The abuse of Iraqi prisoners reflected a failure of leadership in the US armed forces, the general who investigated the mistreatment said on Tuesday, but he said he found no evidence that American soldiers had acted on the direct orders of higher-ups.Asked directly in ‘‘your own soldier’s language’’ what had caused the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, US Army Major General Antonio Taguba recited a litany of ills.‘‘Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down, lack of discipline, no training whatsoever and no supervision. Supervisory omission was rampant,’’ Taguba, the author of a Pentagon report on the abuse, told the latest Senate hearing on the scandal, which has drawn worldwide outrage.But Taguba told the Senate Armed Services Committee he did ‘‘not find any evidence of a policy or a direct order given to these soldiers to conduct what they did. I believe that they did it on their own volition’’. At the Pentagon’s insistence, Under Secretary of Defence Stephen Cambone and other Pentagon officials also appeared with Taguba to testify on the scandal that has sparked international outrage and calls for Rumsfeld’s resignation. Coalition military intelligence officers estimated that about 70 per cent to 90 per cent of the thousands of prisoners detained in Iraq had been ‘‘arrested by mistake’’, according to a report by Red Cross given to the Bush administration last year and leaked this week.Meanwhile, an Islamist website said today that Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, a top Iraqi ally of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, beheaded an American civilian and vowed more killings in revenge for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.A poor quality videotape on the site showed a man dressed in orange overalls sitting bound on a white plastic chair in a bare room, then on the floor with five masked men behind him.‘‘My name is Nick Berg, my father’s name is Michael. I have a brother and sister, David and Sarah,’’ said the bound man, adding he was from Philadelphia.After one of the masked men read out a statement, they pushed Berg to the floor and one of them sawed his head off with a knife then held it aloft.The website said Al-Zarqawi was the man who cut off Berg’s head. The statement read out before the killing was signed off with Zarqawi’s name and dated May 11. The Jordanian-born Zarqawi, 37, has raised his profile and status as Al Qaeda’s most active operational leader with a series of suicide bombs and attacks on US troops in Iraq. —(Reuters)
