Wife: Soldiers in Iraqi Abuse Case Are Scapegoats

Reuters.com ^ | Tue May 4, 2004 10:45 AM ET | Sue Pleming

[Iron Matron]

I actually heard the female brig. general at this prison refer to those that committed this deviancy as "children".

Children who "needed more supervision", Children who were under "stress", Children just taking "orders".

Here in Texas we know Bull S--t when we hear it!

[pghkevin]

Isn't everyone a victim and therefore, not responsible for their actions?

[aft_lizard]

" 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. >>>

No excuse. They know right from wrong and they know they have the right to refuse unlawful orders and report them.

The people who ordered the soldiers to do this ought to be hung, literally.

[skeeter]

OK, OK I admit it. Its Bush's fault.

[John H K]

Well, it was the same excuse used by most everyone at Nuremberg...."I was just following orders"

[ken5050]

She's under invertigation, and she's back home on the talk-show circuit ducking responsibility. It's a classic command failure, on her part, and she's now passing the buck..blaming her troopers...

BTW..remember Rhonda Cornum?

[antonia]

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

Take a look at the faces of those soldiers again, especially the female soldiers. They look less like sadists than delinquents. They look like they're showing off at some wild party trying to impress everybody with how "cool" they are.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

"Did you order the code red?"
"I did the job you sent me to do."
"Did you order the code red?"
"You're goddamn right I did!!"

Hopefully, life will imitate art and the truth will come out. If it hasn't already.

[Dark Wing]

I saw this at the Gym today.

[colorado tanker]

This woman is an idiot. Her husband admitted to her he knew what was going on in the prison was wrong. Now, by going public, she's just erased any spousal privilege that may have protected those conversations and made public admissions. Thanks, honey.

[auggy]

"Here in Texas we know Bull S--t when we hear it!"

Here in Kentucky, we do too!

It's all BULL, if you ask me. I went through worse in Survival training in the Navy.

Between the media and the Dims, this country is slowly being destroyed.

[BossLady]

FYI

[Righty1]

You are basically right but, it still looks like MI is covering their asses with anyone they can find. It just seems strange that reservists would on their own come up with advanced humiliation tactics that fit the situation perfectly. My instints tell me these tactics were purposely imported from Gitmo and Afghanistan. The soldiers in the pictures sure don't give the impression that they see anything wrong with what they are doing.

[Dr. Frank fan]

" 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.

[Frank_Discussion]

I saw part of an interview with her this morning, and I knew she was doing something wrong by speaking out. Thanks for putting your finger on it for me.

[lilylangtree]

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.

[glorgau]

Let's see, the officers will get a bad mark on their evaluations and not get promoted, while the enlisted soldiers will be put in Leavenworth for the rest of their natural lives.

[Blzbba]

"U.S. soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners were following orders"


Yep - it's exactly the 'Nuremberg defense'. Your post beat me to it.

[glorgau]

Let's see, the officers will get a bad mark on their evaluations and not get promoted, while the enlisted soldiers will be put in Leavenworth for the rest of their natural lives.