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The Iraqi prison scandal continues
On Friday, I posted about how I thought that statements of one of the accused’s lawyers, that he was just following orders, had the ring of truth to it (Iraqi prison duty: it's a dirty job, but someone has to be the scapegoat ).
With more facts surfacing, that truth rings louder than ever. Most notable is the article in today’s Wall Street Journal which reveals that the American Red Cross had previously catalogued exactly the kind of activities that we saw in the pictures (AP: Red Cross Report Describes Abuse in Iraq ).
[A]ccording to the Red Cross, military police guards supervised by intelligence officers subjected prisoners to "ill-treatments ranging from insults and humiliation to both physical and psychological coercion that in some cases might amount to torture." The report adds that "several military-intelligence officers confirmed" that holding prisoners "naked in a completely dark and empty cell" was "standard operating procedure" to extract information.
This is exactly as I pointed it out in my previous post on this matter. Furthermore, it seems that all of the accused soldiers are telling the same story.
I still remain agnostic about the way the Iraqi prisoners were treated. If people who know a lot more about intelligence gathering than I do determined that this was a proper way to treat the prisoners, I owe their determination a certain amount of deference. Bad things happen in war. If the war is fought for a just reason, we shouldn’t back away from it because it hurts the enemy. As Pat Buchanan writes in his column today (The superpower goes to confession):
What did the president and his advisers – and Kerry, who voted to give Bush a blank check to go to invade Iraq – think a guerrilla war would be like? Has none of them even seen "The Battle of Algiers," the 1965 film of how Gen. Massu ended terrorism out of the Casbah?
What we are getting from Abu Ghraib is a glimpse of the dark side of guerrilla war, with this critical difference: Cameras and minicams are ubiquitous today. The Internet transmits photos and videos worldwide in a flash. America can no longer control the images of America's wars.
What I find to be outrageous here is the reaction to these photos. Soldiers who had no part in determining our Iraqi policies are being made scapegoats, and Bush is apologizing to the Arab street to whom he owes no such apology.
From today's New York Times:
The decision to allow a wide level of public access to Specialist Sivits's court-martial appears to reflect a conclusion by American commanders that the abuse and the photographs have severely damaged the credibility of the United States enterprise in Iraq and the country's reputation in the Middle East. While American courts-martial are not usually conducted in secret, it is unusual for the military justice authorities to make them easily accessible to the public.
...
In anticipation of intense interest from around the world, General Kimmitt said military officials might hold the trial in Baghdad's convention center, a spacious building with several auditoriums, ...
The New York Times: First Trial Set to Begin May 19 in Abuse in Iraq
Pandering to the Arab street in this manner is not going help us. And what happens if the soldier is found not guilty? Does anyone remember what happened after the police officers in the Rodney King trial were found not guilty? Perhaps the people conducting the trial know that the soldier will be found guilty because it’s not a real trial at all, but a sham kangaroo trial?
I am not certain that anyone should be on trial here at all, but if there are people who deserve to be on trial, they are the people who gave the orders and the people who created the policies, not the unfortunate soldiers who got stuck with MP duty.
posted Monday, May 10, 2004
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