It is just barely possible that this situation will result in the way the military establishment handles such cases. The general method in the past has been to try lower ranks by court martial and use administrative punishment for high ranks.
There was quite a discussion onThe News Hour last night, May 10. In it Mr. Eugene Fidell, President, National Institute of Military Justice said, * "What these cases raise is the question of how responsibility should be assigned. What kind of punishment regime should apply to what are effectively crimes of command, crimes of oversight, crimes of carefulness or lack of carefulness?
And thus far the U.S. military has tended to use administrative sanctions such as a reprimand or non-judicial punishment. That may strike people as unfair in a case like this, where you have people at the lower end of the official hierarchy who are being taken to courts-martial, whereas people at the upper end are going to get reprimands and then probably permitted to retire. And the juxtaposition of those two outcomes may raise some questions as to whether we should move to a more formal or move back to a more formal process."*
We shall see whether or not any stratospheric ranks get court martialed, chastized and allowed to retire “for the good of the service,” or told to clean things up and left in their present jobs.
Dammit! In that first sentence between the first “in” and the following “the” insert “a change in”
Found this at Ugga Bugga:
Diagramming the situation
And the article from which the digram was created:
Chain of Command
The diagram does help clear up the confusion with regards to the civilian interrogators. However, I don’t quite know why people in the 205th MI had authority over the MPs 372nd. It appears it’s clear violation of the normal chain of command. Unless, of course, the MPs got orders from their superiors to follow the orders from the 205th. If I understand correctly, Karpinski has stated that she didn’t authorize this change in command.
Being prior military, I am amazed that noone in the 372nd didn’t relay information up the chain of command regarding this violation/confusion. Troops are reluctant to follow orders from someone who isn’t in their chain of command unless they are told specifically to do so (note: reluctant in the sense of a particular task not falling within the guidelines/missions of a particular unit; I am well aware that if an officer/NCO tells a subordinate to do a simple task, then they do it).
I think even Taguba outlined this in his report - that what the MPs were doing was in violation of their mission/regs. Senior NCOs from the 372nd at the very least should have been bitching and complaining that what they were asked to do wasn’t part of their mission (nor in the regs). Junior officers I can somewhat excuse for not knowing the mission/reg requirements (although not entirely), but not senior NCOs. Hell, it’s the senior NCOs that keep the military functioning according to rules/regs (this coming from a former junior officer!).
I’m just wondering if one of the problems stems from the fact that these were reservists and not regular army. In other words, maybe these reserve MPs didn’t know the full extent of their mission/regs like those in the regular army would. Thus, they were more easily swayed in following orders from people outside their immediate chain of command and to engage in activities that were not specifically part of their mission. This doesn’t excuse what the MPs did - however, what it does highlight is a clear beakdown/confusion in the normal chain of command.