Why would what’s happened necessarily be a “Systemic Failure”?
General A tells Colonel B tells Major C tells Captain D tells Lieutenant E tells Sergent F tells Corporal G tells Private H* to “Get me some gawddamn information I can use from some of them prisoners. I don’t care what you gotta do.”
A couple deaths, some torture, some videos and photos.
General A gave orders demanding intelligence and the people below him did what was necessary to attempt to provide it.
Sounds like the system worked exactly as it was supposed to.
The whole thing is, though, that the report IS a complete whitewash. The “so-called” ghost prisoners aren’t even covered. The guys who are so secret nobody even knows how many there are…
But I’m sure they’re being treated well. After all, they’re in US’er hands, not the hands of someone who would hurt them, like Hussein.
*damn, I was so hoping to get to Private I
-Joe, busy being cynical
It is a systematic failure (or a deliberate unlawfulness) because Western armies do not work on a system that designates a result at the top and lets the poor grunt at the tip of the spear get those results any way his fancy strikes him. Commanders designate an objective and the method the objective is to be accomplished. To the extent method is not specified method is designated by recognized standard operating procedures, published regulations and published doctrines. That is why we have the dreaded seven and five paragraph operation orders, so every body knows the job and how the job is to be done.
A commander does not accept on trust that his directives are being carried out at all or being carried out according to his instructions. He checks on the performance of his subordinates. He sends out staff people to keep an eye on things and give help and additional instructions in the commanders name – thus the first question when told to do something by some jack leg staff officer is “by whose order.” The whole thing is set up to achieve a specified result by a specified method. That’s why it’s called command and control.
When people start going off and doing things the commander does not want done (especially when there is no opponent who prevents the subordinate from doing what the subordinate was told to do) it is a systemic failure. The system malfunctions. When it malfunctions over a significant length of time and nobody bothers to find out and tell the commander what is going on, or the commander once told does nothing, then we can safely think that either the subordinate was free lancing or the subordinate was doing precisely what the commander wanted done just the way the commander wanted it done.
You have a choice, either the whole thing was a gigantic screw up with a command structure that did not care or there was a deliberate under-the-rug prisoner abuse system.
A third alternative is that the Army just abrogated its responsibility to some non-uniformed agency and was simply providing the muscle and housekeeping for the CIA or the Defense Security Agency, or some other cloak and dagger bunch.
In any event, any alternative is reprehensible and certainly screws up any effort to win over the population of Iraq to the occupation or its present limited sovereignty quasi-government or any real government which may follow.