Deaths of U.S.-held detainees

I am so glad the the NYT has started to try to be a real newspaper and is–at last– doing some things that look like serious investigative reporting.
One recent product of this is this story by Steven Lee Myers in today’s paper. It’s titled: “Military Completed Death Certificates for 20 Prisoners Only After Months Passed”. This refers to the fact that of the 37 deaths of foreign citizens in the US military’s global gulag that have been reported since –it seems–December 2002, 20 of them had no death certificates issued until very recently.
At that point, I assume, after the breaking of the Abu Ghraib scandal, people in the military hierarchy started to realize that that just maybe, that many unreported deaths might look a little fishy?
Well, at least 17 of the deaths that have now –however belatedly–had certificates issued look very fishy anyway. These are all but one of the deaths briefly described in the table accompanying the article. The one exception there was one, in Mosul in december 2003, in which the death certificate explicitly stated, “No signs of abuse or foul play”. Many others showed extreme signs of foul play (see below).
The caption to this table says it doesn’t include “13 deaths attributed to natural causes.” 18 + 13 = 31. So that makes 6 more deaths we need to know more about?
This is what I learned from looking at the table there:

(1) The causes of death described on these death certificates were fairly varied: blunt force injuries, strangulation, smothering, “head injuries consistent with a hard, fast blow”, “multiple gunshot wounds with complications”, etc etc.
(2) The places in which these deaths were recorded were widespread, throughout Afghanisatn and especially Iraq. They were:

Bagram, Afghanistan (2)
Nasiriyah, Iraq
Baghdad, Iraq
Asadabad, Afghanistan
Abu Ghraib prison, Iraq (3)
Gereshk, Afghanistan
Al Qaim Iraq
Al Asad, Iraq
Mosul, Iraq (2)
Baghdad area, Iraq
Camp Cropper, Iraq (2)
Tikrit, Iraq
“Iraq”

So in other words, of 17 deaths-in-custody in extremely suspicious circumstances, only three were in Abu Ghraib.
Does this mean (as we might reasonably deduce) that the habitat of abuse at Abu Ghraib constituted only a little over one-sixth of the entire habitat of abuse in the Iraqi and Afghan branches of the gulag? (No deaths from Guantanamo or other branches of the gulag are reported here. )
I guess my working assumption in all this is that the kinds of scenes we saw on the Lynndie England photos and videos, and the deaths as reported in these death certificates, each represent slightly (though not completely) different tips of a much broader undelying iceberg of abuse.
How big is the whole hunk of ice? Who knows. Maybe we’ll never know. Myers’ story in the NYT notes:

The abuses at Abu Ghraib have prompted an array of investigations, including one by the Army’s inspector general and another by the deputy head of Army intelligence, but each has distinct mandates, limited scope and, to some, inherent conflicts of interest.
“There is already ample evidence of a confusing array of investigations,” said Eugene Fidell, the president of the National Institute of Military Justice in Washington. “I believe the situation has already lost focus. It has all the makings of an investigative debacle.”
After first giving conflicting accounts, the Pentagon now says that at least 33 investigations have been opened involving 37 deaths of prisoners. There are also an unknown number of investigations into assaults and other abuses. Some of the deaths were attributed to natural causes; others involved prisoners killed in what investigators determined to be justified homicides, like the shooting deaths of four Iraqis during a riot at Abu Ghraib in November.
But even now, officials say they cannot specify how many cases remain under criminal investigation…
The officials acknowledge they are not even sure how many deaths have occurred in American custody. Even before the Abu Ghraib abuses, the International Committee of the Red Cross and human rights organizations reported mistreatment of prisoners, and even deaths, involving American or other troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not clear that those cases are under investigation.
Of the 37 deaths that have been investigated, only one soldier, who has not been identified, has been punished for what was ruled a homicide, according to Army officials and the documents. He was demoted and discharged, but not court-martialed, after fatally shooting a prisoner who was throwing stones at a detention center northwest of Baghdad on Sept. 11, 2003.

… Then, right under Myers’ story is another good one, by Eric Schmitt, with the lede:

The Army is investigating at least two dozen cases in which American soldiers are accused of assaulting civilian Iraqis or stealing their money, jewelry and other property during raids, patrols and house-to-house searches, senior Defense Department officials said Sunday.

By the way, yesterday I finished writing a “special” column for the CSM specifically on the torture issue. In it, I try to make the best case possible for why the Prez and the leaders of Conmgress should declare and then verifiably implement a policy of “zero tolerance for torture“. I think it’ll be in Wednesday’s paper, but I need to check that with my editor.