We can’t undo the torture — but we can turn away its perpetrators

SO do you think we should welcome President Bush to Ireland in June?

Do you think we should spend €10 million or €15m on his security? Do you think we should bring in more water cannons to ensure that legitimate protesters are frightened away? Do you think our leaders should go down to wherever he is cloistered, to be photographed with him and issue a communiqué of banalities about EU/US relations? Do you think our leaders should confirm, if asked, that Shannon is still available to any US soldier who needs to land there? If you do, maybe you should get hold of a copy of Article 15-6 Investigation of 800th Military Police Brigade. It's not easy reading, partly because it contains a lot of US military jargon. And partly because some of the material in the report would make anyone wince.

But it's essential, especially to anyone who wants to understand how a military adventure, conceived out of expediency, can become entirely debased and degraded in the hands of the victors. The document is the US army's report on the alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners most of them petty criminals with no connection whatever to the collapsed regime of Saddam Hussein or the Al-Qaida movement.

The report was written by Major General Antonio M Taguba, a career soldier inquiring into the activities of other soldiers. After outlining his terms of reference, and commenting on the outcome of some earlier investigations, he makes his findings quickly enough, in stark, almost bureaucratic language.

"Between October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility, numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees.

"This systemic and illegal abuse of detainees was intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force (372nd Military Police Company, 320th Military Police Battalion, 800th MP Brigade), in Tier (section) 1-A of the Abu Ghraib Prison.

"The allegations of abuse were substantiated by detailed witness statements and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence."

He then lists all the acts he discovered, all of which he describes as "intentional" (I'm only including some of them): punching, slapping, and kicking

detainees; jumping on their naked feet; forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing; forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate while being photographed and videotaped; arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them; using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee; breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; beating detainees with a broom-handle and a chair; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomising a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.

He names the people specifically responsible for most of the acts he has identified, most of them untrained military policemen and policewomen, who were taking their orders, in effect, from CIA interrogators. We have all seen photographs by now of some of these people Chip Frederick, Jeremy Sivits, Sabrina Harman, Javal S Davis, Lynndie England, Adel Nakhla.

Incidentally, Adel Nakhla is a civilian, who works for an American company called Titan Corp. Titan Corp reported an income of $459m for the first quarter of 2004 (that's over $2 billion a year).

Their revenues have grown rapidly since the Gulf war began, reflecting, according to themselves, "new and expanded contract activity in Titan's national security solutions business". Titan describes itself as "a leading provider of comprehensive information and communications products, solutions and services for National Security and the Security of our Homeland".

Finally Major General Taguba names four senior officers and CIA men who he says were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib, and he strongly recommends immediate disciplinary action against each of them.

Taguba's report was commissioned at the end of January this year and completed a month later. It has been in the hands of the US government since then, although the president claims to have known nothing about it. If the photographs accompanying the report had not been leaked to the media, there would never have been a public statement, just a quiet series of disciplinary actions against senior officers (most of which involved demotions) and the scapegoating of some privates. Now, thankfully, because of the leaks, the pressure is on senior administration officials, up to the rank of Donald Rumsfeld.

AND what of George W Bush? He denies knowledge. In highly scripted and stilted performances, he seeks to distance his government from the barbarities involved. He's sent out by his minders to apologise but forgets, and has to be sent out again. Meanwhile, administration spindoctors are sent out to admit that it's awful, but it's nothing compared to Saddam Hussein.

This, of course, is the most disgusting defence of all. Aren't we supposed to be better than that? Wasn't this war fought to end tyranny and restore democracy (at least after all the other reasons went up in smoke)? How is it possible to justify actions like this in the name of democracy, at any level? And, we are told, there is more to come. According to some accounts, the vicious degradations we have been told about so far are only a preliminary to what is about to unfold actual rape as opposed to threats of rape, actual murder as opposed to fear and terror. And there is more to come too in terms of who knew what, where, and when.

As of this moment, the US war in Iraq has unravelled. Right now, it is unwinnable, a recipe for more and more hatred and polarisation throughout the Middle East and beyond. America will turn in on itself, as it did before when it realised it was fighting a war without cause and morality.

And what of us? Are we going to examine the manifests of all the US planes that landed here, to find out if we supported any of these perpetrators as they travelled to their war? Did Chip Frederick and Lynndie England disport themselves in Shannon, spending welcome dollars on our duty-free on their way to a place where they were to become corrupted and ultimately doomed? Were their commanding officers, the ones directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses now so graphically documented, made welcome in Aer Rianta's VIP facilities? And let me repeat. Are we going to welcome the president on some Irish tarmac, standing to attention while a group of marines, or maybe our No 1 Army band, plays Hail to the Chief? Are we going to turn a blind eye to all the reports, all the unfolding horror? Are we going to accept the blandishments, and stand at a press conference accepting thanks for our commitment to the war against terror, a war whose only rule, it seems, is to pass the blame for every atrocity to someone lower down? Are we going to do all that next month and shame ourselves in the process?