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Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
 
Part of the reason I put scare quotes around "alleged" is that there are pictures that clearly show abuse. In spite of that, at least one article title I came across on this issue put scare quotes around "abuse" instead.

Below is a link and excerpts to one of many stories about the investigation. The pictures have been broadcast in the Arab media. We deserve credit as a free society for openly engaging in this investigation and (hopefully) prosecution. But it's a very disturbing instance of the administration and military's lack of attention to a situation that is historically prone to abuse - the housing and treatment of captured enemy combatants.

Even with investigation and prosecution, the pictures are disturbing enough, they are guaranteed to inflame more anti-American sentiment in the Arab world.

Accused in POW Scandal, Soldier Tells of Questions

Excerpts:

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HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) ? A soldier facing a court-martial for his role in the alleged abuse of Iraqi war prisoners says commanders ignored his requests to set out rules for treating POWs and scolded him for questioning the inmates' harsh treatment.

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Frederick is one of six members of the 800th Military Police Brigade facing courts-martial for allegedly humiliating prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Charges include dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, assault and indecent acts with another person.

CBS's 60 Minutes II broadcast pictures of the alleged abuse and an interview with Frederick on Wednesday. Some of the soldiers were smiling in the photographs obtained by CBS, which showed naked prisoners stacked in a human pyramid and being forced to simulate sex acts.

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quote:

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House denounced abuse by U.S. troops of Iraqi prisoners as "despicable" and called for disciplinary action against those responsible on Friday after photographs depicting the acts were published and broadcast around the world.

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One Iraqi man had a slur written on his skin in English. Another was directed by Americans to stand on a box with his head covered, and wires attached to his hands, and was informed that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted.

The publicity could not have been worse in the Arab world with the sexual humiliation depicted in the pictures particularly shocking.

McClellan said President Bush has "known about it for a while," but did not offer details of the images he has seen.

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Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
 
It seemed a concise and clear statement... I'm not sure what your point is, sndrake?
 

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Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
 
I think the sarcasm is because while Bush responded to the publicity surrounding the situation quickly, he had actually known about the incidences for a while.

Now, I know that there can be reasons for that, but most of them are fairly weak, especially considering this is the military, not civilian, realm.

-Bok
 

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Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
 
The investigation has obviously been on going for some time... so I'm guessing that you're criticizing the White House for not actually breaking the story themselves?
 

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Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
 
Yes - Bok, that was it, exactly. I should have spelled it out. Thanks.
 

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Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
If it's not 'alleged'-and it really looks like it isn't alleged-throw the big, heavy, entire collection of encylopedia at them all. Let them also be tried by Iraqis and imprisoned in Iraq.

Scumbags.
 

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Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
 
"Sergeant Chip Frederick -- a reservist whose full-time job is as a prison officer in the US state of Virginia -- said he and his fellow reservists had never been told how to deal with prisoners, or what lines should not be crossed."

That he "didn't know better" makes one wonder what sort of sick sociopaths are hired to run the prison systems in the US.

[ April 30, 2004, 12:37 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
 

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Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
 
After a great deal of searching, I found a link to a story that has some of the pictures.

WARNING: They're pretty disturbing, nude men piled together and apparently being laughed at. Also another one of the man with wires attached to him.

Anyone want to guess how images of a female American soldier grinning over the nude bodies of prisoners will play in the Arab world?

Crap. Here's the link:

The Mirror: Outrage Over Iraqi Photos
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Actually, the "trial by Iraqi" idea is an excellent one. If our military isn't going to take responsibility for the actions of these soldiers, they're clearly "enemy combatants" and Iraq -- as soon as it becomes its own nation in June -- should feel free to do whatever the heck it wants to 'em.

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sndrake, there are also pictures involving fairly graphic forced oral and anal sex, again with American servicepeople in the foreground and background. I won't link, but they're easy to find.

[ April 30, 2004, 12:33 PM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
 

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Posted by Alexa (Member # 6285) on :
 
How do we go about starting a letter writing campaign to get these soldiers tried by the Iraqi governing council? They deserve it AND it is the only way for America to save face in the Arab world. WE need to do it for our own security in my opinion.
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
Well, needless to say, this story is all over the Al Jazeera page. Now we are going to look like Saddam to the Arab world - and to our allies like our military cannot handle the politics of war.
 

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Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
I don't think Dubya will let the soldiers be tried and imprisoned in Iraq...I'm not even sure that'd be legal, but I don't see him straining to make that happen, or permitting it if it were.

Which is bad news.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Heck, I can't imagine Dubya imprisoning the soldiers in THIS country. They'll be discharged, but he'll only press for prison terms if he can't spin this to our own media fast enough.
 

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Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
 
I do not think we can pass this off by disavowing the individual soldiers involved. There is an institutional problem, maybe even a societal problem here. We’ve all heard/read stories about “hazing” rituals that involve sexual humiliation in this country – in the military, fraternities and sororities, football teams, even in high schools. My brother works for a Fortune 500 company that just required all of it’s workers to attend ethics training because some of the supervisors were requiring employees to simulate sex acts in order to receive their “performance incentives.” (Which were supposed to be handed out on the basis of work performance.)

So I’m not surprised by this. Disgusted, yes. Saddened, yes. It’s bad enough to coerce this kind of behavior with social or financial pressure, as in the above examples. To do it at the point of a gun to people over whom you have near absolute and maybe even life and death power is evil.

But the military should have anticipated it. We have enough studies about what that level of power over another person does to the person wielding it. We also know a fair amount about what the stresses of combat and near-combat situations do to people’s mental state, and the mental de-humanization of the enemy that’s inevitable in war. None of this excuses what the individual soldiers did, and they should be prosecuted. But the higher ups have some responsibility as well. As does anyone who’s ever laughed off any level of sexual hazing as a “prank.”
 

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Posted by combustia (Member # 6328) on :
 
I'm not sure if this little news blip was read elsewhere, but both USA Today and The Guardian have articles discussing a recent episode of abuse against Iraqi prisoners of war by American troops.

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CBS's "60 Minutes II" broadcast pictures of the alleged abuse and an interview with Frederick on Wednesday. Some of the soldiers were smiling in the photographs, which showed naked prisoners stacked in a human pyramid and being forced to simulate sex acts.

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Daniel Sivits--whose son, 24-year-old Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits, is also facing court-martial--said the young man "was just doing what he was told to do."

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Sunday, 27 July, 2003, 03:18 GMT 04:18 UK

US troops charged with POW abuse


Amnesty has criticised conditions for Iraqi POWs
US military officials say four American soldiers have been charged with assaulting Iraqi prisoners of war - the first such charges to be brought.

The four face charges of punching, kicking and breaking the bones of POWs at the largest detention centre in Iraq, Camp Bucca near Umm Qasr.

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Monday, January 5, 2004 Posted: 4:19 PM EST (2119 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Three American soldiers have been discharged from military service for abusing Iraqi prisoners, the U.S. Army said Monday.

The soldiers had been facing a court-martial proceeding, but agreed instead to a nonjudicial one. In addition to the discharges, two soldiers had their ranks lowered, and all three were ordered to forfeit pay for two months.

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All of this reflects directly back on Bush and his administration, not because Bush ordered the mistreatment (that would be a silly assumption), but because the troops over there are representatives of the US military, which Bush is the commander-in-chief of. Shit rolls downhill, and culpability rolls uphill. The problem here is that military apologists can't claim this most recent as a "single, isolated incident," because it's obviously not even the first reported case. Three times over the course of almost a year is not isolated, it's practically a trend. This is bad, and it needs to be addressed.

And does anyone else think that this lays some credence to the gripes of some Iraqis over there about the US occupation?
 

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Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
 
dkw,

While I agree that there is a societal issue with this type of thing, I disagree with the implication that there is something about military structue and power that makes this more likely. I would say the opposite is true. I think the *vast* majority of military members are as aggravated by this as you are... maybe more so since they are *acutely* aware that it reflects on them as a whole.

For everyone else, why do you think there will be no prison time on this stuff? They will be more than discharged, I would bet. I think it would be a very bad idea, and a very bad precedent to turn these people over to another country's governance.

We should hammer them ourselves, by all means.
 

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Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
 
Sorry, Jim. I tried to make it clear that I wasn’t singling out the military on this one. I just don’t want to see this dismissed as a few “depraved” individuals when it’s clearly a larger problem than that.

I didn’t mean to imply that it’s something inherent in the military structure and power, I think the potential for abuse is inherent in all power structures. The occupying military vs. prisoner of war relationship just happens to be one of the most unequal power structures in existence (obviously). Which means there is a much higher level of responsibility and vigilance] necessary to avoid abuse.
 

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Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
 
As dkw said in detail (I alluded to it), the idea that a prison atmosphere is one that is conducive to abusive treatment by those in power againt those jailed is old news. A war context only makes it worse - the rules of the Geneva Convention weren't drawn up to prevent hypothetical problems.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted in 1971. It is still a subject of debate today.

(I talked to the researcher, Phil Zimbardo, once, when he was president of the American Psychological Association - but the discussion was mostly about why we were protesting something at his conference rather than the poor accessibility at the conference hotel.)
 

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Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
 
there certainly are rampant opportunities for abuse there... as sndrake says, though, that's *why* the Geneva Convention adopted the rules they did. We should be vigilant for these kind of things, but punishing the perpetrators is about all we can do.

thanks for clarifying for me... that was quite courteous.
 

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Posted by Ninja Squirrel (Member # 6508) on :
 
This is absolutely horrifying. Acts like this fall very clearly into the classification of "evil".

The soldiers who perpetrated these abuses are anti-American themselves. They are traitors to their own country when they commit such crimes.

Is it surprising that there is a general outcry against the Americans in the Arab world? Is it surprising that they do not want our Western influence in their countries? I am ashamed and disgusted.
 

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Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
 
not to defend those who did this, but let's also not go overboard here... many worse things have been done.
 

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Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
 
Jim-Me,

I think the thing that is making (some) of us really angry with the Bush administration, is that it really didn't take much to see that the detention centers in Iraq were a place that had the perfect environment to foster abusive attitudes/behavior on the part of at least some soldiers.

Knowing that, extra precaution and oversight should have been in place when it came to the treatment of Iraqi prisoners. There's no evidence at all the Bush administration put anything other than miminal effort into oversight.

Keeping prisoners naked without toilets for days at a time in small cells is not an "isolated" event - that shows they didn't put resources or thought into monitoring the situation. If not for moral reasons, then at least to protect us from a human rights/public relations disaster.

The administration has a, to be generous, spotty record when it comes to showing much appreciation of the social arena in the Middle East. As an example, this prolonged and violent insurgency was seen as a likely consequence of our invasion by just about everyone but, well, the Bush administration.

This could have been prevented, if the administration and military had showed a little foresight.
 

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Posted by Suneun (Member # 3247) on :
 
Considering that a _huge_ part of this whole war in Iraq deals with the perception of the West by the non-West, I'd say this is a very important and very poorly handled part of the war. We had our chance to prove that the US is better than they make us out to be. But I think we failed, and it especially shows in how we treated our prisoners.
 

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Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
 
Maybe Jim-Me (or other folks with military experience) can clarify this – is the existence of the Geneva Convention rules a part of standard training?

I’ll admit that my knowledge of them comes mainly from watching Hogan’s Heroes and The Great Escape but the American soldiers in those and other shows/movies always seemed to know the Geneva rules by heart –for their own protection, so they knew their rights if they were captured. Can I assume this is not true in real life?

It would seemed to me that at the very least any soldier put in charge of prisoners should have had a copy, and should have been told by his or her commander that we take these rules seriously.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
sndrake, thanks for the link to the Stanford Prison Experiment. Fascinating - and frightening.
 

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Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
 
The existence and basic gist of the Geneva Convention rules is covered, but the actual rules themselves are not covered in detail... or, at least, not that *I* remember. American soldiers, being an all volunteer group, are not really expected to have to worry about it because our own standards for behavior tend to be higher and more humane than the minimums. Essentially, the American soldiers have it drilled home that they are PROFESSIONALS, like doctors and lawyers, and that they should bear themselves in this manner... meeting the standards of the Geneva Convention isn't a problem when you respect yourself and others as soldiers SHOULD and usually DO.

That having been said, I would fully expect a group of security police assigned to a POW camp to be FULLY versed in the rules... it's like a police officer not being aware of the local traffic laws. It's so ridiculous to conceive of that happening-- of their not getting training in such relevant matters-- that you almost HAVE to assume that they ignored the training they received.

The mistreatment of POWs generally results from there being more POWs than the captor was prepared to deal with... both in terms of cramped, ugly living quarters and potential abuse by their captors (less supervision because people are spread too thin). Depending on the situation, the fault for this could lie at the very top, or at some fairly low-level.

As an aside, taking pictures of this was just plain stupid and these people deserve to be hung for that, alone.

Edit: these are just my opinion and personal experience... and we all know about anecdotal evidence, so take it with that grain of salt.

There's not much discussion of it at the military board I frequent... some gallows humor and a bunch of "I can't believe they were this stupid"...

[ April 30, 2004, 04:27 PM: Message edited by: Jim-Me ]
 

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Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
 
It just struck me that I guess I don't care if the soldiers at the prison knew the rules of the Geneva Convention.

I don't know them and I know that having naked prisoners pile up on each other, "simulate" sex acts and laugh at them while they're doing it just plain violates every rule of civilized behavior.

It's on a level that, to me, is harder to comprehend than a beating (that is NOT meant to condone beatings or regard them as excusable). Beatings are a pretty direct and uncomplicated expression of anger, contempt, and sadism - not excusable, but I can wrap my head around it. This stuff is something I really can't wrap my head around - the soldiers in the pictures look to be having the time of their lives. Not angry, just doing stuff that naughty kids might to with Barbie dolls.

If it turns my stomach as much as it does, I am beginning to wrap my head around the ways in which people in the Arab world might feel about it.

In one of the articles I came across today, a former NATO commander commented that the images of prisoners being forced to simulate sex acts was the most effective recruiting poster for Al-Qaeda he'd ever seen.

He's probably right.
 

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Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
 
Sndrake,

yep.
 

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Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
 
combustia, your post seems to be copied from somewhere.
 

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Posted by Yozhik (Member # 89) on :
 
The British had their version of this last year.
 

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Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
 
If this is happening in Iraq, can we be certain that similar problems are not occuring in Quantanamo?

That is where we sent all the Afghanistan prisoners.

How about the secret, unnamed prisons where any US Citizen that the administration could consider a threat is thrown into. These "enemy combatants" can be taken away with no oversite or access to the rest of the world. There are no rules about what can or cannot happen to them.

We all say such things are necessary for our protection, that the government and the military know what they are doing and would never abuse thier power.

What do we call this but abuse.
 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 
If anyone is interested, they replicated the Stanford prison experiment in Sweden not too long ago and had to call it off for the exact same reasons.

As to the abuse, the worst part about this is that I believe it has made the US occupation of Iraq a million times harder. Since it will fan the flames of rebellion, it will cost many lives both on our side and the Iraqi 'resistance' side.

I hope this doesn't break the will of the American people. I hope these pictures don't make it impossible for America and Iraq to go forward with their relationship. Clearly, the US is goign to have to work very energetically to resolve issues and to bridge the gap between us and the Iraqis.
 

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Posted by cochick (Member # 6167) on :
 
I was truly disgusted when I saw this on the News yesterday and in the papers today. It is sickening that people can do such sadistic, horrible things to other people. Don't these soldiers understand that only one incident of this type will be used as an excuse for further unrest and violence against the troops and foreign civilians. Surely that alone should be reason enough to stop them. Let alone their own sense of decency and respect for other human beings. Then to use pitiful excuses such as "I didn't know how they should be treated" or "I was commanded to do it". I've seen the photo's and none of those grinning soldiers was being forced to do anything against there will and without their full co-operation.

If anyone was tried in a civilian court and they were found guilty of any of these "alleged" assaults they'd go to prison. But no, they discharged from duty, reduced in rank or have their wages stopped. Big deal - that's not justice.

One other think that concerned me was that you had to really search to find the pictures of these incidents and did so eventually in a UK paper. These pictures were all over our TV news and papers and those of almost every country around the world. Were they shown in the US at all - if not then I can understand how they can get away with referring to it as an "alleged" assault.
 

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Posted by Elizabeth (Member # 5218) on :
 
"I hope these pictures don't make it impossible for America and Iraq to go forward with their relationship."

Me too!
 

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Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
 
I don't think you're going to see that in this case (merely getting off with discharges/rank reductions).

#1 - there's not any possible way that they can claim, as the other sentencees did, that the prisoners were fighting or resisting in any way. There's no ambiguity here, really... it's not like they were subduing a prison riot and used excessive force, they were just plain humiliating Iraqis for no other reason than their personal enjoyment. Culpability and responsibility goes way up and extenuating circumstances are way down.

#2 - the previous sentencees were taking Article 15 punishments. That has to be offered, it *is* career ending, and it's the equivalent of a plea bargain, which they likely negotiated with a lawyer (BTW, I'm almost certain the three people in the "second incident" above are 3 of the 4 from the "first incident"). A civilian trial of a first offender would likely go the same way (did any of the Rodney King guys see any serious jail time?). Also, due to the publicity and severe reprecussions of this event, I would be shocked if these six were allowed to take Article 15.

#3 - for a dash of perspective, examine what the Macedonians just admitted to...
 

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Posted by Lupus (Member # 6516) on :
 
I think what is worse than using those methods as torture...trying to get information, is the fact that some of the pictures show American soldiers enjoying themselves...for example the woman smiling pointing at the Iraqi man's genitals. Torture is bad enough, enjoying it is unbelievable. I don't want the military to simply dishonorably discharge them, I want Bush to push for a Treason charge. While that may seem excessive, in treating our captives that way the soldiers put AMERICAN lives at stake. Not only will this inflame the situation in Iraq, it will put captured Americans at risk. I don't care if you were not given guidelines, there is such a thing as common sense. You should never do things to captives that you would not expect the opposing side to do to your captives, and for American soldiers to think that kind of abuse should be done to American prisoners is treasonous. I was for going to war with Iraq, I thought we could make it a better place. It is very disturbing to see this kind of thing happening.
 

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Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
 
This does happen in war, regardless of which countries are represented as prisoner and which as detainers. The elite Canadian Airborne Regiment was disbanded after having committed abuses in Somalia [see below], including the fatal beating of a sixteen-year old civilian boy.

(I agree with Stephen that the depravity of the current concerns is almost unbelievable, but it is certainly not unprecedented. Horribly. Remember the sodomization of a 30-yr old prisoner by New york police officers, the one whose rectum was torn through with a plunger, which then broke off his front teeth when it was shoved into his mouth?)

There is some evidence that the different training received by dedicated peacekeeping forces leads to fewer abuses. It's one of the main reasons why an international peacekeeping force would be such a godsend in Iraq, rather than our admittedly fearsome military. Militaries have a less than great history in peacekeeping roles.

Heck, peacekeepers have a less than stellar reputation, but it would be a start.

quote:

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Lost in the debate is the argument that, because military establishments exist primarily to fight wars where they kill people and destroy things, they may be unable to make the change from using overwhelming force to defeat an enemy to using minimum force.

A graphic reminder of how hard this cultural change can be is found in a Canadian book published this past May. In "Significant Incident: Canada's Army, the Airborne, and the Murder in Somalia," David Bercuson, a well-known author and historian, recounts the incident which took place on March 16, 1993 when a 16-year old Somali, Shidane Abukar Arone, was tortured and beaten to death by a member of the Canadian Airborne Regiment Group in Somalia. The Regiment had come to Somalia as part of the much larger, U.S.-led UNITAF (Unified Task Force) humanitarian coalition. This crime sparked the biggest peacetime scandal in the history of the Canadian Armed Forces. The Airborne was subsequently disbanded.

The murder takes on added significance when one considers that, unlike many other countries, Canada has been relatively enthusiastic about doing peacekeeping work. It has been far ahead of most nations in setting up specialized training centers for doing peacekeeping work. In fact, peacekeeping is almost a national religion in Canada.

Canadian soldiers are taught how to treat prisoners. They are instructed in the rules of the Geneva convention. They are supposed to know what they may and may not do to prisoners. Every Canadian soldier above the rank of master corporal learns that he or she is bound not to follow any order deemed to be illegal, including orders to mistreat prisoners. The system is designed to make sure that no Canadian soldier will ever attempt to justify a war crime by claiming that he or she was "just following orders." Yet the Canadian soldier who punched, kicked, clubbed, and burned the life out of Arone over the course of hours was a master corporal. Furthermore, at least eight other Canadian soldiers witnessed Arone's destruction but did nothing to stop or even to report it.
Weekly Defense Monitor

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My take-home point in this is that when there are such egregious abuses, regardless of how one feels about the individuals involved, there is a big, big problem with the system. Thankfully eventually someone couldn't stomach this and broke the story (with pictures, thank god, to drive it home), but the system should have kicked in with constraints much sooner.

I'm very interested in seeing someone who knows what they're doing take apart and analyze what happens from a systems perspective. What failsafes or pressure valve didn't work, or weren't even there to begin with? Given that militaries will occasionally be required to do peacekeeping missions, what can we learn from this about how to structure things differently? What can we learn from trained forces of peacekeepers, and what can we learn about when to step back for those with other training to be involved?

My heart just aches when I think of how it must have felt to be inside that mask, how it must have felt to be standing or kneeling there.

[ May 01, 2004, 08:13 AM: Message edited by: ClaudiaTherese ]
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 

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I want Bush to push for a Treason charge.

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Like any other lawyer wouldn't say something similar, Thor.

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That's what I'm talking about, I'm sick and tired and fed up to the maximum with Micheal Jackson molesting boys and having some lawyer do a song and dance of innocence, or having Dennis Kozlowski's faggot lawyers say "He's totally innocent", or thinking of the long line kids coming out of college waiting eagerly to drop their souls in a new york minute for the right career oppourtunity.

Lawyers are a fundamental flaw of democracy.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
Don't go too far - if you've got a decent alternative to an adversarial legal system, I'd love to hear it.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by The Silverblue Sun (Member # 1630) on :
 
New and Improved Torture Chambers!
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
Of course, that makes the guard's lawyer right. Which means lawyers aren't so bad after all. Which means we don't need the torture chambers. Which means the lawyer IS scum. Which means we do need a different system. Which means we do need the torture chambers.

Of course, that makes the guard's lawyer right....

[ May 01, 2004, 10:41 AM: Message edited by: Dagonee ]
 

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Posted by Fishtail (Member # 3900) on :
 
Don't know what kind of punishment/justice Thor might be looking for in regards for this bunch, but a stint in a military prison is certainly no walk in the park.
 

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Posted by The Silverblue Sun (Member # 1630) on :
 
I'm looking for new and improved PEOPLE.

I don't want want lip service, promises and good public relations statements, I want good people.

This reminds me of when Newt Gingrich was cheating on his wife while blasting Bill Clinton for cheating on his wife, or Catholic Priests speaking out about sexual morality while molesting boys, or any politician talking about campaign finance reform.

I'm sick of all the talk-talk-talk, all the promises, declarations and verbaige.

I WANT GOOD PEOPLE!

I want the Human Evolution C.S. Lewis talked about.
 

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Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 
What's really sad is that I have friends who will tell you criminals deserved to be raped. They knew what they were doing, this is just part of the punishment. And these are people who claim to be Christian. Boy did they not get it.

While I have no problem blaming Bush for this (Chain of command. The guy in charge is supposed to make sure these things don't happen.) I think it would be more constructive to look at the criminals commiting these acts of violence. Does this follow some kind of control pattern? Would random psychological screening catch this sort of thing before it happens?

Or is it just people giving themselves over to evil and not even sending in a fleet of priests to drive the demons out would stop it? If someone chooses to do evil, unfortunetly, nothing we do can stop them. All we can do is lock them up and pray they won't do anything too terrible to our guards and the other inmates.

Unless you believe the other inmates deserve it. Then it's Dag's loop all over again.
 

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Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
 
Good People, like Charity, starts at home, Thor.

Like the man said, "first remove the plank from your own eye..."

One thing that resonated the most with what dkw said is that this is a *human* problem-- as long as there is a need for authority (and there is), people will abuse it (original sin anyone?). We all have work to do... learning to love, learning to value ourselves and others, learning to respect... let's not turn the news into another version of the Jerry Springer Show where we spend all our time criticizing others while, inside, we're really saying "heh... at least I'm not *that* screwed up!".

What these people did was sadistic, wrong, and stupid. Shouting about it isn't going to fix it... committing ourselves to be respectful, right, and smart today might do a little bit.

[ May 01, 2004, 11:06 AM: Message edited by: Jim-Me ]
 

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Posted by The Silverblue Sun (Member # 1630) on :
 
This is a stupid war planned by a bunch of idiots.

What are we fighting for?

If our house is chaos what gives us the right to run another man's house?
 

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Posted by The Silverblue Sun (Member # 1630) on :
 
Oh the price of improper leadership.

how fast our political saviors are willing to pay it
 

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Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
 
Blah Blah Blah, Thor.

Blah blah, Thor, Blah Blah Blah Blah...

(with acknowledgement to Mr. Larson)
 

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Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 
Hey, Jim, CT says we aren't supposed to feed the trolls.

I agree completely with you, by the way. The only problem is you can't make other people want to grow and do right. So the ones who do would have to spend all their time policing the actions of people too darn sorry to bother. Can't we just publicly shun them? Not as nice but a whole lot easier.
 

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Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
 
He's not a troll... he's an institution at Hatrack...

In my experience, the best way to make someone else want to be better is to, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, "be excellent to each other...and...

on dudes!"

which is not to say that it isn't useful to have a police force and etc., but everyone generally agrees that it is more effective to treat the cause rather than the symptoms...
 

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Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
 
It turns out that the photos and the six individuals under investigation may be just the tip of the iceberg. If even part of the account published in The New Yorker is accurate, we're in for a very long and rough ride on this one.

Torture at Abu Ghraib by Seymour M. Hersh

quote:

---

A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community. (The 372nd was attached to the 320th M.P. Battalion, which reported to Karpinski’s brigade headquarters.) Taguba’s report listed some of the wrongdoing:

Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

There was stunning evidence to support the allegations, Taguba added—“detailed witness statements and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence.” Photographs and videos taken by the soldiers as the abuses were happening were not included in his report, Taguba said, because of their “extremely sensitive nature.”

---

Reading the article left me absolutely stunned. And that's saying something - since I pride myself as being leaning toward realism and cynicism when it comes to human behavior. There's one new piece of information about the photos we've already seen.

The photo with the solitary prisoner sitting naked, genitals blurred out, and the woman grinning behind him? He was being forced to masturbate.

Like I said, if even part of what is in this article is true, there's a big international storm coming.

Maybe the best thing we can do as Americans is call on the President to open the prison to inspection by a U.N. evidence-gathering team. Any attempt to say "we'll handle this ourselves" is just going to make us look even worse, I'm afraid.

I'm also wondering how long it is before some responsibility starts to stick to Rumsfeld, at the very least.
 

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Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
 
Ah, god.

This is why we are feared. Not because it is only we that do this (we aren't -- again, it is endemic in all such situations), but because so many of us believe that representatives of our country never would.

This is why other nations want an international court, and this is probably why we fear it so.

But you can see their point.

[ May 01, 2004, 03:05 PM: Message edited by: ClaudiaTherese ]
 

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Posted by Suneun (Member # 3247) on :
 
It's not just the American forces, unfortunately.

Torture by British soldiers bbc article
 

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Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
 
I know. Great Britain and the US in this war, Canada and others in previous wars. This behavior has a long history in wars. It's what I envisioned might come when I first learned we were declaring war, although I hoped to be wrong.

Some ten thousand dead Iraqi civilians, hundreds of Afghanistan prisoners (including children) held without trial at Guantanamo Bay, and now systemic, institutionalized torture of those we'd imprisoned.

And they were taking pictures ... for souveneirs.

[ May 01, 2004, 02:24 PM: Message edited by: ClaudiaTherese ]
 

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Posted by The Silverblue Sun (Member # 1630) on :
 
1:42 pm saturday

Fox's fair and balanced News channel has STILL not acknowledged the story.

<T>
 

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Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
 
Thor,

I'm not exactly a fan of Fox News, but they have the story as their main item on their "Top Stories" page:

Foxnews.com - Top Stories
 

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Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
 
I'm with Thor. I'm tired of all this hypocrasy. It seems like every time I read the news about this war it gets worse.
 

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Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
 
what hypocrisy, exactly? The hypocrisy of the administration that condemned the acts, the hypocrisy of the justice system that is invesitgating and charging the perpetrators as they are identified, or the hypocrisy of the news channels reporting on an important story?

I'm afraid I don't see any hypocrites... just people who did bad things (and their attorneys and families), people trying to bring them to justice, and a whole ton of people who have paid and are going to pay more for what those people did.

[ May 01, 2004, 03:44 PM: Message edited by: Jim-Me ]
 

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Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
 
Universal hypocrasy... Sure, I'm not perfect. But I'm not in charge of a whole country. Nor am I in another country representing the whole of America.
What were these people thinking? That they'd just have a little bit of "fun" in their eyes with the prisoners?
Did they think this was like some sort of frat hazing or something?
This is serious... Things in Iraq are already delicate as it is and now...
Now a whole group of people will see this as an attack on their pride...
I'm beyond horrified....
 

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Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
 
Jim-Me,

I am not sure about hypocrisy, but I am increasingly concerned about irresponsibility, especially after reading the New Yorker article.

Why?

We came in as occupiers without the support of the international community and outright opposition from a large part of that community. Disregarding the international perspective (rightly or wrongly), Bush went in claiming a moral imperative to do so.

As I and others have said, the treatment of prisoners of war is known to be, historically, one of the worst scenarios in terms of fostering a climate in which abuse will occur.

According to information coming out, the most influential people at the prison were the representatives of the intelligence community. That's a problem and it doesn't take a rocket scientist or a PhD in social psychology to figure that out. Intelligence organization of all countries operate by bending and even breaking laws and civil liberties - not special to the U.S., it's just how business is done.

The entire staff could have been given the message that their number one one priority was to make sure that all prisoners were treated humanely and with respect. That we had to show the world we are as good as we say we are.

It looks like, instead, they were told that the number one priority was intelligence-gathering and interrogation - those tend to put considerations of human rights in a secondary role, or at least put them in jeopardy. It's credible to me, given that Rumsfeld, at least, still is holding out hope for his hunt for "Massively Destructive Snarks."

The prominent role given to private and government intelligence forces in the prison has to be a decision made at a fairly high level. Whoever gave intelligence a high level of authority in that prison (if the accounts are true) should be forced to resign at the very least.
 

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Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
 
Well,

going by what we *KNOW*:

BAD things happened.

The actions are being investigated and people responsible charged and brought before a courts martial.

There's not a lot more to be done, at this stage. How do you make basic human decency clear to someone? The kinds of acts that happened there are the kind thaat we aren't supposed to do. The fact that we are investigating and prosecuting those who did would seem to be evidence enough that the directive was clear and someone somewhere chose to ignore it.

Perhaps we should know more facts before we begin painting everyone withing 30 miles of the incidents as hypocrites and calling for their heads?

I also find it highly ironic that people so concerned about non-US citizens being held without trial are so anxious to have summary judgement passed on members of the US military without so much as knowing their names and relationships to this... much less allowing them their day in court.

This sucks, but getting emotional and irrational is not going to help anything.
 

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Posted by Suneun (Member # 3247) on :
 
All the US/British prisons in Iraq should be open to the international community for inspection, through the UN for example. Members of the military or civilians in charge of POW should be given rigorous psych eval and evaluations by 3rd parties on a regular basis (like twice a year).

[ May 01, 2004, 05:55 PM: Message edited by: Suneun ]
 

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Posted by Fishtail (Member # 3900) on :
 
While the treatment of these prisoners sickens me, I have to wonder why, in all wars, eventual horrible mistreatment of prisoners seems an inevitable consequence. In every war I've ever studied it's happened, even modern conflicts. As an institution, the memory of its members being victims of horrendous violations of the Geneva Conventions during Vietnam ought to have made the US military wary of the way it treats its own POWs.

Yet the dark side of individual human nature always seems to out itself. Hmmm.

Humans suck.
 

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Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 
All I can think is the beginning of The Count of Monte Cristo where the inspector comes to check on the prisoners. The food's bad, conditions are horrible, and he's completely apathetic. Who'll watch the watchmen?

It's nice to say, "Yes, let the UN rescue us" but it doesn't change the fact that it's still people who have to oversee other people. If they come from this system of what is looking like systematic abuse of prisoners, why would they really care? Besides, let's look at the UN security council for a minute. The US and Britain are the ones who need to be watched at the moment. France and Russia would just play politics to pay us back for all the money they lost. And who would take China seriously if they alleged human rights abuses? If they cared enough to bother. Unfortunetly, UN inspections probably wouldn't do any good, would cost the US a giant pile of money, and all we'd see is more bickering about it in the news.
 

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Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
 
Haven't we let the red cross do inspections of our POW camps? I'm pretty certain we have let them at least... and maybe others...
 

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Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
 
They have, but they must not be doing a good enough job.

quote:

---

The International Committee of the Red Cross began visiting the Iraqi prisoners this week to ensure they're treated properly but has not been allowed access to the American POWs

---

quote:

---

And it was so good to be with people who felt like shit. I kept feeling like I don't deserve to feel this bad, you know? ... (The president of the University of Wyoming) basically said, 'C'mon guys, let's show the world that Laramie is not this kind of a town.'

But it is that kind of a town. If it wasn't this kind of a town, why did this happen here? I mean, you know what I mean, like, that's a lie. Because it happened here. ... And we have to mourn this and we have to be sad that we live in a town, a state, a country where shit like this happens. I mean, these are people trying to distance themselves from this crime. And we need to own this crime, I feel. Everyone needs to own it.

We are like this. We are like this. We are like this.

---

 

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Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
 
Spot on, Scopatz. Spot on.

Crud.

As I was talking to my husband today, I realized that although I am not one for dramatic speeches or flamboyant gestures, I really don't think I can stay in this country if we don't have a major revolution in November. And for me, that would mean that I'd give up my citizenship here.

We aren't a chosen people. We aren't a nation set apart. We are a group of people, some loosely and some tightly united by heritage, with shared history and basic founding goals. We are just another country -- and that should be enough.

When we view ourselves as having a Providence, when we view ourselves as having a Manifest Destiny, we cease to view others as being as important as we are. They are. Their citizens are.

The goal of the United States, the dream on which this country was created, is awesome. Awesome. This is a great experiment in the strongest sense of "great." But being destined to rule the other nations of the world was the self-assessment of Rome, of Japan, of Germany. And the world itself always resists such hubris -- even we cannot be overcome by others, sometimes we do catch a glimpse of ourselves in the mirror.

In order to become what it could be, this nation needs to give up its mythology of what it is. If we aren't prepared to ask questions, to criticize ourselves, then that unwarranted hubris will always taint us as misguided and foolish, and dangerous.

So, Bob, I agree with you, and I'm pretty sure I don't have the cojones to stick it out. I've pushed myself to do so many things I didn't want to do, that I didn't have the strength or heart for, just for the sake of an ideal, that I'm afraid I've burned out that Will.

*very, very sad tonight
 

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Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
 
That's a good quote, Suneun. Much as I would hope otherwise, I do think most folks will wind up externalizing these events.
 

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Posted by The Silverblue Sun (Member # 1630) on :
 
A year later...

Does anyone believe that America is now SAFER?

Does anyone believe that there are now LESS terrorists who would do anything to harm us?

Does anyone believe we are LESS hated in the eyes of the world?
 

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Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
 
The answer to that Silverblue, is no... Bush's policies have stirred up a major hornet's nest.
And I see him taking no responsibility for this! Talking about things that should have died out decades ago!
This sort of attitude did no good 40 years ago and isn't doing much good now...
It has to stop.
But it won't. I feel so cynical.
I want to believe in hope. I want to believe things will change and get better... But each day I see more signs that it isn't.
Although, it is comforting that others here feel the same as I do-Disapointed and disgusted.
Maybe that's a start.
Excellent quoat, Suneun... I agree. Things will never change unless we learn to truly feel just how wrong all this is.
Good post, CT. I'd like to move away myself if I can ever get the money to move...
 

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Posted by The Silverblue Sun (Member # 1630) on :
 
America is my nation.
I was born here.
I love the land.
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 

quote:

---

I submit that this will likely be a watershed event in America's understanding of itself. I submit that even more than Vietnam, our actions in Iraq, where we set out to be the aggressors and act "pre-emptively" show us more about our national character than we have yet to realize.

And when it does finally sink in, I think many of us will be very humbled and even ashamed. Not because of the criminal acts of a few who let the power go to their heads -- they are criminals and don't reflect our attitudes. But because we can't blame anyone for the overall mess that will be Iraq but ourselves. Our failures are what are going to make that country less than what it should be. Our failure to understand the culture first. Our failure to understand their dominant religion and its various factions. Our failure to win "hearts and minds" because they look at us and find us wanting. And we'll look at ourselves and do the same.

It's coming soon, folks.

---

As I've been saying, I certainly hope we learn our lesson soon, before we can repeat our mistakes. However, I'm not sure even this will make people realize what's wrong with this whole picture. I think at least half of America is still echoing Bush's steadfast refusal to admit making any major mistakes. As long as that is true, it will be difficult to make changes.
 

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Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
 
I think you guys are forgetting some important facts here.

Saddam gassed his own people!

Babies in incubators!

We've always been at war with Eurasia!

Won't someone PLEASE think of the children!

Of COURSE Bush is responsible. He called them evil doers. He called it a crusade. He set the Iraqi militants up as less than human, a terrible threat to America. He implied countless times that these people had a connection to the 9/11 attacks. For the love of Pete, he's responsible for the army being there in the first place, let alone having trained killers in charge of "keeping the peace".

I suspect that in about three posts people saying that this changes nothing, and that Bush is a great president.

I myself am thinking that perhaps others are starting to realize why I had Bush as my number one on my worst presidents ever list. In the history of the United States, I doubt there has been a president that has done more lasting harm against America, and Americans.

But a good portion of citizens like him because he is "kicking Arab ass", you know, the people who are too stupid or bigoted to tell one arab from another.

Then there is another good portion which will vote for him because the don't want equal rights for gays. Even more who will vote for him because he says he is against abortion.

I just hope, from the bottom of my soul, that some of those people will wake up and smell the roses before November.

Otherwise 4 more years of a terrible, terrible president.

I'm not going to claim that I am going to leave if he is elected, because there is nowhere for me to go. Also I love this country, even if the current leadership takes a little chunk of that love off bit by bit.

Bob, you are wrong that the time to be ashamed of your country is in the future.

Its already here.
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
Lara,

I wish I had a good answer for you. I do agree with your mom that the best place to take action is at the grass roots level. I like the phrase "Think Globally, Act Locally." But what does that mean when you are trying to stop madmen from ruining the country you love?

Sure, it's the "establishment." But the establishment is us. Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is us." That's what we need to understand. That we can't just automatically claim superiority and think anyone should or will believe us. We have to understand that doing whatever America thinks is right is not the same as doing what is right for the people we're trying to help.

Like it or not, we can't be isolationist. Like it or not, we can't leave Iraq now. We have to try to undo what we've done AND fix whatever Saddam did. And we are ill-equipped to do it. We have no experience running other people's countries in trust while they get their act together. Especially in places where they have no democratic tradition and where religious leaders really do hold power.

$4 billion a month.

That's the price of doing a crappy job.

What's the price of doing it right?

God only knows.

What would've been the price of talking for another two years instead of starting this war?

We have to ask these questions in the future. Now, it's too late. But in the future, before we do this again, we can ask...and DEMAND answers. We can choose representatives who won't run ahead of our knowledge passing laws and supporting insane plots. We have to make tough choices. Really tough choices. Do we kill people to make our point or do we let some of our own people die in future attacks that will come our way? And even less clear -- what do we do when no matter what you do the attacks will still come?

I heard a conservative talk radio host (Mike Reagan) going on about how worldwide terror attacks are at their lowest level in 20 years. And that there have been steady drops since 9/11 compared to the years before 2001.

And he tried to draw a correlation between the US' get-tough attitude and the reduction.

I don't know. Maybe he's correct.

Or maybe what we're doing in Iraq has no bearing on other terrorist groups that folded or negotiated a peace independent of us, but are included in his statistic.

Or maybe the government decided to change the definition of "terrorist attack" so that our actions and those of our allies (like Pakistan) don't count, but other countries' actions do count.

But the point is, you always have to ask. Always question. And never let them sell you on something without asking questions and demanding real answers.
 

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Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
 
CT,

If people like you bail, then we don't have hope for the future.

Bob,

I just wanted to say you are doing a nice job in this thread (as if you don't always).

Xavier, (edit...)

I would remind you that there are those of us who support The US efforts in Iraq and, in spite of the mistakes that were and will be made there, think it was the right and appropriate thing to do, and who are most decidedly not bigoted and ignorant and, quite frankly, I would appreciate it if you would take those implications back.

[ May 02, 2004, 04:14 AM: Message edited by: Jim-Me ]
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
CT, if you leave, they win.

America isn't dead unless we let it die. We have to force ourselves to live up to our dream and our potential. It requires people who see the shortfalls and want to make us be better. It means that instead of running away, people like us need to run for office.

And rant

And protest

And be a general nuisance if necessary.

Ornery!

Or the war-mongers who think bullets are the one best solution will always win. They have the money and the emotion backing them. But the hangover from these parties is painful. That's why you can't leave, because we will all need hangover remedies from our favorite doctor.

I don't know if I can do anything either. Heck, I WORK for the government. If I was forced to take an oath of loyalty, I'm not sure I could do it.

They just told us a week or so ago that everyone has to fill out paperwork basically equivalent to that required for a "SECRET" security clearance. We work on non-classified projects for the Department of Transportation, for crying out loud!!! Who do these bastards think they are?

So, is a loyalty oath next? Do I have to promise not to criticize President Bush in order to keep my job?

I'll starve first.

But I won't leave unless America becomes irretrievable in my mind. If the dream is lost forever, I'll go somewhere else and hope to start it anew. But I don't think we're there yet. I still can work to get these jerks out of office and get the nation going in a direction that makes better sense to me.

And if I lose on some things, I'll still hope to win on others.
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
Jim-Me...thanks, but I'm not exactly sure what I've done in these posts to earn your praise that others haven't done.

I mean, I do not at all support our war in Iraq. I never have and even if it turns Iraq into a garden paradise with a McDonalds (tastefully) installed on every corner, I won't support it.

I do support our military. To a point. I think there are things they should not be asked to do, like handle border crossings by Mexicans or engage in nation-building. Whenever they are asked to go "off mission" like that, we get too much death and not enough resolution. But when we need them, I'm very glad they are there.

I do not support placing people like Dick Cheney in charge of programs or policy development in areas that can benefit their stock portfolios (even if those stocks are held in a "blind" trust.) I do not support John Ashcroft in any decision he's made so far.

I think Don Rumsfeld is one of the scariest men alive.

I think Colin Powell is looking like a deer caught in the headlights.

I think there will soon be mass defections from this administration. I might be wrong. Maybe people like Powell and Rice can rationalize their continued involvement in the "executive privilege Presidency." But I doubt it.

And I think George Bush simply lacked the intelligence and the experience to do a good job as President. I thought that when he was running for office and I've seen very little that would change my mind.

He's all about appearances and it shows.

So, whether I've expressed my negative feelings above or not, I guess I just can't accept the compliment. I hate the direction this country has taken during this Administration and I hope that in November we throw this entire Administration and a good portion of Congress out on their ears.

I do realize, however, that whoever comes in next will have to figure out what to do about Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a very tough call. And I get very depressed just thinking about it.

Most of the solutions I can think of are unacceptable.
 

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Posted by fallow (Member # 6268) on :
 
did it ever strike anyone during the last election campaign that George Jr. just didn't really want the job?

fallow
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
You mean as in he ran because it was the family busineess and his daddy expected it of him? Like attending Yale and being a pilot?

Ooohhh...interesting to ponder.

This is just one example of why I like your posts fallow...


 

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Posted by fallow (Member # 6268) on :
 
Bob,

No. Just his body language in public appearances.

fallow
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
Ah...

Never underestimate the power of body language.


 

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Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :
 
Bob, much as I hate to say it, you may be right that we should have waited a couple of years.

Because then we'd have a Democrat to blame for the mess.

This was going to happen, one way or another, some time or another. And I doubt anything but the time and the particular people involved would have changed.
 

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Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
 
Bob-- you should clap your hands and shout for joy at the idea of getting a secret clearance.

Clearance means that you can negotiate a larger salary.

At least it does here in the DC area. . .
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 

quote:

---

And we currently can't say anything bad about America -- or even recommend a bit of soul searching -- without being blasted as unpatriotic or downright treasonous.

---

quote:

---

Xavier, (edit...)

I would remind you that there are those of us who support The US efforts in Iraq and, in spite of the mistakes that were and will be made there, think it was the right and appropriate thing to do, and who are most decidedly not bigoted and ignorant and, quite frankly, I would appreciate it if you would take those implications back.

---

quote:

---

do the human race a favor and remove yourself from the gene pool

---

Nice. Now Xavier gets to decide who's worthy to either exist or reproduce based on political opinions.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
 
Well, Dag, Xav is just echoing another old American project - except when the State engaged in its experiment in controlling breeding, it was class-based, rather than selecting according to ideological beliefs.

There are three heroes we should all be thankful to --

1. The MP who reported the abuse to authorities (apparently the only one).

2. The individual, presumably in the military, who made sure the photos got out so that keeping the abuses secret would not be an option.

3. The individual, also presumably in the military, who released the internal investigative report on prison abuses to journalist Seymour Hersh, making sure the public knew how long the military has known about this, what they've found, and making sure it gets to be public - as it should be.

Today, on Hardball, Rumsfeld says he hasn't seen the report yet.

Why do I have a hard time believing that? Rumsfeld's strikes me as the type who would have demanded to see a copy as soon as he heard about it just so he could figure out how to do damage control.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
I think I'm more upset if he's telling the truth. You're the Secretary of Defense, and you haven't read this report yet? I'd think you'd free up an hour or two to take a look at the thing.

Has the MP been identified? How much do we know about how long he was there, etc.? Part of me would like to think we could have owned up to this and faced it without having the pictures be released, but I guess that's unlikely, eh?

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Fishtail (Member # 3900) on :
 
sndrake,

It's not inconceivable that Rumsfeld hasn't seen the report yet. There's a certain chain-of-command and set of procedures for things to go through in the military, and while it's no doubt working its way to him, sometimes that does take a bit of time. Especially where the Army is concerned.
 

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Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
 
Fishtail,

Rumsfeld is perfectly capable and willing to streamline those chains when it's something he needs.

My comment isn't based on seeing Rumsfeld as a stupid guy. I disagree with a lot about him, but he's very sharp. Given the extreme seriousness of this and the potential for added disaster to our relations in and outside of Iraq, it really is almost unbelievable he isn't being briefed on this - the report has been out for awhile and the investigation has been going on for months.

And it's within the department he has the most personal responsibility for.

Edit to add: One of the stories I read indicated that CBS agreed to delay airing of the story about abuse with the photos for a few weeks - I forget the exact reason. Knowing this was coming, I would expect Rumsfeld and others in the administration to be getting as much information as possible on the situation, if they hadn't been fully briefed already.

Chains of command and procedures are most rigid at the bottom - they get more flexible as you go higher up the chain of power, at least in matters like these.

[ May 02, 2004, 02:56 PM: Message edited by: sndrake ]
 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 
/snarky, pessimistic post incoming

Let's just jump to where this is eventually going to go and get it out of the way--what did Bush know and when did he know it?

Answer 1: (Usable in any situation which might reflect badly on someone)We can't possibly know what's going on. Who are we to make decisions about the war when we're not even there. And anyways, these things happen in war. You're all just obviously Bush h8ters out to undermine the country. Semper Fi!

Answer 2: Bush knew about the problems in the military prisons a long time a go. He authorized further torture and abuse because he hates Iraqis, liberty, and most of all, your dog. Party on, dude!

/snarky pessimism off

Sigh. We so need some kind of independent, investigative body that everyone trusts.
 

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Posted by Elizabeth (Member # 5218) on :
 
So it's more like an Eiffel Tower of command? (I am not being facetious. I tend to have to put a visual image to things)
 

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Posted by Fishtail (Member # 3900) on :
 
Perhaps Rumsfeld is showing respect for the commanders under him by not "streamlining" ie short-circuiting the way things are supposed to work. By doing so, he's expressing confidence in the military's ability to handle the situation. Chain-of-command and the actions of those at both ends is a bit more important, especially during crises, than most people realize.

By not streamlining the process, he allows things to be done correctly, legally, so that the rights of all concerned are upheld.

If he were to skip the chain, it would imply that the current commanders are not capable of handling the situation. By trusting those below him and waiting for them to do their jobs, he's supporting the military justice system.
 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 
Also, the idea that Rumsfeld hasn't seen these reports is ludicrous in about a million different ways. Did he hear about them and just not care, or did whoever handle the reports not think they mattered enough to hot foot it over to him? Really, enquiring minds want to know.
 

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Posted by Fishtail (Member # 3900) on :
 
I'd guess I'd have to ask what you, and the reporter (since I didn't see the article about when/where the question was asked)means by "reports"?

Official investigation reports or just media reports of the incident. If he hasn't seen media reports, then, yes, that's irresponsible at best and probably a lie at worst. But if it's the official report done by the Army, I'd stand by what I said above.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
When I worked with the Navy, we got requests for preliminary unfinished reports from Congress, the White House, and every level of the Secretary-level bureacracy on matters a lot less important than this. Rumsfield is lying, or sndrakes concern about how seriously we're taking this is well-placed.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Audeo (Member # 5130) on :
 
I supported this war all along. Maybe it could have been done later, but I don't think that politically there would have been enough support to do so at a different time. I never thought that there were weapons of mass destruction, they are irrelevant to the purpose of this war; to remove a sadistic and cruel dictator from power. I'm glad we succeeded, and even after hearing this, I'm not sorry we went to war.

However, this incident has completely ruined any American credibility. We can not stay in Iraq. It would be futile and counter-productive. Even if we support an interim government that government will fail, because anything associated with America will now be associated with these images in the minds of the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people will not see these soldiers as individual abberrations, they will see them reflected in the face of every person in uniform.

On top of that we've placed our own troop in an untenable situation. They are peace-keepers in a war zone. The resulting American-Iraqi fighting will grow bloodier and the dead will become more innocent as Iraq unifies against a common enemy; America. We've succeeded. We've deposed Saddam and opened the way for a new, fair government.

These recent events show that our military is not capable of providing a secure environment for that democracy to grow, and furthermore, our presence there will incite violence in remembrance of these events. Remember how Iraqi's toppled the statue of Saddam when he was deposed? That's how they will now react towards Americans.

We can't just abandon Iraq after throwing it into chaos. So we have a couple of options. We hand over control to the interim government and slowly phase out the Americans there, or we give the whole mess to the UN, apologize abjectly, and send lots of money, of course withdrawing every last American soldier from Iraq.

I like Bush as a president for a good many reasons, and I think he's done a good job. I don't think that he deserves any more culpability for the torture of Iraqis than you or I, unless proof can be given that he directly ordered this. I'll even argue that any negligence on his part (outside of actually seeing this abuse and not stopping it), while condemnable, is not a direct enough cause for him to be blamed.

No decent human being expects another human being to behave this way. Unfortunately, it does happen, but no one other than the depraved individuals involved are responsible for it. Not even Bush.

But our troops are no longer capable of doing anything worthwhile in Iraq. We need to bow out now, and however much I like Bush and his presidency, I will vote for whomever will promise me that we'll be out of Iraq by this time next year. There is simply no other option. We cannot rebuild trust of this kind. It's gone, and we need to go with it.
 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 

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We can not stay in Iraq.

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Those Pictures...
The pictures are horrific. I felt a multitude of things as I saw them... the most prominent feeling was rage, of course. I had this incredible desire to break something- like that would make things somehow better or ease the anger and humiliation. We’ve been hearing terrible stories about Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad for a while now, but those pictures somehow spoke like no words could.

Seeing those naked, helpless, hooded men was like being slapped in the face with an ice cold hand. I felt ashamed looking at them- like I was seeing something I shouldn’t be seeing and all I could think was, “I might know one of those faceless men...” I might have passed him in the street or worked with him. I might have bought groceries from one of them or sat through a lecture they gave in college... any of them might be a teacher, gas station attendant or engineer... any one of them might be a father or grandfather... each and every one of them is a son and possibly a brother. And people wonder at what happened in Falloojeh a few weeks ago when those Americans were killed and dragged through the streets...

All anyone can talk about today are those pictures... those terrible pictures. There is so much rage and frustration. I know the dozens of emails I’m going to get claiming that this is an ‘isolated incident’ and that they are ‘ashamed of the people who did this’ but does it matter? What about those people in Abu Ghraib? What about their families and the lives that have been forever damaged by the experience in Abu Ghraib? I know the messages that I’m going to get- the ones that say, “But this happened under Saddam...” Like somehow, that makes what happens now OK... like whatever was suffered in the past should make any mass graves, detentions and torture only minor inconveniences now. I keep thinking of M. and how she was 'lucky' indeed. And you know what? You won't hear half of the atrocities and stories because Iraqis are proud, indignant people and sexual abuse is not a subject anyone is willing to come forward with. The atrocities in Abu Ghraib and other places will be hidden away and buried under all the other dirt the occupation brought with it...

It’s beyond depressing and humiliating... my blood boils at the thought of what must be happening to the female prisoners. To see those smiling soldiers with the Iraqi prisoners is horrible. I hope they are made to suffer... somehow I know they won’t be punished. They’ll be discharged from the army, at best, and made to go back home and join families and cronies who will drink to the pictures and the way “America’s finest” treated those “Dumb I-raki terrorists”. That horrible excuse of a human, Janis Karpinski, will then write a book about how her father molested her as a child and her mother drank herself into an early death- that’s why she did what she did in Abu Ghraib. It makes me sick.

Where is the Governing Council? Where are they hiding now?

I want something done about it and I want it done publicly. I want those horrible soldiers who were responsible for this to be publicly punished and humiliated. I want them to be condemned and identified as the horrible people they are. I want their children and their children’s children to carry on the story of what was done for a long time- as long as those prisoners will carry along with them the humiliation and pain of what was done and as long as the memory of those pictures remains in Iraqi hearts and minds...

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Remember the days when every time you hear an Iraqi talk on TV you had to remember that they are talking with a Mukhabarat minder looking at them noting every word? We are back to that place.

You have to be careful about what you say about al-Sadir. Their hands reach every where and you don't want to be on their shit list. Every body, even the GC is very careful how they formulate their sentences and how they describe Sadir's Militias. They are thugs, thugs thugs. There you have it.

I was listening to a representative of al-sadir on TV saying that the officers at police stations come to offer their help and swear allegiance. Habibi, if they don't they will get killed and their police station "liberated". Have we forgotten the threat al-Sadir issued that Iraqi security forces should not attack their revolutionary brothers, or they will have to suffer the consequences.

Dear US administration,
Welcome to the next level. Please don't act surprised and what sort of timing is that: planning to go on a huge attack on the west of Iraq and provoking a group you know very well (I pray to god you knew) that they are trouble makers.

Oh and before I forget.........Help please.

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In general, U.S. civilian contract personnel (Titan Corporation, CACI, etc….), third-country nationals and local contractors do not appear to be properly supervised within the detention facility at Abu Ghraib. During our on-site inspection, they wandered about with too much unsupervised free access in the detainee area…. Several interviewees insisted that the MP and MI Soldiers at Abu Ghraib received regular training on the basics of detainee operations; however, they have been unable to produce any verifying documentation, sign-in rosters or soldiers who can recall the content of this training.

The various detention facilities operated by the 800th MP Brigade have routinely held persons brought to them by other government agencies (OGAs) without accounting for them, knowing their identities, or even the reason for their detention. The Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib called these detainees "ghost detainees." On at least one occasion, the 320th MP Battalion at Abu Ghraib held a handful of "ghost detainees" (6-8) for OGAs that they moved around within the facility to hide them from a visiting International Committee of the Red Cross survey team. This maneuver was deceptive, contrary to Army Doctrine and in violation of international law….

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"In November I talked to Mr Bremer about human rights violations in general and in jails in particular. He listened but there was no answer. At the first meeting, I asked to be allowed to visit the security prisoners, but I failed," Turki told AFP on Monday.

"I told him the news. He didn't take care about the information I gave him."

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The reprimands are not aimed at anyone suspected of carrying out abuses - they are for failure to supervise correctly. Nor is there any hint that this is the extent of punishments to be meted out.

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Two tragedies took place in 1968 in Viet Nam. One was the massacre by United States soldiers of as many as 500 unarmed civilians-- old men, women, children-- in My Lai on the morning of March 16. The other was the cover-up of that massacre.

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Meanwhile, the rampage below continued. Calley was at the drainage ditch on the eastern edge of the village, where about seventy to eighty old men, women, and children not killed on the spot had been brought. Calley ordered the dozen or so platoon members there to push the people into the ditch, and three or four GIs did. Calley ordered his men to shoot into the ditch. Some refused, others obeyed. One who followed Calley's order was Paul Meadlo, who estimated that he killed about twenty-five civilians. (Later Meadlo was seen, head in hands, crying.) Calley joined in the massacre. At one point, a two-year-old child who somehow survived the gunfire began running towards the hamlet. Calley grabbed the child, threw him back in the ditch, then shot him.

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The strongest government case was that against Lt. William Calley. On November 12, 1970, in a small courthouse in Fort Benning, Georgia, young Prosecutor Aubrey Daniel stood to deliver his opening statement: "I want you to know My Lai 4. I will try to put you there." Captain Daniel told the jury of six military officers the shocking story of Calley's role in My Lai's tragedy: his machine-gunning of people in the plaza area south of the hamlet; his orders to men to execute men, women, and children in the eastern drainage ditch; his butt-stroking with his rifle of an old man; his grabbing of a small child and his throwing of the child into the ditch, then shooting him at point-blank range. Daniel told the jury that at the close of evidence he would ask them to "in the name of justice" convict the accused of all charges.

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After thirteen days of deliberations, the longest in U. S. court-martial history, the jury returned its verdict: guilty of premeditated murder on all specifications. After hearing pleas on the issue of punishment, jury head Colonel Clifford Ford pronounced Calley's sentence: "To be confined at hard labor for the length of your natural life; to be dismissed from the service; to forfeit all pay and allowances."

IV.

Opinion polls showed that the public overwhelmingly disapproved of the verdict in the Calley case [OPINION POLLS]. President Nixon ordered Calley removed from the stockade and placed under house arrest. He announced that he would review the whole decision. Nixon's action prompted Aubrey Daniel to write a long and angry letter in which he told the President that "the greatest tragedy of all will be if political expediency dictates the compromise of such a fundamental moral principle as the inherent unlawfulness of the murder of innocent persons" [AUBREY LETTER]. On November 9, 1974, the Secretary of the Army announced that William Calley would be paroled. In 1976, Calley married. He now works in the jewelry store of his father-in-law in Columbus, Georgia.

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But I don't think the perpetrators will be punished based on the larger picture of making Americans more hated. Ironically, it was before this story broke that I heard an Egyptian quoted as saying Americans have never been more hated.

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Torture and abuse of prisoners is obviously wrong and sickening and has to stop. Because this is America, we will see that it stops. These people will be prosecuted.

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Terrorism-

The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

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That private contractors are interrogators in U.S. prison camps in Iraq should be stunning enough. This is incredibly sensitive work and takes our experiment with the boundaries of military outsourcing to levels never anticipated. But even more outrageous is the fact that gaps in the law may have given them a free pass so that it could be impossible to prosecute them for alleged criminal behavior.

Most people by now know that in an attempt to fill the gap between the demand for professional forces and the limited number deployed by the Pentagon, an array of traditional military and intelligence roles have been outsourced in Iraq, all without public discussion or debate. There are 15,000 to 20,000 private military contractors operating in Iraq, outsourcing critical military roles from logistics and local army training to guarding installations and convoys. This outsourcing to private companies represents a sea change in the way we fight a war.

However, until the last few days, not many Americans were aware that private firms were also providing interrogators and translators in the prisons. According to recent reports, the Army's investigation on the abuses committed at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad in November and December named Virginia-based CACI International Inc. and San Diego-based Titan Corp. Titan, however, denies having contracts that involve working with prisoners.

The Army investigation discovered such depraved behavior as making prisoners perform simulated sex acts and form naked human pyramids and putting "glow sticks" in bodily orifices. The perpetrators even took more than 60 photographs, including one showing an Iraqi prisoner standing on a box with his head covered and wires attached to his hands and genitals. He was told that if he fell off the box he would be electrocuted. One civilian contractor was even accused of raping a male juvenile prisoner.

The Army has responded swiftly and correctly, at least with regard to its soldiers. Seventeen soldiers were relieved of duty and six face court-martial. As Army spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmit said: "We're appalled... they wear the same uniform as us, and they let their fellow soldiers down... . These acts that you see in these pictures may reflect the actions of individuals, but, by God, it doesn't reflect my Army."

But although the military has established structures to investigate, prosecute and punish soldiers who commit crimes, the legal status of contractors in war zones is murky. Soldiers are accountable to the military code of justice wherever they are, but contractors are civilians - not formally part of the military and not part of the chain of command. They cannot be court-martialed.

Normally, an individual's crimes would then fall under the local nation's laws. But, of course, there are few established Iraqi legal institutions - that is why we are running prisons in Iraq in the first place - and, besides, coalition regulations explicitly state that contractors don't fall under their scope.

In turn, because the acts were committed abroad, and also reportedly involve some contractors who are not U.S. citizens, the application of U.S. domestic law in an extraterritorial setting is unclear and has never been tested. This appears to leave an incredible vacuum.

So far, none of the contractors involved have been criminally prosecuted. As for the contractor accused of raping a prisoner in his mid-teens, Central Command spokesperson Col. Jill Morgenthaler told the British newspaper the Guardian: "We had no jurisdiction over him. It was left up to the contractor on how to deal with him." It is clear that our policies on military contractors must be updated.

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BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer first heard of allegations that troops were mistreating Iraqi captives at Abu Ghraib prison in January, a spokesman said Friday. The Red Cross claimed it had been warning of prisoner abuse throughout Iraq since the very beginning of the U.S.-led invasion.

In mid-January, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, announced an investigation into allegations of mistreatment of prisoners at a coalition detention facility in Iraq - prompted by complaints of a U.S. guard at Abu Ghraib who told his superiors he could not tolerate abuses he had witnessed.

The international Red Cross, meanwhile, said Friday it had warned U.S. officials of abuse of prisoners in Iraq more than a year ago, shortly after the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion.

It continued giving verbal and written reports through to November, including detailed allegations of mistreatment at Abu Ghraib.

Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the abuse represented more than isolated acts, and the problems were not limited to the Abu Ghraib prison.

"We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts. There was a pattern and a system," he told a news conference in Geneva.

He confirmed that a leaked ICRC report to U.S. authorities, published Friday by the Wall Street Journal, was genuine.

The newspaper said that the 24-page report described prisoners kept naked in total darkness in empty cells at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and male prisoners forced to parade around in women's underwear. Coalition forces also fired on unarmed prisoners from watchtowers, killing some of them.

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This seems far too specific and extensive with specific sources and details to be fabricated. This is pretty ridicuolous to have allowed this kind of treatment to go on since our entry into Iraq.

Just something to caution about before you reply: Please, if you want to discuss this refrain from making generic statements of how the Red Cross is merely anti-American and therefore not credible, that's not a valid argument in this documented, specific, and long-standing case.
 

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Posted by Telperion the Silver (Member # 6074) on :
 
*sigh*

The main losers in all this will be the Iraqi people. I don't really like Bush, but what he said the other day is very true: The enemies of America will use these unfortunate images to remind people of their dislike for America.

Already they are being shown again and again and again on the Arab networks...

And, even as a lover of Truth and offerings to Apollo, have to question the wisdom of our media leaking this. If the American mission in Iraq is sabotaged it will mean mass death and virtual enslavement for it's people. Already the thugs and warlords are trying to carve out their own little mini-kingdoms using the Iraqi people's ignorance and paranoia against them.

I guess my thought that maybe the media could or should have keep it quiet is moot...they would have come out eventually anyway I guess.

But what is more important? Truth that may speed the failure of the mission and the death/enslavement of the Iraqi people? Or silence that may help the mission?

I don't know... both choices seem bad. But I guess the final analysis being loyal to the truth must be done.
Gods what a mess. I'm glad that Bush took a hand in this personally to apologize.

A little factoid, my uncle who is a colonel in the military said that the general in charge of the investigation is a good friend of his and very cool. We can trust that whatever he finds will be the truth, embarrasing though it may be.
 

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Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
 

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Thank you Dan. We need to keep reminding ourselves and the muslim world of this. People will be prosecuted, not promoted over these abuses.

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A little factoid, my uncle who is a colonel in the military said that the general in charge of the investigation is a good friend of his and very cool. We can trust that whatever he finds will be the truth, embarrasing though it may be.

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"We don't tolerate these type of abuses," Bush told Al-Arabiya television, a satellite channel based in the United Arab Emirates. He said there was "more than an allegation, in this case, actual abuse -- we saw the pictures. There will be a full investigation."

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"The American people are just as appalled" as Iraqis, Bush said in the same interview. "People in Iraq must understand that I view those practices as abhorrent. They must also understand that what took place in that prison does not represent the America that I know," Bush said.

"The America I know is a compassionate country that believes in freedom. The America I know cares about every individual. The America I know has sent troops into Iraq to promote freedom -- good honorable citizens that are helping Iraqis everyday," he said.

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Yet it is still 10,000 better than the treatment of prisoners under Sadaam Hussein.

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Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told congressional investigators that videos and "a lot more pictures" exist of the abuse of prisoners at the prison. "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "I mean, I looked at them last night, and they're hard to believe."

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Gosh. That makes me feel better.....
 

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Posted by plaid (Member # 2393) on :
 
From a Washington Post editorial:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5840-2004May5.html

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Mr. Rumsfeld's Responsibility
Thursday, May 6, 2004

THE HORRIFIC abuses by American interrogators and guards at the Abu Ghraib prison and at other facilities maintained by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan can be traced, in part, to policy decisions and public statements of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Beginning more than two years ago, Mr. Rumsfeld decided to overturn decades of previous practice by the U.S. military in its handling of detainees in foreign countries. His Pentagon ruled that the United States would no longer be bound by the Geneva Conventions; that Army regulations on the interrogation of prisoners would not be observed; and that many detainees would be held incommunicado and without any independent mechanism of review. Abuses will take place in any prison system. But Mr. Rumsfeld's decisions helped create a lawless regime in which prisoners in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been humiliated, beaten, tortured and murdered -- and in which, until recently, no one has been held accountable.

The lawlessness began in January 2002 when Mr. Rumsfeld publicly declared that hundreds of people detained by U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan "do not have any rights" under the Geneva Conventions. That was not the case: At a minimum, all those arrested in the war zone were entitled under the conventions to a formal hearing to determine whether they were prisoners of war or unlawful combatants. No such hearings were held, but then Mr. Rumsfeld made clear that U.S. observance of the convention was now optional. Prisoners, he said, would be treated "for the most part" in "a manner that is reasonably consistent" with the conventions -- which, the secretary breezily suggested, was outdated.

In one important respect, Mr. Rumsfeld was correct: Not only could captured al Qaeda members be legitimately deprived of Geneva Convention guarantees (once the required hearing was held) but such treatment was in many cases necessary to obtain vital intelligence and prevent terrorists from communicating with confederates abroad. But if the United States was to resort to that exceptional practice, Mr. Rumsfeld should have established procedures to ensure that it did so without violating international conventions against torture and that only suspects who truly needed such extraordinary handling were treated that way. Outside controls or independent reviews could have provided such safeguards. Instead, Mr. Rumsfeld allowed detainees to be indiscriminately designated as beyond the law -- and made humane treatment dependent on the goodwill of U.S. personnel.

Much of what has happened at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay is shrouded in secrecy. But according to an official Army report, a system was established at the camp under which military guards were expected to "set the conditions" for intelligence investigations. The report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba says the system was later introduced at military facilities at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, even though it violates Army regulations forbidding guards to participate in interrogations.

The Taguba report and others by human rights groups reveal that the detention system Mr. Rumsfeld oversees has become so grossly distorted that military police have abused or tortured prisoners under the direction of civilian contractors and intelligence officers outside the military chain of command -- not in "exceptional" cases, as Mr. Rumsfeld said Tuesday, but systematically. Army guards have held "ghost" prisoners detained by the CIA and even hidden these prisoners from the International Red Cross. Meanwhile, Mr. Rumsfeld's contempt for the Geneva Conventions has trickled down: The Taguba report says that guards at Abu Ghraib had not been instructed on them and that no copies were posted in the facility.

The abuses that have done so much harm to the U.S. mission in Iraq might have been prevented had Mr. Rumsfeld been responsive to earlier reports of violations. Instead, he publicly dismissed or minimized such accounts. He and his staff ignored detailed reports by respected human rights groups about criminal activity at U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan, and they refused to provide access to facilities or respond to most questions. In December 2002, two Afghan detainees died in events that were ruled homicides by medical officials; only when the New York Times obtained the story did the Pentagon confirm that an investigation was underway, and no results have yet been announced. Not until other media obtained the photos from Abu Ghraib did Mr. Rumsfeld fully acknowledge what had happened, and not until Tuesday did his department disclose that 25 prisoners have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. Accountability for those deaths has been virtually nonexistent: One soldier was punished with a dishonorable discharge.

On Monday Mr. Rumsfeld's spokesman said that the secretary had not read Mr. Taguba's report, which was completed in early March. Yesterday Mr. Rumsfeld told a television interviewer that he still hadn't finished reading it, and he repeated his view that the Geneva Conventions "did not precisely apply" but were only "basic rules" for handling prisoners. His message remains the same: that the United States need not be bound by international law and that the crimes Mr. Taguba reported are not, for him, a priority. That attitude has undermined the American military's observance of basic human rights and damaged this country's ability to prevail in the war on terrorism.

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...the practice of using MPs to help break down prisoners may have been imported from the Guantanamo Bay prison complex and possibly others in Afghanistan used to hold terrorist suspects.

The Guantanamo Bay prison complex was run by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller. In late August 2003, Miller conducted an inquiry on interrogation and detention procedures in Iraq and suggested that prison guards could help set conditions for the interrogation of prisoners, according to the Taguba Report [which also states that use of military guards for interrogation is illegal under Army regulations].

Most of the alleged abuses at Abu Ghraib took place from October to December 2003.

Last week, the military announced Miller had been appointed chief of the US-run prisons in Iraq.

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It appears that Rumsfeld deliberately didn't read the report, and Dubya deliberately didn't have Rumsfeld pass along information inregards to prisoner abuse and torture, to maintain "plausible deniability" as to what their right-hand man in Guantanamo was up to.

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But from the very beginning, the military tried to cover up the massacre. And that wasn't all. Thompson is uncomfortable talking about it, but before the Hall of Fame ceremony in Nashville, he and Colburn told 60 Minutes that the U.S. military had stopped providing him with adequate back-up on his chopper missions after My Lai.

“He was placed in a very precarious position as far as the missions that he was carrying out,� says Colburn. “He didn’t have any adequate cover in my opinion. Instead of being followed by two armed gun ships, he had another scout helicopter.�

Scout helicopters are not equipped with the machine guns and rockets carried by the larger Huey gun ships.

“It seemed like he was really going out on a limb when he was going out without adequate cover,� says Colburn.

How many choppers did he lose? “I think three or four, something like that,� says Thompson.

Actually, Thompson crashed a total of five times. And the last time, he broke his back.

Why has none of this ever been told before? “I don’t know,� says Thompson. “I just sorta like went underground. I didn’t mention it to anybody.�

Thompson may have clammed up, but word of what he had done followed him when he returned from Vietnam to the United States. And he kept paying a price for turning on his fellow soldiers at My Lai.

“I'd received death threats over the phone,� says Thompson. “We didn’t have caller ID. But it was scary. Dead animals on your porch, mutilated animals on your porch some mornings when you get up. So I was not a good guy.�

He said that when he went to the Officer’s Club, there would be “100 people in there after work, and five minutes after I was there, you know, it seemed like it was me and the bartender left.�

“This was because the truth, I don't think, was out there. This was, I was somebody that was crying and whining about a few people getting accidentally killed,� says Thompson. “There was no accidental killing that day. It was murder.�

But when Thompson testified about those murders to Congress in 1970, his testimony was kept secret. He says they didn’t want the story out: “Well, not when one of the senior Congressmen here in the secret testimony say if anybody goes to jail that day, it'll be that helicopter pilot.�

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WASHINGTON -- The author of an Army report that exposed "sadistic, blatant and wanton" abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, is scheduled to testify today on Capitol Hill.

The testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee comes one day after President George W. Bush extended his embattled defense chief a full-throated endorsement for a "superb job," then went into Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon office for his first private glimpse of Iraqi prisoner abuse pictures never seen in public.

Bush saw more than a dozen images blown up into roughly 8-inch by 10-inch color prints, a "representative sample" of the kind of abuse seen in hundreds of pictures now part of criminal investigations at Abu Ghraib prison, one senior Defense official said.

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hindsight, it seems clear that Pfc. England is a villain, and that Spec. Darby is a hero. Yet nothing in the biography of either predicts those labels. England's lawyer describes her as a "20-year-old farm girl from West Virginia who lives in a trailer park" -- almost the same socioeconomic profile as Jessica Lynch. England's friends have described her as normal, happy, well-adjusted. "It's not like her to be like that," a family friend says of the photos. "She's a caring person." According to her mother, Lynndie England joined the army to pay for college: She loved thunderstorms, and wanted to be a meteorologist.

But if England's biography contains no clues, neither does that of Darby. He, too, lived in a coal town, in a household headed by a disabled stepfather. To make ends meet, he worked the night shift at Wendy's. If that sounds potentially heroic, look closer. It seems Darby was well known, in his days at North Star High School in southwest Pennsylvania, for punching out paper towel dispensers. His former girlfriend remembers him "pounding" on someone who insulted him on a school bus. When a Washington Post reporter told one of Darby's other high school friends of his heroic decision to protest the mistreatment of prisoners, the man shook his head and said, "That don't sound like Joe."

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Last month, Iraqi militants videotaped the killing of Italian hostage Fabrizio Quattrocchi. The Arab TV network al-Jazeera refused to air the footage, saying it was too graphic.

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WASHINGTON - The abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops went beyond the photos seen by most Americans, shaken lawmakers said Wednesday after viewing fresh pictures and video that they said depicted forced sex, brutality and dogs snarling at cowed prisoners.

*snip*

"I don't know how the hell these people got into our army," said Colorado Republican Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell after viewing what he called a fraction of the images.

"I saw cruel, sadistic torture," said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., who said some of the images were of male prisoners masturbating. She said she saw a man hitting himself against a wall as though to knock himself unconscious.

Others said they saw images of corpses, military dogs snarling at cowering prisoners, women commanded to expose their breasts and sex acts, including forced homosexual sex.

"There were people who were forced to have sex with each other," said Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y.

Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., said, "There were some pictures where it looked like a prisoner was sodomizing himself" with an object. He said blood was visible in the photograph.

Not everyone reacted the same way to the additional photos.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said he thought "some people are overreacting."

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"Excuse me, if I see somebody dragging my people through the streets and hung up on a bridge -- I mean, the bible even says an eye for an eye," said retired Vietnam War veteran Robert Zalewski, 56, drinking a beer at Pete's Parkview Tavern and Grill.

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Two new photographs have surfaced from Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, showing U.S. soldiers posing and smiling over the body of an Iraqi detainee.
In the photos, aired Thursday, by two U.S. television networks, Army Specialists Charles Graner and Sabrina Harman give a "thumbs up" signal as they kneel over the man's body, which is lying on the floor packed in ice. It was not clear when the photos were taken.

The U.S. television network ABC identifies the dead prisoner as Manadel al-Jamadi, and says he was beaten to death by civilian or CIA interrogators in the prison's showers.

The case is one of three detainee deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan being investigated by the CIA's inspector general.

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I'd like a larger photo.

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The video begins with three soldiers huddled around a naked detainee, his thin frame backed against a wall. With a snap of his wrist, one of the soldiers slaps the man across his left cheek so hard that the prisoner's knees buckle. Another detainee, handcuffed and on his back, is dragged across the prison floor.

Then, the human pyramid begins to take shape. Soldiers force hooded and naked prisoners into crouches on the floor, one by one, side by side, a soldier pointing to where the next ones should go. The grainy video stops. But there is more.

In a collection of hundreds of so-far-unreleased photographs and short digital videos obtained by The Washington Post, U.S. soldiers are shown physically and emotionally abusing detainees last fall in the Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

More vivid images
The new pictures and videos go beyond the photos previously released to the public in several ways, amplifying the overt violence against detainees and displaying a variety of abusive techniques previously unseen. They show a group of apparently cavalier soldiers assaulting prisoners, forcing detainees to masturbate, and standing over a naked prisoner while holding a shotgun. Some of the videos echo scenes in previously released still photographs -- such as the stacking of naked detainees -- but the video images render the incidents more vividly.

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But the truth is, most of us would.

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