Abu Ghraib like 'Animal House,' but Rumsfeld should not resign

WASHINGTON — The chief of the Pentagon's investigation into the Iraq prison abuse scandal said Tuesday that the Abu Ghraib facility was so chaotic it was like "Animal House" and that culpability reached into the upper levels of the Defense Department.

Still, the four-member panel headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger concluded that current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior leaders, including Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should not be forced to resign because of the scandal.

Referring to Rumsfeld, Schlesinger said: "His resignation would be a boon to all of America's enemies."

Schlesinger, speaking at a Pentagon news conference to release the panel's 118-page report, faulted the U.S. military chain of command — from Rumsfeld down to the commanders of the units in Iraq responsible for prisoners.

Schlesinger's report concluded that:

• U.S. military leaders didn't properly address the protection of prisoners but rather were focused on a growing Iraqi insurgency late last year.

• Senior military leaders had devised conflicting and confusing guidelines on how prisoners should be interrogated.

• Commanders failed to adequately train and equip Army personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison, site of the widely publicized abuses.

Schlesinger said commanders at Abu Ghraib up to the brigade level shared "direct responsibility" because "they did not adequately supervise what was going on" at the prison. Senior military leaders like Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of American forces in Iraq during the time of the prisoner abuses, shared "indirect responsibility in that the weaknesses at Abu Ghraib were well-known and that corrective action could have been taken and should have been taken," Schlesinger said.

Senior Pentagon leaders and top commanders in Iraq "were not focused on the detention operations. In retrospect it's clear that we regarded that as an error on their part," Schlesinger said. However, he added: "We do not think that it was a sufficient error to call for senior resignations."

Contradicting Rumsfeld's earlier assertions that the abuses were isolated, Schlesinger said the investigation found the abuses were "widespread." The report said that the U.S. military is investigating about 300 allegations of abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where suspect al-Qaida terrorists are imprisoned. Thus far, the report said 155 investigations have been completed, yielding 66 substantiated cases of prisoner abuse.