Since JamesCarroll is apparently incapable of looking for information about the scandal despite his newly-granted Mensa status, and I’m feeling charitable this morning, I thought I would help out with a few cites here. Forgive the length of this post, but I suspect asking JamesCarroll to click on a provided link might asking too much.
Excerpted from the “Taguba Report” on Treatment of Abu Ghraib Prisoners in Iraq [Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade, Part One (Detainee Abuse): Findings] (bolding mine):
Another interesting bit from Part Two of Taguba’s report:
And there’s much more in Taguba’s report. Informative and damning of U.S. command at the prison, even if you don’t read anything else. But why stop here?
Someone else posted this link in GD, but it’s worth repeating:
It hasn’t yet been brought up in this thread, but in case anyone thinks the abuse was just a few poorly trained yahoos at work, read this article (from The Washington Post; free registration required). Note the party of the senators quoted!
BTW, here is an article discussing the International Red Cross’s report on abuse of Iraqi prisoners, citing the percentage of mistakenly held individuals as up to 90 percent.
In SunFish’s post (#61) there is reference to Judge Advocate officers going to the New York State Bar Assn, apparently because nobody was paying any attention to their concerns, complaints, advice within military channels. There was a passing reference to this in this last Friday night’s Washington Week in Review on PBS, but otherwise I have not heard anything about this. Is there anything beyond the LA Times item that will flesh this out?
If true, and verified, it seems to me that the inability of the Army’s own in house uniformed legal staff to rectify abuse that they knew of is a pretty solid indication that the interrogation and prisoner handling practices in Iraq were tacitly approved of if not actually authorized and directed at pretty high levels in the Pentagon. Also disturbing is the reference to civilian (political) lawyers in, presumably, the Dept of Defense general council’s office involvement in drafting the rules to the exclusion of the uniformed lawyers in the Judge Advocate General’s office.
It is worth noting that General Taguba concluded that the Command Judge Advocate at the 800th MP Brigade was ineffective and sought to avoid responsibility for what was going on at the prison. General Taguba’s investigation report (made under the authority of Army Regulation 15-6, not under Article 15-6 of the UCMJ – there is no Article 15-6), was of the 800th PM Brigade, not the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade so that outfit’s activities were only tangentially involved in General Taguba’s investigation. The report does mention that along with the MI types (“spooks” in soldier parlance) the Iraq Survey Team, the people charged with by God finding the weapons of mass destruction, were also involved with the interrogations.
from:http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/05/10/scandal.tm/
But the horror stories keep coming. An Army investigation of conditions at Abu Ghraib concluded that prison guards had carried out “numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton abuse” for months. The Army is investigating reports of crimes committed at other detention facilities in Iraq.
Testifying before the Senate last Friday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the Pentagon has obtained more photos and video footage that show U.S. troops engaged in even worse behavior.
“We’re not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience,” Senator Lindsey Graham said. “We’re talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges.”
Characterizing objections as “partisan hollering” in no way serves to rebut them. It may be an accurate descriptor, but just because something is hollered, doesn’t mean that it is false.
Further, as to myself, I’m a registered Republican, a GOPTeamLeader from AR so the odds are that I’ve been sick of Slick Willie, (incidentally the name of pool hall a few blocks from the AR capital down by the tracks), for at least a good decade longer than you. So, even if Clinton had something to do with this issue and you had thereby brought up something relevant, you’d be proven wrong in your assertion that the hollerin’s limited by partisan lines by the fact that many who took issue with Clinton’s mendacity are also deeply disturbed by the current Admin’s perfidy. Clinton’s not a very good tsandard of comaprison. Comparing GWB to WJC and saying, “Well, he’s only as bad as Clinton,” is actually a condemnation of GWB. As Andrew Sullivan puts it the Bush Admin has “humiliated the United States by presenting false and misleading intelligence”
The Bush Admin deliberately conspired to thwart the electorate’s the right to deny consent.
You think I’m surprised by this Haynes guy getting nominated to the federal bench? Sorry, but that’s entirely typical of this administration. I was just reading a new story in Newsweek that discusses White House Counsel Al Gonzalez’s
You think I’m surprised by this Haynes guy getting nominated to the federal bench? Sorry, but that’s entirely typical of this administration. I was just reading a new story in Newsweek that discusses White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales’ advice to the President that America should dump the Geneva Convention entirely.
I knew Al Gonzales before he went to D.C. He was a decent and reasonable man, who I liked fairly well. What happened, Al?
From [url=http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4989422/minty’s link
Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner declared the pictures were the worst “military misconduct” he’d seen in 60 years, and he planned more hearings. Republicans on Capitol Hill were notably reluctant to back Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And NEWSWEEK has learned that U.S. soldiers and CIA operatives could be accused of war crimes. Among the possible charges: homicide involving deaths during interrogations. “The photos clearly demonstrate to me the level of prisoner abuse and mistreatment went far beyond what I expected, and certainly involved more than six or seven MPs,” said GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, a former military prosecutor. He added: “It seems to have been planned.”
We don’t need no pansy-ass conventions! We’re 'MURRICANS! Anybody mess with our soljers, we whup their ass! And if we can’t find 'em, we’ll round up a bunch of “likely suspects” and whup their ass!
Seriously (for me, at least): I remember Watergate, and I found the echoes eerily familiar. Like the Huston Plan, which would “coordinate” all intelligence-gathering apparatus (including the FBI and the CIA) using a superagency under Henry Kissinger. And, of course, the “plumbers.”
I certainly would not agree with the vacating of the Geneva Conventions, but all the same I think that doing so would have little to no impact upon how we are treated. In fact, it is assumed that when you are taken captive your captors will not abide by the Geneva Convention. Aircrew are required to get POW training, and I’m telling you, that is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s very abusive, and very realistic, and we all assume that that’s the way it will happen if we are captured.
None of us at risk of capture are unaware of what will happen to us if we are captured, and none of those things are legal under the Geneva Conventions.
The argument is that all this, this abomination, this savagery, this arrogance, is simply the Big Dawg approach to national power, just as explained by our old and honorable friend Scylla, so many months ago in the “Great Thanksgiving–Weapons of Mass Destruction Thread.” The United States being all powerful and all knowing has the right and duty to do what ever it wants to whom ever it wants, when ever it wants, where ever it wants, and has no duty to explain itself or justify its action to anybody. Clearly the conventions of government behavior mean nothing to this administration. Clearly its policies are short sighted and founded on the impulse to bulldoze any thing that gets in the way of its instant gratification. This administration appears to truly believe that might makes right and that the end, or the end hoped for, justifies any and all means.
Democracies are not suited to be empires. We can be one or the other. We can’t be both. Apparently each generation has to learn that lesion.
Please note that the occupation of Iraq has precious little to do with protecting our country from Jahadist horrors like September 11, 2001.
Airman Doors, that you received escape and evasion training and training in what to expect if you fall into enemy hands (as did I although your training was probably based on the Vietnam experience and mine on the Korean experience) does not it any way make the abuses we were trained to expect and cope with the accepted model for how we are expected to treat and deal with people who fall into our hands. Because our enemy might be portrayed as a savage brute does not mean that we, a civilized Western nation with an organized and disciplined armed force, and with a government answerable to the governed, should ourselves transform ourselves into savage brutes even more rabid than our enemy. Just as soon as that happens then the Jahadist have indeed won. We cannot trivialize and defend the treatment of people who have fallen into our hands by arguing that our behavior is no worse than our opponents and still retain some iota of self respect.
Believe me, I understand that. In no way did I advocate that we should torture people as a matter of course after capturing them, which is why I said that I “would not agree with the vacating of the Geneva Conventions”. My comments were in response to Reeder’s comments, to wit:
My response to that statement specifically addressed the fact that we expect horrible treatment anyway, and repudiation of the Geneva Conventions won’t change that expectation one bit. If Bush were to withdraw from the Geneva Conventions I could scarcely imagine a scenario worse than those that have already taken place.
I think the US did, in essence, withdraw secretly from enforcing the Geneva Conventions, and was caught out. I wan’t go so far as to say that it led directly to the beheading of an American, as loons who whill do such things can always find a justification for it.