DoD Inspector General Reviews Detainee Abuse Investigations
The Department of Defense did a poor job of investigating and addressing reports of detainee abuse committed in Iraq by U.S. military personnel, according to a newly declassified report (pdf) of the DoD Inspector General.
“Allegations of detainee abuse were not consistently reported, investigated, or managed in an effective, systematic, and timely manner,” the IG found.
“Reports of detainee abuse by special mission unit task force personnel dated back to June 2003, but we believe it took the publicized abuse at Abu Ghraib [in spring 2004]… to elevate the issue to the Flag Officer level.”
“There are many well-documented reasons why detention and interrogation operations were overwhelmed [including] … inconsistent training; a critical shortage of skilled interrogators, translators, and guard force personnel; and the external influence of special operations forces and OGAs [other government agencies, a euphemism for the CIA].”
The August 2006 Inspector General report, originally classified Secret, was released in redacted form last week.
See “Review of DoD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse,” DoD Inspector General, August 25, 2006.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.