Drop charges against Lynndie

[mcfbridge]

You keep saying "these animals," mcg.

Make some elementary distinctions.

The fellow with the knife who killed Berg is not Iraqi.

As with most terrorist actions, this is a provocation, pure and simple.

You're now supposed to be so blinded with outrage that you blame the Iraqis and avenge yourself on them. The al-Qaeda have been telling the Iraqis that we hate every muslim, and the Berg killing is a provocation by a foreign terrorist to make us fly off the handle and prove them right.

If our government bites this bait they are being used as puppets just as surely as if they had al-Qaeda's hand up their ass.

As to the relative nastiness of each side's crimes. hooey! The al-Qaeda who did this is surely not on the side of the Iraqis! If it works, the Iraqis will suffer insane reprisals!

You don't like him. Good. You don't like Iraqis. They didn't do this.

You may not like kohlrabi. But kohlrabi isn't on the same side as the Iraqis, either. You are lumping everyone together.

The charges at the three Iraqi prisons where the torture and abuse took place include some homicides and rapes, after weeks of touture and less serious abuse. It aint all panties and pigpiles, pard.

By animals, I mean the people who killed Mr. Berg, the people who set off bombs near women and children, the people who strap bombs to children and have them go commit suicide and kill as many civillians as they can.

I do NOT blame the average Iraqui, Palestinian, or any other group. I firmly believe that the average person in any culture has two main desires. Finding a way to survive and prosper, and taking care of his or her own family. The "animals" I am referreing to are as detrimental to those people as they are to anyone else.

Animals, frankly, could also refer to the American MPs who sexually abused, assaulted and tortured Iraqui prisoners. While the victims of this are hardly innocent boy scouts, that in now way permits American soldiers to act without honor and contrary to any civilized code of conduct.

What I will again say in our favor, is that Americans as a people are horrified by what has happened and we will see that there are consequences for it. I cannot say the same thing for any group on the Arab side.

I do not hear outrage from Iraqis or Palestinians or Syrians or Iranians (yes, I know Iranians aren't Arabs) over the suicide bombings in either Iraq or Israel. Nor over the murder of Mr. Berg. All I can conclude from this is that contrary to the specific teachings of the Koran, these governments both applaud and condone the killing of civillians as a legitimate form of protest.

This is the main reason I think of us as civilized and these other governments as barbarians.

 

[cantdog]

I do not hear outrage from Iraqis or Palestinians or Syrians or Iranians (yes, I know Iranians aren't Arabs) over the suicide bombings in either Iraq or Israel. Nor over the murder of Mr. Berg. All I can conclude from this is that contrary to the specific teachings of the Koran, these governments both applaud and condone the killing of civillians as a legitimate form of protest.

Honestly. If all you watch is Fox News and CNN, of course you won't hear this stuff. It's not that difficult to hear the BBC, read British papers once a week, or go online for it. Al-Ahram is online in English. There's a lot of things you "don't hear" if you rely entirely on the partisan press. Canadian papers. Anything at all. Try it. Try just the BBC, you won't even have to read, you can tune in NPR and close your eyes.

Clearly, if there's a suicide bombing, people's reactions in the street and in the circles of government IS the story, because you want to assess in what way and to what extent this essentially political action is really affecting politics. CNN and Fox News generally only ask talking heads and each other. Other places, reporters are paid to go out and get some news.

There's more outrage about the Israeli Defense Force bulldozing refugee camps and the like in the Israeli press than there is in the American press, where all this barbarity seems to pass without outrage or even mild censure.


cantdog

 

[shereads]

Honestly. If all you watch is Fox News and CNN, of course you won't hear this stuff. It's not that difficult to hear the BBC, read British papers once a week, or go online for it. Al-Ahram is online in English. There's a lot of things you "don't hear" if you rely entirely on the partisan press. Canadian papers. Anything at all. Try it. Try just the BBC, you won't even have to read, you can tune in NPR and close your eyes.
<snip>
There's more outrage about the Israeli Defense Force bulldozing refugee camps and the like in the Israeli press than there is in the American press, where all this barbarity seems to pass without outrage or even mild censure.

Anti-American propogandist pornographer on the loose!



Thanks, Cant. This is a point that can't be stressed enough. Commercial television and the commercial press feed us what interests us, because their advertisers demand it. We get an Americacentric emphasis on the news. Listen to BBC radio once a week or so on your local public radio station, or Google any foreign newspaper, or just listen to interviews with foreign nationals on NPR once in a while, and you won't have any reason to say that the Arab world doesn't care about brutality directed toward Americans. There is no one Arab world, or Arab viewpoint that enjoys seeing people beheaded. We're not popular for obvious reasons, but the news in-depth makes them more human.

 

[mcfbridge]

Honestly. If all you watch is Fox News and CNN, of course you won't hear this stuff. It's not that difficult to hear the BBC, read British papers once a week, or go online for it. Al-Ahram is online in English. There's a lot of things you "don't hear" if you rely entirely on the partisan press. Canadian papers. Anything at all. Try it. Try just the BBC, you won't even have to read, you can tune in NPR and close your eyes.

Clearly, if there's a suicide bombing, people's reactions in the street and in the circles of government IS the story, because you want to assess in what way and to what extent this essentially political action is really affecting politics. CNN and Fox News generally only ask talking heads and each other. Other places, reporters are paid to go out and get some news.

There's more outrage about the Israeli Defense Force bulldozing refugee camps and the like in the Israeli press than there is in the American press, where all this barbarity seems to pass without outrage or even mild censure.


cantdog

First of all, I completely reject your argument that the suicide bombings are a political act. They are no more a political act than was the holocaust, the killing fields of camboida, or the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia. They are simply murder and do not deserve in to be defended in any way as some political statement.

Second as to the Israeli bulldozings.

Those at are in response to a suicide bombing where they destroy the homes of those who participated in the murder are not barbarous acts. No one is killed and they do seem to reduce the number of terrorist acts.
Secondly, the Israelis do not target specifically civillians. In a war, collateral damage is unavoidable and if combatants are intentionally going to hide behind civillians then they can't complain when civillians are killed unintentionally in legitimate military actions.

To me, a terrorist act is one that intentionally attempts to kill civillians. For example, years ago, a group blew up a Marine barracks in Lebanon. As much as my heart goes out to the victims of that attack, I cannot classify that as a terrorist action. The bombing, whether you agree or disagree with it, as against a legitamate military target. On the other hand, setting of a bomb in a shopping center is neither political nor military, it is just murder and the purpotrator of such an act is not a combatant and is not protected by the Geneva convention or any other rules of warfare. He is just a common murderer and is subject to whatever laws apply in the nation that the act was committed in.

 

[Pure]

Here are some links for the Sabrina Harman pics with the corpse:

What a charming smile!

http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/3689167.stm

see third in series
----

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/006568.html

=====

mcfb: you split hairs and your efforts are self serving. it's the old,
"He sweats, I perspire" routine. consider Hiroshima.

 

[mcfbridge]

Here are some links for the Sabrina Harman pics with the corpse:

What a charming smile!

http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/3689167.stm

see third in series
----

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/006568.html

=====

mcfb: you split hairs and your efforts are self serving. it's the old,
"He sweats, I perspire" routine. consider Hiroshima.

As I believe I've said earlier, I have absolutely no problem with either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The US was attacked by Japan. At that point, the only responsibility of the US government is to limit the loss of American lives in any way possible. It came down to risking 100,000 American lives in an invasion of Japan, or an A-Bomb which risked no American lives. This was a no-brainer. Truman always claimed that he lost absolutely no sleep over this decision and frankly I don't see why he would have.

 

[Pure]

mcfb:
well, here's a similar no brainer: you can limit your losses to 20 lives, and majorly disrupt an enemy, internally, and in his foreign efforts. you can cause misguided retaliatory actions that will build your movement in dozens of lands.

WTC.

 

[Pure]

Interesting hobbies

http://www.freedominion.ca/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=236902

BABYFACED BRUTE:
Sabrina Harman, accused of photographing Iraqi prisoners, has had a penchant for corpse and crime-scene snaps since she was a kid.
Washington Post

May 9, 2004 --

The shocking photos of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners that rocked the world were snapped by a former pizza-house manager who grew up exposed to gruesome pictures of dead people, according to a published report.

Spc. Sabrina Harman, 26, an MP at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, has been accused by the Army of taking pictures of a nude human pyramid.

She also captured in photos and video tapes prisoners forced to strip and masturbate as fellow detainees and soldiers looked on, according to a charge sheet obtained by The Washington Post.

Harman, an Army reservist from Alexandria, Va., is also accused of photographing a corpse and then posing for a picture with it, as well as jumping on prisoners as they lay in a pile and writing "rapeist" on one detainee's leg.

Army documents say Harman also attached wires to a prisoner's hands while he stood on a box with his head covered, then told the prisoner he would be electrocuted if he fell off.



The young soldier's family said she's always had a fascination with stomach-churning photography.

Growing up, her homicide detective dad and forensic science buff mom constantly shared with their daughter grisly crime-scene photos.


"She has been looking at autopsies and crime-scene pictures since she was a kid," Robin Harman told the paper.

She said her daughter claims she took the photos at Abu Ghraib as evidence of the atrocities being committed there.

"Sabrina said she had to prove this," said Robin. "I told her to bring the pictures home, hide them and stay out of it."

Harman came home with hundreds of pictures during a leave last November. On Jan. 16, a CD of her photos and her laptop were taken by an Army investigator.

Harman, along with several others charged with abuse in the scandal, said the inhumane treatment was a direct order from Army intelligence officers, CIA operatives and civilian contractors who all conducted interrogations.

"They would bring in one to several prisoners at a time already hooded and cuffed," Harman told the paper in an e-mail from Iraq. "The job of the MP was to keep them awake, make it hell so they would talk."

Aside from being the main photographer, Harman also posed beside the pyramid of naked Iraqi detainees.

Before being called into active duty, Sabrina was an assistant manager at a Papa John's Pizza. Her mom said the photo fiasco has caused her daughter to scrap her dream of following in her father's footsteps.

"She just moved out [of the house] two years ago," Robin said. "She has no clue what people are really like. She thinks everyone is good."

Robin said her daughter would never hurt anyone.

 

[mcfbridge]

mcfb:
well, here's a similar no brainer: you can limit your losses to 20 lives, and majorly disrupt an enemy, internally, and in his foreign efforts. you can cause misguided retaliatory actions that will build your movement in dozens of lands.

WTC.

Not a valid comparison. Neither the Palestinians, nor Al-Quaida were attacked, they were the aggressors. Isreal did not start the bloodshed, the terrorists did. Also, the US did not initiate combat with the Arabs. You cannot take the moral highground when you simply begin by committing murder.

 

[Pure]

.
(deleted)
mcfb, there are several general politics threads where 'terrorism' murder and politics discussions are happening. maybe see ya there.

i'd like this to stay on the prison, torture, trial, justice etc., and US conduct in the Iraqi war. Also, the question of *who* the perpetrators are, and if they're bad apples or boys next door.

 

[Pure]

I hadn't realized it's Graner, one of the clear (low level) 'bad guys' who's the father of her baby. He's one with a prison guard background, iirc.

Several recent news stories point to Gen'l Sanchez as authorizing unusual interrogation methods. He's the director of the whole damned Iraq operation.

Isn't it nice that Bush is seeing to it that there are some Hispanic Republican generals?

J.




May 24, 2004 |
WASHINGTON (AP)

-- Lawyers for one of the soldiers accused of abusing prisoners in Iraq said Monday they will ask a military judge to throw out her confession, because they contend military investigators pressed her to talk after she had asked for an attorney.

Pfc. Lynndie England is one of seven soldiers facing military charges in connection with the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison. She appears in several of the most well-known photographs from the prison, including one where she is holding a leash attached to a collar around the neck of a naked prisoner.


One of England's civilian lawyers, Rose Mary Zapor, said Army agents had violated England's rights by questioning her after she had asked for an attorney. Zapor said England's legal team would seek to have the confessions thrown out.

"She had invoked her right to counsel, and those statements are illegal. In a civilian court, those would be immediately suppressed," Zapor told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Monday. Defendants in military courts have the same rights to lawyers that criminal defendants have in civilian courts.


Zapor declined to discuss what England said. News reports have said England acknowledged participating in the abuse of prisoners and insisted the mistreatment was approved by military intelligence operatives.

England, 21, is charged with assaulting Iraqi detainees, conspiring with Spec. Charles Graner Jr. to mistreat the prisoners and committing an indecent act by forcing prisoners to masturbate.

Zapor and another lawyer for England, Roy Hardy, said Monday they also will try to determine if the commanding general in Iraq knew about the abuses. The Washington Post reported Saturday that a military lawyer quoted a witness as saying the commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, was at Abu Ghraib during some of the abuses.

In a statement, the military said that allegation was false. [...]

Army officials have not scheduled England's Article 32 hearing -- the proceeding where military prosecutors present evidence and a judge decides whether or not to go forward with a court-martial.

That hearing likely will be at Fort Bragg, N.C., where England has been assigned because she is pregnant. Graner is charged with adultery for having sex with England last October.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The Reason For the Pictures

In the latest New Yorker, Seymour Hersh gives a reason for one of the most puzzling aspects of this whole scandal: why were the pictures taken in the first place?

The use of sexual humiliation and nudity was specifically chosen as a way of shaming Arabs. According to Hersh, a 1976 book called "The Arab Mind" because the Neocon's bible on the psychology of the middle-east. Through that book it was decided that Arabs could be manipulated through their senses of shame and pride.

The idea behind the pictures was that we'd be able to blackmail the detainees into becoming intelligence providers once they were released. The idea was that we'd threaten to shame them with the pictures unless they provided us with information. Hersh cites some unnamed intelligence agent as the source of this revelation.

If this is so it would imply that some one pretty high up on the policy ladder was designing the methods of abuse to be used.

---dr.M.

---dr.M.

 

[Pure]

Interesting stuff, mab. At the same time, some sexual degradation comes naturally to macho types like Graner, Fredericks, etc. And photos are trophies in many a war-- just more private, before the 'net!

The official nominees of the this thread for responsibility abuse are Goeffrey Miller and Thomas Pappas; those at the highest levels operating under a 'do what's necessary and don't show me the damn photos' policy.

Lynndie still appears to be among the smallest of the fish to fry, though she did wrong, and violated some parts of military conduct regulations (while following others).

Query and poll: Will Sanchez--head of the Iraq 'theater'-- be disciplined or cited in any way?

Now Miller and Pappas turn on each other:

General Is Said To Have Urged Use of Dogs

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A01


A U.S. Army general dispatched by senior Pentagon officials to bolster the collection of intelligence from prisoners in Iraq last fall inspired and promoted the use of guard dogs there to frighten the Iraqis, according to sworn testimony by the top U.S. intelligence officer at the Abu Ghraib prison.



According to the officer, Col. Thomas Pappas, the idea came from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who at the time commanded the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and was implemented under a policy approved by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top U.S. military official in Iraq.

"It was a technique I had personally discussed with General Miller, when he was here" visiting the prison, testified Pappas, head of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade and the officer placed in charge of the cellblocks at Abu Ghraib prison where abuses occurred in the wake of Miller's visit to Baghdad between Aug. 30 and Sept. 9, 2003.

"He said that they used military working dogs at Gitmo [the nickname for Guantanamo Bay], and that they were effective in setting the atmosphere for which, you know, you could get information" from the prisoners, Pappas told the Army investigator, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, said a transcript provided to The Washington Post.

Pappas, who was under pressure from Taguba to justify the legality and appropriateness of using guard dogs to frighten detainees, said at two separate points in the Feb. 9 interview that Miller gave him the idea. He also said Miller had indicated the use of the dogs "with or without a muzzle" was "okay" in booths where prisoners were taken for interrogation.

But Miller, whom the Bush administration appointed as the new head of Abu Ghraib this month, denied through a spokesman that the conversation took place.

"Miller never had a conversation with Colonel Pappas regarding the use of military dogs for interrogation purposes in Iraq. Further, military dogs were never used in interrogations at Guantanamo," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq.

Pappas's statements nonetheless provide the fullest public account to date of how he viewed the interrogation mission at Abu Ghraib and Miller's impact on operations there. Pappas said, among other things, that interrogation plans involving the use of dogs, shackling, "making detainees strip down," or similar aggressive measures followed Sanchez's policy, but were often approved by Sanchez's deputy, Maj. Gen. Walter Wodjakowski, or by himself.

The claims and counterclaims between Pappas and Miller concern one of the most notorious aspects of U.S. actions at Abu Ghraib, as revealed by Taguba's March 9 report and by pictures taken by military personnel that became public late last month. The pictures show unmuzzled dogs being used to intimidate Abu Ghraib detainees, sometimes while the prisoners are cowering, naked, against a wall.

Taguba, in a rare classified passage within his generally unclassified report, listed "using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees" as one of 13 examples of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" inflicted by U.S. military personnel at Abu Ghraib.

Experts on the laws of war have charged that using dogs to coerce prisoners into providing information, as was done at Abu Ghraib, constitutes a violation of the Geneva Conventions that protect civilians under the control of an occupying power, such as the Iraqi detainees.

"Threatening a prisoner with a ferocious guard dog is no different as a matter of law from pointing a gun at a prisoner's head and ordering him to talk," said James Ross, senior legal adviser at Human Rights Watch. "That's a violation of the Geneva Conventions."

Article 31 of the Fourth Geneva Convention bars use of coercion against protected persons, and Common Article Three bars any "humiliating and degrading treatment," Ross said. Experts do not consider the presence in a prison of threatening dogs, by itself, to constitute torture, but a 1999 United Nations-approved manual lists the "arranging of conditions for attacks by animals such as dogs" as a "torture method."

But Pappas, who was charged with overseeing interrogations at Abu Ghraib involving those suspected of posing or knowing about threats to U.S. forces in Iraq, told Taguba that "I did not personally look at that [use of dogs] with regard to the Geneva Convention," according to the transcript.

[end excerpts]

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Well, I see where Sanchez has been replaced. Part of the normal 'rotation', they say. Guess they're trying to get his ass out of there.

---dr.M.

 

[Pure]

if you're a general you get 'normal rotation'; if you're a private, you get screwed.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

if you're a general you get 'normal rotation'; if you're a private, you get screwed.

*LOL* (but shaking my head in agreement)

---dr.M.

 

[Pure]

Anyone following the Boykin story (the General who says fighting al qaeda is fighting Satan, and that GWB is God's envoy). Boykin and Cambone have a tight connection.


Jason Vest writes, in "Implausible Denial II," posted May 17, 2004, on The Nation:

"On Saturday, May 15--twenty-four hours after The Nation published Implausible Denial--The New Yorker posted on its website Seymour Hersh's latest Abu Ghraib-related investigative report. Its central revelation: The interrogations at Abu Ghraib were part of a highly classified Special Access Program (SAP) code-named Copper Green, authorized by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and ultimately overseen by Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone.

Originally a joint CIA-Pentagon program in Afghanistan that utilized highly trained Special Operations personnel, Copper Green eventually expanded to Iraq, Hersh reports, where Cambone decided it would begin using non-Special Operations personnel--including military intelligence officers and other military personnel--to begin questioning prisoners whose status was outside the program's original brief. The CIA objected and withdrew from the program, while Cambone apparently tasked Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, former Guantánamo Bay interrogations chief, with 'Gitmo-izing' Iraq's prison system.

"What may be more surprising than the revelations in Hersh's piece is the fact that leads to the Abu Ghraib skullduggery were hidden in plain sight--and that the Pentagon press corps all but ignored them. Though Cambone has been an exceptionally sub rosa figure in his position as DoD's intelligence chief, on November 21, 2003, he sat down for a rare on-record meeting over breakfast with the Defense Writers Group.

Again in contrast to his May 11 comments [before the Senate Armed Services Committee], in which he cast himself as a benign bureaucrat largely out of the loop, his November comments offer a glimpse into the mechanics of how Cambone's office was assertively taking the lead in coordinating intelligence operations in Iraq.

"Transcript : Taguba, Cambone on Abu Ghraib Report," Washington Post, May 11, 2004. Video.

"Noting first that his office has 'one group of people over to do an assessment' and that another was getting ready to go, Cambone said that 'the requirement for an increased level of intelligence support became increasingly evident as we went through a period between early July/late August....

"In that late August time frame, a delegation went over there from the Department and included people from the CIA to look at how we were structured, whether we had proper arrangement at the division level, whether that information, as it was being compiled at the divisional level, was being moved from that level up to the CJTF-7 (Combined Joint Task Force 7) level in an expeditious manner.'

"Cambone further stated that the group 'came back with a list of somewhere close to eighty or ninety recommendations,' and went on to describe a rapid infusion of personnel and technology for intelligence-related endeavors. He also noted that the Director of Central Intelligence, George J. Tenet, had 'made a number of adjustments in his complement of people in Iraq' as part of a 'concerted effort to lash up much more tightly the work that is done in the context of the CIA activities with those being done by the Department to ensure there is [a] cross-flow of information and cooperation.'

"The specifics of any of those eighty to ninety recommendations--as well as the nature of then-joint CIA/Department of Defense operations and the staffing and leadership of the August delegation to Iraq, which may have covered Miller's mission--were not, apparently, of interest to the members of the Defense Writers Group.

Though a few journalists elsewhere had raised concerns about the gray areas Defense Intelligence operations might be getting into--as well as Cambone's interest in bringing all uniformed Special Operations under his aegis--there were no follow-up questions, and Cambone's comments went virtually unreported.

"Cambone's remarks at the breakfast also bring into potentially clearer focus the role in Abu Ghraib of Lieut. Gen. William G. Boykin, his deputy for intelligence and warfighting support. 'It is an office,' Cambone says of Boykin's shop, 'that is designed to assure the types of capabilities we have just been talking about here, whether it is people, or it is resources, or it is material, or it is information, is moved forward to the people who need it at various levels of command and operation in order for them to execute their mission.'

 

[Pure]

Official sanction of abuse in US prisons. See last para of quote.

Bob Herbert, NY TIMES,

{abu ghraib situations at home [US]}

[excerpts]

On Oct. 23, 1996, officers from the Tactical Squad of the Georgia Department of Corrections raided the inmates' living quarters at Dooly State Prison, a medium-security facility in Unadilla, Ga. This was part of a series of brutal shakedowns at prisons around the state that were designed to show the prisoners that a new and tougher regime was in charge.

What followed, according to the lawsuit, was simply sick. Officers opened cell doors and ordered the inmates, all males, to run outside and strip. With female prison staff members looking on, and at times laughing, several inmates were subjected to extensive and wholly unnecessary body cavity searches. The inmates were ordered to lift their genitals, to squat, to bend over and display themselves, etc.

One inmate who was suspected of being gay was told that if he ever said anything about the way he was being treated, he would be locked up and beaten until he wouldn't "want to be gay anymore." An officer who was staring at another naked inmate said, "I bet you can tap dance." The inmate was forced to dance, and then had his body cavities searched.

An inmate in a dormitory identified as J-2 was slapped in the face and ordered to bend over and show himself to his cellmate. The raiding party apparently found that to be hilarious.

According to the lawsuit, Mr. Garner himself, the commissioner of the Department of Corrections, was present at the Dooly Prison raid.

None of the prisoners named in the lawsuit were accused of any improper behavior during the course of the raid. The suit charged that the inmates' constitutional rights had been violated and sought compensation for the pain, suffering, humiliation and degradation they had been subjected to.

Fat chance.

The Prison Litigation Reform Act, designed in part to limit "frivolous" lawsuits by inmates, was passed by Congress and signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1996. It specifically prohibits the awarding of financial compensation to prisoners "for mental or emotional injury while in custody without a prior showing of physical injury."

 

[Uther_Pendragon]

Was she less guilty than the oficers who ordered it?
Certainly. Was she less guilty than the officers who
could have stopped it, but turned a blind eye? Arguably.
|
Does that make her innocent? No way!
People at the bottom of the chain of command must understand
that you refuse some orders. What would have happened if
she had said, "Sir, I believe that is illegal. May I have
that order in writing?"

 

[dr_mabeuse]

According to the lawsuit, Mr. Garner himself, the commissioner of the Department of Corrections, was present at the Dooly Prison raid.

Wait a minute. Garner was the "commissioner of the [Georgia] Department of Corrections"?

That can't be right.

---dr.M.

 

[Pure]

Hi UT,

Nice to see ya!

No one's insisting, prior to investigation, that she is clearly innocent (except of the prisonwide planning of abuse).

Originally I said, 'drop charges,' and I've since qualified that** to: a penalty NOT involving prison, and possibly including dishonorable discharge. These, obviously after a fair and full investigation and trial where higher ups' part is aired candidly.

You might note that Sanchez' penalty is 'rotation', as mab pointed out. And you agree, I think, hers should be less that that of those higher?

I remind you that dropping of charges happens for a number of reasons, some having to do with botching of prosecution, investigative irregularities, etc. Also, no good accruing to the public and/or military (no interest furthered).

J.

**See the May 10 addition to the original first posting.

 

[Pure]

hi mab,

here's a bit more excerpt, and overall, i read the article as saying that Garner was present at the prison during at least some of the raids.

Herbert, on 'America's Abu Ghraibs.' NY TIMES.

//Stephen Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, represented several prisoners in Georgia who sought compensation in the late-1990's for treatment that was remarkably similar to the abuses at Abu Ghraib. An undertaker named Wayne Garner was in charge of the prison system at the time, having been appointed in 1995 by the governor, Zell Miller, who is now a U.S. senator.

Mr. Garner considered himself a tough guy. In a federal lawsuit brought on behalf of the prisoners by the center, he was quoted as saying that while there were some inmates who "truly want to do better . . . there's another 30 to 35 per cent that ain't fit to kill. And I'm going to be there to accommodate them."

On Oct. 23, 1996, officers from the Tactical Squad of the Georgia Department of Corrections raided the inmates' living quarters at Dooly State Prison, a medium-security facility in Unadilla, Ga. This was part of a series of brutal shakedowns at prisons around the state that were designed to show the prisoners that a new and tougher regime was in charge.//

 

[Pure]

Virtual Burlesque has started a thread on Pentagon planning for interrogation, according to a Wall St. Journal article.

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/06/07/0988582

The gist is: Surprise: The commander in chief** gets to do what he pleases. Or so say the commander in chief and his advisors.

"In order to respect the president's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign ... (the prohibition against torture) must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in chief authority,"


**of the US, of course. NOT those other bozo chiefs in the rogue states.

 

[seasparks]

Same things happen in US prisons

The difference here is that the media has no vested interest in stirring up sentiment about how inmates in US prisons ate routinely tortured, raped, and worse.

Where the soldiers wrong in what they did? Hell yes.
Did it surprise me? Hell no.
I've been in the Military, (US Navy) and I have seen firsthand what goes on to P.O.W.'s and civilian prisoners alike. The biggest difference I can see is that someone got hold of pictures of the events in Iraq.

 

[cantdog]

First of all, I completely reject your argument that the suicide bombings are a political act. They are no more a political act than was the holocaust, the killing fields of camboida, or the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia. They are simply murder and do not deserve in to be defended in any way as some political statement.

Second as to the Israeli bulldozings.

Those at are in response to a suicide bombing where they destroy the homes of those who participated in the murder are not barbarous acts. No one is killed and they do seem to reduce the number of terrorist acts.
Secondly, the Israelis do not target specifically civillians. In a war, collateral damage is unavoidable and if combatants are intentionally going to hide behind civillians then they can't complain when civillians are killed unintentionally in legitimate military actions.

To me, a terrorist act is one that intentionally attempts to kill civillians. For example, years ago, a group blew up a Marine barracks in Lebanon. As much as my heart goes out to the victims of that attack, I cannot classify that as a terrorist action. The bombing, whether you agree or disagree with it, as against a legitamate military target. On the other hand, setting of a bomb in a shopping center is neither political nor military, it is just murder and the purpotrator of such an act is not a combatant and is not protected by the Geneva convention or any other rules of warfare. He is just a common murderer and is subject to whatever laws apply in the nation that the act was committed in.

In fact, bombing a shopping mall or a bus is a crime against humanity. The people who send people to commit those acts are supposed to be liable, criminally, under the international humanitarian law. But the Israeli government does not acknowledge international humanitarian law. They may be well advised not to do so, but I don't believe it.

Murder is common as dirt. People are being killed and maimed all over the place, by everyone, all day long. That once acknowledged, an act of murder in no way is exempted from also being describable in another way by virtue of it's being a murder. A killing which is also an extrajudicial execution, a mass slaughter which is also a crime against humanity, a murder which is also a legally justified execution by the State, a killing which is also a legally justified act of war-- all these things are murders, but not necessarily pure and simple.

Few things really are simple, and fewer things pure.

My argument that some of these killings are also describable as political is not logically refuted by your contention that they are murder. Political leaders are nearly universally cowardly; the more powerful of them nearly always murdering lying thieving power-driven hyenas of the worst stripe, whatever flag they hide behind and claim to "serve."

Let every man define terrorism to suit his purposes. But the rest of us will analyze the definition and divine those purposes. For me, I have no axe to grind. I am foursquare on the side of gentleness. I do not seek to justify one killing above another by words like "terrorist." But my own feelings haven't slowed down the killing much.

I think it's cowardly in the extreme to bottle people up in a refugee camp and then rain modern weapons fire on their pitiful hutments and cheap housing. Bulldoze their homes, kill their families, raze their olive trees or shoot at them when they attempt to harvest them, steal their water, and prohibit their free movement and return to their homes by means of further violence. All the while repudiating the 4th Geneva convention and excluding international law. If there was someone doing this to me and mine, I would be moved to stop it, and so would you. It only takes one side to start a war.

What about the option of ending the war? It takes all sides to do that, but I still think it desirable. I also happen to prefer the actions of international law to the starting or prosecuting of war or other killings. Your government does not, for example, but I do.

cantdog