Terrorist atrocities far outweigh prison abuse, Rumsfeld says

Pentagon investigations in recent months have said there have been about 300 allegations of prisoners killed, raped, beaten and subjected to other mistreatment at military prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay since the start of the war on terror. A few of those cases amounted to torture, a senior Army investigator has said.

Rumsfeld listed statistics aimed at showing the military is addressing the problem. He said there are 11 investigations into prisoner abuse, eight of which are completed. Investigators have recommended court-martial for 45 people, and a few have already been prosecuted. Twenty-three people were discharged from the military in connection with the scandal.

Shortly before Rumsfeld spoke, Democratic Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts sharply criticized Rumsfeld and the Bush administration in a Senate floor speech, calling the abuses at Abu Ghraib "just one part of a much larger failure for which our soldiers have been paying a high price since day one."

He quoted from a Pentagon prison abuse investigation that laid part of the blame on too few troops, ill-trained and ill-equipped for the prison and stabilization missions. It said the Pentagon wrongly predicted that postwar Iraq would be "a relatively nonhostile environment" rather than the increasingly violent one that has developed during the occupation.

"Because of the Bush administration's arrogant ideological incompetence and its bizarre 'mission accomplished' mentality, our troops and our intelligence officers . . . had neither the resources nor the guidance needed to deal with the worsening conditions that steadily began to overwhelm them and continue to do so," Kennedy said.

Another Pentagon-ordered probe found "commanding officers and their staffs at various levels failed in their duties and that such failure contributed directly or indirectly to detainee abuse."

Mark Kitchens, a spokesman for the presidential campaign of Democratic Senator John Kerry, said Rumsfeld's comments show him to be a "secretary of defense who continues to evade and deny responsibility for setting the leadership climate for the abuses that took place."