The Road to Abu Ghraib: US Army Detainee Doctrine and Experience

153 Pages·2005·1.76 MB·English

The Road to Abu Ghraib:
US Army Detainee
Doctrine and
Experience

Major James F. Gebhardt, US Army (Retired)

Global War on Terrorism
Occasional Paper 6
Combat Studies Institute Press
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
The Road to Abu Ghraib:
US Army Detainee
Doctrine and
Experience
by
Major James F. Gebhardt, US Army (Retired)
Combat Studies Institute Press
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gebhardt, James F., 1948-
The road to Abu Ghraib : US Army detainee doctrine and experience / James F.
Gebhardt.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Prisoners of war—United States—History. I. Title.
UB803.G43 2005
355.4’1—dc22

2005001080
CSI Press publications cover a variety of military history topics. The views ex-
pressed in this CSI Press publication are those of the author and not necessarily
those of the Department of the Army or the Department of Defense.
A full list of CSI Press publications, many of them available for downloading, can be
found at: http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/csi.asp.
Foreword
The US Army’s experience with detainee operations spans the period
from the Revolutionary War to the present. More to the point, over the past
60 years a body of international law and military regulations, the joint and
Army doctrine derived from it, and two centuries of practical experience
have emerged that inform current detainee operations in the Global War
on Terrorism. The 2004 revelations of detainee maltreatment at the Abu
Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad, Iraq have led to an exhaustive overhaul
of Army doctrine and training with respect to this topic. The Army has
identified disconnects in its individual, leader, and collective training pro-
grams, and has also identified the absence of a deliberate, focused doctrinal
crosswalk between the two principal branches concerned with detainees,
Military Intelligence (MI) and Military Police (MP). These problems and
their consequences are real and immediate.
The perceptions of just treatment held by citizens of our nation and, to
a great extent the world at large, have been and are being shaped by the ac-
tions of the US Army, both in the commission of detainee maltreatment but
also, and more importantly, in the way the Army addresses its institutional
shortcomings. James Gebhardt’s study, The Road to Abu Ghraib: US Army
Detainee Doctrine and Experience, captures the salient doctrinal issues of
this critical aspect of the Army’s battlespace. Indeed, this work, in DRAFT
form, has already informed the evolution of detainee doctrine in the MP
and MI schoolhouses, as well as Combat Training Center practical exer-
cises. A solid understanding of our past experiences will aid those soldiers
charged with executing this important mission today and in the future, and
this study represents a valuable contribution to the effort.
Thomas T. Smith
Colonel, Infantry
Director of Combat Studies
i

Contents
Foreword ............................................................................................ i
Preface ........................................................................................... v

Introduction ........................................................................................... 1

Chapter 1 Enemy Prisoner-of-War Doctrine at the End of World
War II................................................................................ 5
Chapter 2 The 1949 Geneva Conventions........................................ 11
Chapter 3 Korea, 1950-53................................................................ 15
Chapter 4 Interlude, 1954-64........................................................... 35
Chapter 5 Vietnam War.................................................................... 41
Chapter 6 Post-Vietnam Interlude.................................................... 61
Chapter 7 Grenada and Panama....................................................... 69
Chapter 8 Operation DESERT STORM.......................................... 83
Chapter 9 Post-DESERT STORM Doctrine.................................... 95
Chapter 10 Haiti: Operation UPHOLD DEMOCRACY.................. 105
Chapter 11 Regulatory and Doctrinal Renewal................................ 111
Chapter 12 Analysis and Conclusions.............................................. 119

Appendix A Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners
of War, Article 3............................................................ 131
Appendix B Recommendations Extracted for Special Attention....... 133
Bibliography ....................................................................................... 137

iii

Preface
This study resulted from the confluence of three events: my return to
the Combat Studies Institute (CSI) after an absence of 16 years, a list of
25 suggested research topics compiled and nurtured by Dr. William G.
Robertson, and the immediacy of the issue to our Army and, indeed, to
our nation. A decade, or perhaps even a generation from now, soldiers and
leaders will be reading about Abu Ghraib Prison in their doctrinal manuals
and professional readings. It is destined to become a defining moment in
the Global War on Terrorism, much in the same way the My Lai massacre
and its aftershock were in the Vietnam War.
Periodic releases of what formal Army internal investigations find, ap-
pearances of high-ranking Army and DoD officials in congressional hear-
ings, and the very public analyses of ongoing legal proceedings against
accused soldiers will keep the Abu Ghraib scandal on the stove for many
months. Meanwhile, the Army has already begun the struggle to repair
the damage, both real and perceived. The Army has a plan to fix itself so
another Abu Ghraib does not again occur, not in Iraq and not on any other
battlefield. I wrote this study to contribute to that process.
When the Global War on Terrorism began in late 2001, few Americans
had ever heard of the Geneva Conventions. Now type “Geneva Conven-
tion” into any Internet search engine and you can easily find all four
Geneva Conventions and read them in the comfort of your home in three
languages. Our armed forces, though, have a long history of dealing with
Geneva Conventions that began with implementing the Convention of
1929 during World War II and then led to the Conventions of 1949 a year
before the beginning of the Korean War. The US Army, in particular, has a
long history of dealing with the International Committee of the Red Cross,
the Geneva-based non-governmental organization that is the “promoter and
enforcer,” if one can use that phrase, of the Geneva Conventions.
This study examines the relationship over time between doctrine
in two branches of the Army—Military Police (MP) and Military Intel-
ligence (MI)—and the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of
Prisoners of War (GPW). Specifically, it analyzes the MP detention field
manual series and the MI interrogation field manual series to evaluate their
GPW content. It also further examines the relationship of military police
and military intelligence to each other in the enemy prisoner-of-war (EPW)
and detainee operations environment, as expressed in their doctrinal manu-
als. Finally, the study looks at the Army’s experience in detainee operations
v
through the prism of six conflicts or contingency operations: the Korean
War, Vietnam, Operation URGENT FURY (Grenada, 1983), Operation
JUST CAUSE (Panama, 1989), Operation DESERT STORM (Iraq, 1991),
and Operation UPHOLD DEMOCRACY (Haiti, 1994).
I have written this study to inform Army leaders, from platoon level to
the Pentagon, about the Army’s history of detainee operations. Iraq is not
the first war where the Army has struggled with applying the Geneva Con-
ventions to insurgents. A similar struggle occurred in 1965 as President
Lyndon B. Johnson was sending increasingly larger forces to Vietnam, a
situation then viewed by many as an insurgency. Operation IRAQI FREE-
DOM is not the first war where EPW divided themselves into competing
groups, rioted among themselves, and committed murder. That same phe-
nomenon occurred in the Korean prisoner-of-war camps in 1951. And Abu
Ghraib is not the first detention facility where the MP and MI missions,
detention and interrogation respectively, came into conflict. Similar ten-
sion, albeit in a more subdued form, occurred on a smaller scale in a joint
detention/interrogation facility in Haiti in 1994. This study explores these
and other experiences in the interest of saying to the current generation of
leaders, “The Army has been there and done that before. Now what can
we learn from it?” With due introspection, wide media and public interest,
and, no doubt, abundant congressional oversight, the US Army will heal
itself. Of that I am sure.
Several people and organizations have assisted me in this work. Dr.
William G. Robertson, CSI, Fort Leavenworth, provided the topic and
an azimuth. Lieutenant Colonel Brian DeToy, chief of the Research
and Publication Department, CSI, read and suggested improvements to
the manuscript and continues to support the broad dissemination of the
study. Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) David Cavaleri, my co-worker, was a
continuous source of reflection and encouragement, both necessary com-
modities in research-based endeavors. Our editor, Catherine Shadid Small,
improved the quality of the manuscript greatly with her thoughtful sugges-
tions. The staff of the Combined Arms Research Library (CARL) at Fort
Leavenworth helped me to acquire several hard-to-find documents, the raw
materials of any finished historical work. For their contributions I thank
all these people. I reserve for myself the responsibility for errors of fact or
interpretation.
James F. Gebhardt
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
vi
Introduction
On 19 May 2004, a 24-year-old US Army reservist military policeman
stood in front of a summary court martial in Baghdad, Iraq and pleaded
guilty to three criminal charges: conspiracy to maltreat detainees; derelic-
tion of duty for willfully failing to protect detainees from abuse, cruelty,
and maltreatment; and maltreatment of detainees. Later on that same day,
General John Abizaid, commander of Central Command (CENTCOM),
and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of Combined Joint
Task Force 7 and the senior US military commander in Iraq, were ques-
tioned by members of the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washing-
ton about the treatment of detainees at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison during
the fall months of 2003.
In response to a senator’s question regarding the roles of and relation-
ship between Military Intelligence (MI) and Military Police (MP) in the
prison, General Abizaid responded,
Our doctrine is not right. It’s just not right. . . . This is a
doctrinal problem of understanding . . . what do the MPs
do, what do the military intelligence guys do, how do they
come together in the right way. And this doctrinal issue has
got to be fixed if we’re ever going to get our intelligence
right to fight this war and defeat this enemy.1
The Department of the Army Inspector General, Lieutenant General
Paul T. Mikolashek, in findings publicly released on 21 July 2004, came
to the same conclusion:
Doctrine does not clearly and distinctly address the re-
lationship between the MP operating I/R [internment/
resettlement] facilities and the Military Intelligence (MI)
personnel conducting intelligence exploitation at those
facilities. Neither MP nor MI doctrine specifically defines
the interdependent, yet independent, roles, missions, and
responsibilities of the two in detainee operations.2
Both General Abizaid and General Mikolashek reached their conclu-
sions based on analyses of current operating doctrine and its implementa-
tion in an active theater of war. This study, however, looks back in time
at the historical experience of the US Army to discover the genesis of
this problem. It examines the experience of the US Army in applying the
Geneva Conventions of 1949 to enemy prisoners of war (EPW) and de-
tainees in conflict situations. This effort is more akin to a survey than an
1