Correction

My philosophy has been to take things with a grain of salt because all too often there is something some "expert" or other source says that I know to be untrue, unlikely, or misleading. Another principle of mine is that things tend to be complicated, so one particular "fact" is not as important as the complete story. Current political events seems to follow this precept - I try to go with the truth as a whole, not the meaning of a particular fact. This is useful because everything isn't tied up with a bow, plus it allows you to accept something as a given, and not turn back from your argument.

All of this is a prologue to a correction that I want to make up front, though I already corrected the individual post. Thanks as well to the person who pointed it out to me in a comment. In an essay on the dangers of too much executive discretion, I threw (honestly - my draft did not include the wording) in that "the internal army report notes sixty percent of the [Abu Ghraib] detainees appear to be innocent." This came indirectly from Seymour Hersh's piece, which said in part:

"The Taguba study noted that more than sixty per cent of the civilian inmates at Abu Ghraib were deemed not to be a threat to society, which should have enabled them to be released. Karpinski’s defense, Taguba said, was that her superior officers 'routinely' rejected her recommendations regarding the release of such prisoners."

First off, "innocent" (as some reports interpret these words, including critics) and "deemed not to be a threat to society" are not the same thing. Also, as noted here, it appears Hersh confused what the report actually said.

To directly quote the report:

The screening, processing, and release of detainees who should not be in custody takes too long and contributes to the overcrowding and unrest in the detention facilities. There are currently three separate release mechanisms in the theater-wide internment operations. First, the apprehending unit can release a detainee if there is a determination that their continued detention is not warranted. Secondly, a criminal detainee can be released after it has been determined that the detainee has no intelligence value, and that their release would not be detrimental to society. BG Karpinski had signature authority to release detainees in this second category. Lastly, detainees accused of committing "Crimes Against the Coalition," who are held throughout the separate facilities in the CJTF-7 AOR, can be released upon a determination that they are of no intelligence value and no longer pose a significant threat to Coalition Forces. ... According to BG Karpinski, this category of detainee makes up more than 60% of the total detainee population, and is the fastest growing category. However, MG Fast, according to BG Karpinski, routinely denied the board’s recommendations to release detainees in this category who were no longer deemed a threat and clearly met the requirements for release.

The report speaks of a general category of detainees accused of crimes against the coalition, and this is where the sixty percent number comes in. In fact, the two other categories of detainees were described thusly:

First, the apprehending unit can release a detainee if there is a determination that their continued detention is not warranted. Secondly, a criminal detainee can be released after it has been determined that the detainee has no intelligence value, and that their release would not be detrimental to society.

The wording in regards to the third category is a bit confusing, but these other two categories as well as said wording clarifies things. The report speaks of those "in this category," i.e. the sixty percent, "who were no longer deemed at threat." So we are talking about an unclear subset, not the sixty percent figure as a whole. All the same, a correction of the 60 percent factoid does not change the fact of the abuse, the dangers of too much discretion, the fact such discretion was encouraged, some sizable number of individuals wrongly held, and so forth. In fact, the Red Cross report said in part: "between 70 percent and 90 percent of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake. They also attributed the brutality of some arrests to the lack of proper supervision of battle group units."

This allows me to not feel so bady about saying "mea culpa." All the same, "innocent" is the sort of thing that is picked up and tossed around, causing the core truth of the story to be ignored. For that, I am sorry.