Rumsfeld Visits Prison in Iraq

Injured detainees, many of them hit by mortar rounds that have pounded the Camp Ganci portion of the prison, waved crutches, and one displayed a bandaged stump of a leg.

As part of an effort to avoid abuses at the prison, Miller said he had separated commands for military intelligence and military police. An internal Army investigation presented to Congress this week detailed the overlap between the units and alleged that weak leadership contributed to the abuses in two wings of the prison.

Many inmates who had been seen as important sources of intelligence have been removed from those wings, 1A and 1B, in the past few months. The wings now hold about 20 prisoners, including five women whom authorities want to keep separate from the male-populated main compound for safety reasons.

Many of the generals and current commanders at Abu Ghraib agreed with Rumsfeld's contention that leadership failures within the 800th Military Police Brigade and the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade led to a serious breakdown in standards and values, ultimately leading to the abuse. Miller called the situation a "simple leadership failure," and Sanchez attributed the abuse to a lack of training, discipline and leadership.

Col. David E. Quantock, commander of the 16th Military Police Brigade, based at Fort Bragg, N.C., said he found serious problems at Abu Ghraib when he took command of detention operations there in late January.

"Leadership oversight was not in place when I took over," Quantock said in an interview. "The door was open for abuses. We had soldiers we put trust in who didn't deserve that trust."

In his comments to reporters, Rumsfeld said the Geneva Conventions were in effect in Iraq during and after major combat operations last year. He also said instructions approved by President Bush and cleared by Pentagon lawyers made clear that prisoners should be handled in a way that conformed with international standards for the humane treatment of detainees.

"The test is what is decided and what is issued, and then is it adhered to," Rumsfeld said. "And what we know is that the lawyers cleared what was issued down through the system. What we can't know at any given moment of every day is whether each person is executing them consistent with what was approved by the lawyers down through the system."

In addition to his visit to Abu Ghraib, Rumsfeld held a town hall meeting with soldiers in Baghdad. During the session, he congratulated troops for their efforts to liberate the country.