WSJ editorial falsely claimed Abu Ghraib report absolved senior officials

[struggle4progress]

An April 27 Wall Street Journal editorial claimed that the Schlesinger report on the Abu Ghraib prison abuses concluded that they "weren't related to interrogations at all" and that "hat should have put the nail in the coffin of the theory that high-level Bush Administration discussions about techniques for handling al Qaeda detainees somehow resulted in the abuses in Iraq." In fact, the Schlesinger report, compiled from an independent inquiry headed by former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger, explicitly states that abuses did occur during interrogations. In addition, the report includes evidence that policy decisions by President Bush and political appointees in the Pentagon and Justice Department contributed to the abuse.

While the report does state that the photographed abuses at Abu Ghraib were "not part of authorized interrogations," it goes on to report that other non-photographed abuses "did occur at interrogation sessions." From the report:

The pictured abuses, unacceptable even in wartime, were not part of authorized interrogations nor were they even directed at intelligence targets. ... However, we do know that some of the egregious abuses at Abu Ghraib which were not photographed did occur at interrogation sessions and that abuses during interrogation sessions occurred elsewhere . <snip>

http://mediamatters.org/items/200504280004