"This is a leadership problem."

The testimony of Captain Ian Fishback

As reported in The New York Times:

"We came forward because of the larger issue that prisoner abuse is systemic in the Army. I'm concerned this will take a new twist, and they'll try to scapegoat some of the younger soldiers. This is a leadership problem."

In separate statements to the human rights organization, Captain Fishback and the two sergeants described abuses by soldiers in the 82nd Airborne Division, including beatings of Iraqi prisoners, exposing them to extremes of hot and cold, stacking prisoners in human pyramids, and depriving them of sleep at Camp Mercury, a forward operating base near Falluja. The abuses reportedly took place between September 2003 and April 2004, before and during the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad...

Captain Fishback, 26, a West Point graduate from Michigan and son of a Vietnam War veteran, said he was troubled by the Army's response to his concerns, starting in the spring of 2004 after the abuses at Abu Ghraib became known, about the treatment of detainees that he believed violated the Geneva Conventions.

In the months before, Captain Fishback said he had seen at least one interrogation where prisoners were being abused and was told about other ill treatment of detainees by his sergeants. But he said his commanders left the impression that the United States did not have to follow the Geneva Conventions when dealing with prisoners in Iraq, so he did not report the incidents.

That changed, he said, after he heard Mr. Rumsfeld testify to Congress after the Abu Ghraib abuses became public that the Conventions did apply in Iraq. But when he took his complaints to his immediate superiors, Captain Fishback said his company commander cautioned him to "remember the honor of the unit is at stake." He said his battalion commander expressed no particular alarm.

As he moved up his chain of command, he said no one could give him clear guidance on how the Geneva Conventions applied in Iraq.

"We did not set the conditions for our soldiers to succeed," said Captain Fishback, who has served combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. "We failed to set clear standards, communicate those standards and enforce those standards..."

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