Posted on 02/06/2005 6:45:18 AM PST by presidio9
In front of a cheering male audience, two young women wearing only bras and panties throw themselves into a mud-filled plastic kiddie pool and roll around in a wild wrestling match.
At one point a man in the audience raises a water bottle and douses the entwined pair.
At another, a "referee" moves in to break up the scantily clad grapplers.
A young blond lifts her T-shirt to expose her breasts. A brunette turns her back to the camera and exposes her thong undies.
These scenes, taken from 30 photos leaked to the Daily News, could have been snapped at an out-of-control frat party.
But this happened a world away from any American college.
The photos were taken in Camp Bucca, the military prison at Umm Qasr in the hot sands of southern Iraq near the Kuwaiti border.
The women are not coeds but military policewomen who had left their uniforms in a pile not far off.
The men are soldiers, too. Most of them wore T-shirts emblazoned with Army logos, but at least one was still wearing his uniform.
Some were sergeants, including the referee, and some allegedly were drunk.
The photos were taken last Oct. 30, in the same period when enemy detainees were being transferred to Camp Bucca from Abu Ghraib, the prison made notorious by photos of Americans torturing naked Iraqis.
The Camp Bucca pictures document no such abuses.
But they do show what experts called a disconcerting lapse in discipline at a time when Army brass was touting the camp as a model of reform.
"It was basically a goodbye party for those of us who were leaving and a welcome party for those coming in," the alleged referee, Sgt. Emil Ganim of the 160th Military Police Battalion, told The News. "It was a chance for people to blow off some steam before coming home after spending a year in a combat zone."
But one participant described less-benign behavior.
Two sergeants, she said, told her "they had been lending out their room for soldiers to have sex" - a serious infraction of military regulations.
One female soldier, a prison guard with the 160th Military Police Battalion, was photographed baring her breast and showing off her thong panties.
The picture apparently was taken in the room of one of those sergeants, an investigator reported.
The witness told investigators that two high-ranking noncommissioned officers, a first sergeant and a master sergeant, were present. She "noted that these NCOs had been drinking and were noticeably drunk," the report said.
Ganim said American civilians at the camp also participated in the party, and "if anybody had liquor, it was them."
Ganim has since returned to his civilian job as a deputy sheriff in Leon County, Fla.
"It appears that this event was allegedly coordinated by NCOs [sergeants] of the 160th," according to the initial investigation.
One of the soldiers told investigators the mud-wrestling match was underway when she arrived.
"She took off her uniform and joined the other female soldiers that were wrestling," the report says. But "once soldiers started asking for the females to expose themselves [she and two of the other wrestlers] put their uniforms back on and left the area."
But at least one woman was not deterred.
Deanna Allen, a 19-year-old prison guard with the 105th MP Battalion, smiled and lifted her T-shirt. Photos show a man standing close to her and leering at her breasts while another G.I. snaps pictures.
"From what I understand they dared her to do it," said Allen's grandmother, Luci Tomlin, in Black Mountain, N.C. "It was a loose moment. She is a strong-headed young lady. Sometimes she can be a little irrational."
Allen, who is still stationed in Iraq, did not respond to E-mailed questions from The News. She was demoted in rank to private first class.
"A sex party with alcohol that is prohibited would suggest a serious breakdown of military discipline," said Washington-based lawyer Eugene Fidell, a military-justice expert. "Just how it would be handled would be determined by the commander, who has very broad discretion in situations like this.
Fidell said punishments could range from "a good chewing out to loss of rank" for enlisted personnel and "a letter or career-killing transfer" for officers who allowed it to happen.
What if I told you I have friends in Iraq too?
Well, I hope that you're "friends" come home safe and sound and I thank them for their sacrifice. And I never said I was an authority on military conduct. I leave that up to the professionals-namely the military but I do not have to agree with you on this very subject.
Thank goodness there were no Dan Rathers, Walter Kronkites or like-minded journalists back in 1775.
We'd still be subject to the British crown, if that were the case.
Article 134 of the UCMJ only applies to commissioned/warrant officers -- not to NCOs. And how do you know they are subordinate? They might be of the same rank. You are leaping to conclusions.
Anytime there's a possible anti-Bush angle to the story, real or perceived.
Actually, the "easy way out" would have been a hit-and-run post. Not my style at all.
Reading the other posts, it seems a lot of other posters agree that what the soldiers did was wrong.
The fact that this thread is going to go over 400 posts indicates that while "a lot of other posters agree that what the soldiers did was wrong", there is significant disagreement to that opinion. From what I've seen, most of the dissent appears to be coming from active military, former military, or spouses of active or former military.
I, too, respect other people's opinions. However, you called for the dishonorable discharge of soldiers coming out of a war zone for having some harmless fun. A lot of posts like yours do not seem to be about the soldiers at all, but about how it makes US look, or how it makes YOU look. In other words, people are getting indignent because they are embarrassed.
The bottom line is, those folks have been over there fighting for us, and this "party" doesn't embarrass me in the least. Those pictures, and the descriptions, are so totally tame it is asinine.
Not only that, but these soldiers are under orders not to date the locals. In garrison you have a ready supply of civilians to go out with. In Iraq, that option doesn't exist.
I suppose they are supposed to sit around at night doing Bible studies or reading their TOs.
Gimme to old B/W anytime.
Geeeez. I'm glad those "experts" weren't around to watch us launch willing Navy nurses into the pool by the Subic Bay Junior Officers' Club.
I hear that.
Some of the classics are only 'right' if they're in black and white.
When they go colorizing things the movie loses something.
The acts described are violations of other paragraphs of Article 134, though you are correct not fraternization. When I was active duty I investigated something similar to this. I think the point is that this out of control behavior is similar to what happened at Abu Ghirab. The inmates are running the asylum. Good leadership would have found other outlets for the normal energies of these young people.
What is not objectionable in a civilian environment is deleterious in this environment.
This is the sort of thing Bill Clinton did in the White House- where was the outrage then?
Incidentally, there are no more SP5/6 ranks in the Army.
Correction. Post 357.
This sucks...There's always one that will take it too far and jack things up for everyone else. If the Army is anything like the Marines, they've locked down every camp from Iraq to Okinawa, canceled off-base liberty and are just generally making every other soldier's life miserable.
They should have followed the U.N.'s example and coerced some fourteen year old locals into mud wrestling for them...I have yet to see that reported in the MSM.
Oops, I really did not know that. I just took it for granted from what I knew. I'll be looking into that change and when it occurred.
"Geeeez. I'm glad those "experts" weren't around to watch us launch willing Navy nurses into the pool by the Subic Bay Junior Officers' Club."
LOL! I'm glad that they weren't around for a friends re-enlistment party. One of they guys thought that the strippers weren't being energetic enough so he jumped up on a table and showed them how it's done!
A buddy of mine was in Bahrain during the first gulf war, and the stories he told me about the Brits "blowing off some steam" were far worse than this flap. Soldiers and sailors, men and women both, were jumping up on tables, pulling their pants and underwear down, and then leaping out into the crowd, then were passed around the room like in a concert, getting their bare bottoms spanked.
This is NOTHING, people!
Maybe there is something to having females in the military after all.
Cassablanca, Bell, Book and Candle, Most of Alfred Hitchcock's work, On the Waterfront, The Longest Day, King Kong, In Harms Way, They Were Expendable, Wake Island, any Cagney or Edward G. Robinson movie, to mention only a few ruined by colorization.
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