Wife: Soldiers in Iraqi Abuse Case Are Scapegoats

U.S. soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners were following orders and are being used as scapegoats to protect their superiors, the wife of one of the soldiers and the lawyer for another said Tuesday.

Martha Frederick defended her husband, a soldier who faces prosecution for the abuse of Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

" He was told to do these things and when he did them he thought that he was doing them in the sense of national security," Frederick said.

The U.S. military has brought charges of assault, cruelty and maltreatment against six soldiers, members of a military police battalion.

It has also reprimanded six officers in connection with abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison after photographs were broadcast around the world showing naked Iraqi prisoners stacked in a pyramid or positioned to simulate sex acts.

In e-mails to his wife, Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick questioned some of the abuses he witnessed, such as leaving inmates naked in their cells or making them wear female underwear and handcuffing them to the doors of their cells.

" He questioned it from my understanding and he even tried to come up with some rules knowing that pretty much this was something he did not normally do," said his wife in an interview on NBC's "Today" show.

She complained her husband was being thrust into the limelight while others were protected. "Those who are responsible are standing behind the curtain and watching him take the fall for it. It's almost like being a pawn in a chess game," she said.

Houston lawyer Guy Womack, who is representing reservist Charles Graner in the abuse case, said his client should not be court-martialed and that pictures taken of him abusing Iraqi prisoners were staged.

" You court-martial the right person. You don't court-martial the soldier who is following orders. He was under the command and the direction of intelligence officers, both military and civilian," Womack told NBC's "Today" show.

Graner, who was a corrections officer at a North Carolina prison, was on duty in Iraq for a military police unit.

Womack said the pictures were staged and part of the psychological manipulation of prisoners, adding that his client was told to smile for the camera along with a female soldier who was pointing at a prisoner's genitals.

" These pictures themselves are abhorrent, but you have to put them in context," Womack said.

Reserve Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who oversaw prison facilities in Iraq, said she took responsibility for some of what had happened but pointed out military intelligence was in charge of interrogations -- not the military police under her command.

Her lawyer, Neal Puckett, told CNN, "What's clear in all of this and what's apparently yet to be investigated is that the military intelligence personnel were the folks that had complete, exclusive control over what went on in the interrogation rooms."

Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman called for a congressional investigation into the abuse and asked when U.S. military leaders had become aware of what was going on at the prison.

" Clearly we need to know what the secretary of defense knew at what point and what he did about it; the same with the head of the Joint Chiefs; the same with the president. We need to know what was the response of our government to this horrendous set of facts once they got them," said the New Mexico senator.

" He was told to do these things and when he did them he thought that he was doing them in the sense of national security," Frederick said. [...] He was under the command and the direction of intelligence officers, both military and civilian," Womack told NBC's "Today" show."

I hate to say this - and I suppose I'll be jumped on in knee-jerk fashion by some - but I suspect there's a great deal of truth to this.

I don't speak about the more severe charges (sodomization with broom handle, etc) but in general most of this abuse smacks of being intentionally directed by some intelligence guy or another. I'm talking about all the stupid humiliate/fake-homosexual/keep-them-naked stuff. That just doesn't sound like the type of crap a bunch of soldiers (especially the female ones) would spontaneously decide to do on their own as fun 'n games. It sounds more like some kind of hare-brained CIA scheme, based on some classified paper or another that came out of Langley, to Get Muslims To Talk By Using Their Culture Against Them.

Some brilliant mid-level spook had the flash of insight that "Muslims hate homosexuals", "Muslims hate being naked", etc., and drafted up a plan for Here's How To Break Muslims Down So They'll Talk, complete with bullet points like "call them fags", "make them undress with women present", etc.

The thing we have to remember is that many of these prisoners were probably picked up after having been observed i.e. planting IEDs, doing a launch-and-run mortar attack, etc. Wanting to unravel their network - where they got the IEDs, the mortars, who they're in contact with, who seems to be directing attacks, etc - is a perfectly valid intelligence goal. The prison guards doing this crap may have rationalized it that way: "we need to get these guys to talk to roll up this network once and for all". The military intelligence guys, geniuses who read the hypothetical Langley paper, show up and say "here's how you do it! call them fags!" And voila.

I'm not saying this absolves the guards of responsibility for their role. But it does seem plausible that someone in military intelligence came up with this hare-brained scheme and now is content to let the guards be scapegoats.

None of this goes to the question of whether the abuse worked, by the way. In fact, it may have indeed gotten some of the prisoners to talk. But the lesson we should draw from all of this is that it doesn't matter in the long run because whatever short-term intelligence gains were made by playing these stupid games, have almost certainly been erased tenfold by the PR disaster that followed. One could play machiavellian devil's-advocate and say, I suppose, "the methods were situationally justifiable, but they shouldn't have taken the damn photos and released them". However, that there would be moral objections on the part of some whistleblower, and that the photos or (if no photos) at least stories of the abuse would have gotten out, should have been predictable.

My point is that this is a major screw-up and I'm far from confident that the ones who did the screwing-up are namely the six guards who are going to take the fall. I suspect there's some pointyhead intelligence guy who thought all of this was very clever and I don't want to see him get off scot free, if only because stupid ideas like this need to be squashed so that we don't do them or things like them again.

Where's the outrage for Arab acts? While the pictures of Iraqi prisoners being allegedly mistreated by U.S. soldiers have been upsetting, keep in mind that these prisoners are 9th century thinking islamics who know only strength and weakness. They wouldn't have any 2nd thoughts to putting a gun or knife in a non-islamic person and pulling the trigger or carving the insides out. Talk to the Israelis who have plenty of experience with these islamic barbaric people. If the West shows any type of perceived weakness, these crazy islamics will mow you down. Until you have their attention through strength, you don't have a chance of succeeding. I can't help but think about the numerous images of islamics mutilating, dragging, burning and destroying bodies of coalition soldiers and workers. Many in the islamic world have no problems displaying their anger toward the coalition through graphic videos and pictures, but the second something allegedly improper is done on our part, there's the utmost outrage. Information is vital to the coalition forces. Politeness is not a factor in this regard.

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