(Afghan courts permit 'sunglasses' on the defendants? )
This is crap!
I can tell you from personal experience - that is a lie. There is no visa or passport required for US military personnel - especially for US Special Forces...
Someone screwed up... but who?
Afghan courts, a work in progress.
Ahh they would'nt cover up any prison scandals would they?
THE UNTOLD STORY OF ABU GHRAIB
FEMALE GENERAL ACCUSED
IN FEDERAL LAWSUIT OF BEING AT
PRISON “WATCHING AND LAUGHING”
AS INMATES TORTURED – ONLY
ENLISTED PERSONNEL HAVE BEEN
COURT-MARTIALED THUS FAR – IS
THIS ANOTHER CASE OF “DIFFERENT
SPANKS FOR DIFFERENT RANKS?”
Remember when Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the former commander of U.S. Army military police at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was rushing from one TV appearance to the next, all the time proclaiming her ignorance of what really had gone on there?
“I don’t want to be made a scapegoat,” the fierce-looking female brass hat proclaimed. “I would have stopped the abuse if I’d known about it.”
Well, we think old William Shakespeare was right when he wrote: “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”
ACCUSED BY ONE OF THE VICTIMS
The “other shoe” has finally dropped, but Karpinski has no comment for the media. The Pentagon is likewise silent. And the “politically-correct” mainstream media – save the Associated Press in one story filed from Washington on July 28 – has been reluctant to look into this potentially explosive story.
In a devastating deposition, made on video and under oath, Saddam “Sam” Saleh Aboud says that he saw Karpinski present during beatings he endured at the American-run prison.
During one of the assaults, he said, his hood came off and he saw a female officer present during his torture session.
“Sam,” who was naked, said the woman was “watching and laughing” as he was being beaten in Tier 1A.
“He knew she was a supervisor because she had a star on her hat and she was in an American uniform,” human rights attorney Michael Hourigan said. “Sam told me the other soldiers would defer to her.”
Hourigan said his client identified Karpinski after he was shown a picture of the general in an American news magazine.
NO MOTIVE TO LIE ABOUT KARPINSKI’S PRESENCE
It would seem “Sam” has no motive to implicate Gen. Karpinski herself, as his lawsuit protests his treatment at the hands of his American jailers at Abu Ghraib.
If the Iraqi didn’t actually see a female general present, why would he accuse her? He would have nothing more to gain, as he already had fingered interrogators and alleged torturers among the Americans who ran that part of the prison.
Karpinski’s behavior right after the first pictures of abuses at Abu Ghraib made “front-page news” in the United States caused more than a few observers to ask: “What is she trying to hide?”
We don’t really know, but, in the spirit of fairness, invite Karpinski to utilize equal space on our pages to explain her reaction to the accusation against her.
NO OFFICERS PUNISHED TO DATE
Once again, only enlisted members have been court-martialed in this case. Does the old axiom “rank has it privileges” apply here?
“Different spanks for different ranks” is not an unknown phenomenon in today’s military. Some might say it is the rule and not the exception.
Whatever is happening here, the public deserves to know the extent of the cover-up. And those guilty of making the United State’s mission in Iraq all the more difficult in front of the Arab world, should be disciplined regardless of the rank on their collar.
To our readers who will accuse us of “going soft” on the Iraqis, we ask: “Do you think photos of female soldiers dragging naked Iraqi male prisoners around by a dog collar, or forcing them to lie in their own excrement, will help or hurt our troops when they fall into enemy hands?
We rest our case.
This political correctness at its most pathetic level. Letting Americans be tried in an Afghan court is masochistic. It's like the perpetual guilt of the "wine & cheese" set. Oh yeah, I'm sure the Afghans see this as a sign of strength!
Possibly the first real "victims" of the nitwits abusing (NOT TORTURING) prisoners at Abu Garab (and then taking PHOTOS). This is a real shame.