| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq-Jordan |
| BYU doctor says abuse of Iraqis not systemic |
| 2004-05-06 |
| Iraqi prisoner abuse is anything but systemic, according to a former 800th Military Police Brigade surgeon. Retired Lt. Col. Bill Dunaway, who now works as a BYU clinician, served with the brigade from April to July 2003 at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, the largest POW camp in Iraq at the time. "To me, there just wasn’t abuse going on," said Dunaway. "A lot of prisoners would come in already beat up from being captured, but as for being tortured or anything, I didn’t see it." Six members of his brigade faced court martial last month for allegedly abusing prisoners last year at another prison, Abu Ghraib, near Baghdad. Dunaway oversaw medical services at Camp Bucca and said prisoners had the option of seeing medical personnel daily, if they requested it. "If prisoners were beaten up or whatever, I would have known," he said. "There was a small group of high Ba’ath Party and special interest people, not very many of them, who were isolated. Military intelligence and the CIA were interviewing them, as well as the British. I kind of took that group on, and they were never mistreated."... Dunaway thinks the U.S. Army’s reputation is being attacked because of the actions of a few. "My point is that, on the whole, I just don’t feel that it was widespread, and I do feel that it’s become a political issue," he said. "I think it’s been blown out of proportion, and will continue to be. I do not think it was systemic. I do think you had individual cases of it, like the MPs in our camp." There were times, he said, that Iraqi prisoners lashed out to provoke soldiers. Some military police officers, he said, responded to the provocations — and a few responded with what some would say was too much force. Dunaway said the conditions soldiers lived in contributed to an already tense situation — but that is not an excuse. "It’s all extremely complicated, because you’re in a wartime setting, trying to set up a civilian system," he said..."Politicians make it sound easy," he said. "We’re the only penal system over there, and we’re shorthanded. The Army had no tolerance for soldiers who abused prisoners, according to Dunaway. "There was a colonel in charge of the whole camp who lectured the whole staff of officers multiple times that if a GI mistreated a prisoner, that GI was going to jail," he said. "Whether that filtered down, who knows. The Army was very harsh on it; was not tolerating it." As a rule, Dunaway said, the Army tried to treat prisoners "very well." A believable, down-to-earth perspective. Ergo, this articulate military physician will not be interviewed by the tick, tick, 60 minutes gang. |
| Posted by:rex |