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UNITED STATES
Rumsfeld rationalizes prison abuse
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Donald Rumsfeld
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American abuses of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad were terrible, but they are not crimes on a par with the beheadings and other acts carried out by terrorists, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Sept. 10.
Rumsfeld, speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., said the military is correcting the problems raised by the prison events.
"Has it been harmful to our country? Yes. Is it something that has to be corrected? Yes," he said. "Does it rank up there with chopping off someone's head on television? It doesn't. It doesn't. Was it done as a matter of policy? No."
Pentagon investigations in recent months have said there have been some 300 allegations of prisoners killed, raped, beaten and subjected to other mistreatment at military prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since the start of the war on terrorism. A few of those cases amounted to torture, a senior Army investigator has said.
The Japan Times Weekly: Sept. 18, 2004 (C) All rights reserved
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