story, when you said that a claim by Senator Hill that quote, as best I can remember, there was no association of Australians with the abuses, I think that is a paraphrase of it, that that might appear to be misleading.
JOURNALIST: But the association I was referring to was the deep involvement of…
PRIME MINISTER: Well can I say if you say that somebody is associated with an abuse, it means that they are in some way an active participant in it. The idea that because you’re investigating something, youre associated with it, is the equivalent of saying that a police officer investigating a robbery is in some way associated with it. That was the bit…
JOURNALIST: But the report also clearly says that he did not witness, endorse or participate.
PRIME MINISTER: Yes, but you use the expression associated and I think that… I thought then that was unfair, I still think it’s unfair, and I think its very important that I stick up for the reputation of the Australian Defence Force, because however what is being written and reported may be explained, the danger is that some will imply a guilt by association, and to my knowledge no men or women in the Australian Defence Force have been in any way involved in abuse or have in any way condoned that abuse, and that is why I feel quite strongly about this.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, what’s the point of having Australian military officers attached to the coalition command in Iraq if they don’t keep their own Government and their own department and their own hierarchy informed, abreast of developments?
PRIME MINISTER: Jim, that generally is a fair observation and its one of the things that in the aftermath of this, that I will be expecting a response to.
JOURNALIST: Do you think its a bit peculiar, Mr Howard, that a couple of Labor Senators can get all this information out in a day and a half, and the Prime Minister couldn’t get it, being charitable, in the last two weeks?
PRIME MINISTER: Yes, but Michelle, in the last two weeks there have been a lot of other things that I have been dealing with, and the truth of the matter is this that there has been never any allegation of Australian involvement, never. There is no suggestion of Australian involvement. The allegations are against the Americans. Theyre not against Australians. I mean you… many of the questions are asked as if the inquiry is whether or not Australians were involved. Were talking here about knowledge of allegations in the context of those allegations being responded to by the people against whom the allegations were made, and I think the context of that, with respect, is being missed by some people, yourself included.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, is the O’Kane affair another example of the bureaucracy telling the Government what it wants to hear to suit its political ends?
PRIME MINISTER: That is an absurd proposition Tom. I mean there is no reason why I wouldn’t want to know the full story on this, no reason at all, absolutely no reason at all. I first became conscious of these allegations about behaviour by the Americans and to some extent the British, although just exactly what happened in relation to the British appears unclear, after I came back from Baghdad. I mean to give you an illustration of my state of mind, nobody mentioned this to me when I was in Baghdad. I met General Abizaid when I was in Baghdad, I met General Sanchez when I was in Baghdad, I met Paul Bremer when I was in Baghdad, I met two people in the Iraqi Governing Council, I met the Australian Commanding Officer in Baghdad I met all of these people and nobody mentioned it to me. The journalists who were travelling with me didn’t pick it up. I mean if it was all around and it was the subject of a lot of conversation, and if there were widespread concern about it, why wasn’t it mentioned to me? (MARGO: Because there was a cover up!!!)
JOURNALIST: (inaudible) failure of Defence to appropriately brief you, what do you Prime Minister then…
PRIME MINISTER: Look I don’t know the answer to that.
JOURNALIST: And for their failure to…
PRIME MINISTER: Mark, I don’t know. I am unhappy. I mean I don’t enjoy being misinformed. I am very unhappy with it.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, are you satisfied…
PRIME MINISTER: But I am, you know, I am equally… I can’t in this, you know, early winter morning or afternoon just sort of declare precisely why it happened. Of course I’ve asked Senator Hill…
JOURNALIST: You’re obviously telling us how unhappy you are about it. From your preliminary inquiries, what reason…
PRIME MINISTER: It’s too early. They are too preliminary because bear in mind that over the past couple of days the three people principally concerned and to whom I would speak have been tied up in Senate Estimates. I mean, I had the opportunity last evening of having a very brief discussion with Senator Hill, with General Cosgrove and Mr Smith before I went off to have a Monday evening chat with Kerry O’Brien.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, are you satisfied with the way those three people have handled this?
PRIME MINISTER: If you’re asking me whether I have confidence in them, yes of course I do. I have great confidence in the three of them.
JOURNALIST: …down the line to the junior people who cant speak for themselves?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, Michelle, I’ll find out what happened and before then I’m simply not going to respond to those sorts of questions…
JOURNALIST: General Cosgrove (inaudible)…?
PRIME MINISTER: Look, I’m not going to canvass what General Cosgrove said to me. I have a tremendous regard for General Cosgrove. I think he’s one of the outstanding military figures that this country has had for a number of years and I have very strong regard for the administrative skills of Mr Smith and, of course, Senator Hill is a very close and very senior member of my Cabinet…
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, in view of what we know now about these matters is the Australian public entitled to hear directly from Major O’Kane what he saw and what he thought about what he saw and to whom he reported it?
PRIME MINISTER: I think it’s appropriate that the normal procedure in relation to these things be followed and that is being followed and what Senator Hill has said and done in relation to this is similar to the attitude that has been taken by Ministers on both sides of politics when similar situations have arisen. Thank you.