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2004-05-18 Iraq-Jordan

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Posted by Dragon Fly 2004-05-18 10:45|| || Front Page|| [2 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Bowden: The only way to prevent interrogators from feeling licensed to abuse is to make them individually responsible for their actions. If I lean on an insurgent leader who knows where surface-to-air missiles are stockpiled, then I can offer the defense of necessity if charges are brought against me. I might be able to persuade the court or tribunal that my ugly choice was justified. But when a prison, an army, or a government tacitly approves coercive measures as a matter of course, widespread and indefensible human-rights abuses become inevitable. Such approval unleashes the sadists. It leads to severe physical torture (because there can never be a clear line between coercion and torture), to rape, and to murder.

This is Bowden in high moral dudgeon again. If we are going to rely on the rank-and-file to risk their careers and their personal freedom to get information out of recalcitrant prisoners, we will never get that information. The problem with Bush and Rumsfeld is lack of leadership - they won't come outright and say that these are some of the things we have to do to keep our men safe.* Instead, they persecute the people who risked put their jobs and futures on the line to obtain life-saving information. (Anyone who did it for kicks should be punished - but this is at most an extreme form of the hazing that new military recruits are subjected to).

* Although I understand why they do it - this hypocrisy is necessary to placate public opinion in other nations that are cooperating in the War on Terror. Hypocrisy is an indispensable part of diplomacy - we pretend to like them, they pretend to like us and we get along famously, some of the time.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2004-05-18 11:17:18 AM|| 2004-05-18 11:17:18 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 The problem with Bush and Rumsfeld is lack of leadership - they won't come outright and say that these are some of the things we have to do to keep our men safe.

Heh, they don't have to convince me. Given a choice between protecting our military personnel and giving the kid gloves treatment to captured insurgents/terrorists, I'll put the terrorists at the bottom of the list every single time.

Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2004-05-18 11:34:52 AM|| 2004-05-18 11:34:52 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 The problem with Bush and Rumsfeld is lack of leadership In this situation I agree, but what/who is the alternative.

Posted by Phil B 2004-05-18 11:36:46 AM|| 2004-05-18 11:36:46 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 "but this is at most an extreme form of the hazing that new military recruits are subjected to"

There was sodomy with electrical lights and a broom handle included in the abuse at Abu Ghraib. That goes far beyond "hazing" IMO.

If we are going to rely on the rank-and-file to risk their careers and their personal freedom to get information out of recalcitrant prisoners, we will never get that information.

*sigh* But part of the point is (and correct if I'm mistaken) that the information gotten out of the prisoners even *with* the abuse was characterized trivial.

Which, the way I see it, most likely means that most of the prisoners didn't know anything and were tortured for no cause whatsoever.

Posted by Aris Katsaris 2004-05-18 11:51:20 AM|| 2004-05-18 11:51:20 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 If I lean on an insurgent leader who knows where surface-to-air missiles are stockpiled, then I can offer the defense of necessity if charges are brought against me.

Paging Col. West. Paging Col. West.

Didn't he 'lean' on an insurgant in order to learn about an upcoming ambush and saved the lives of himself and those under his command. Lot of good that defense did him.

Perhaps the most disturbing evidence of this mindset was Donald Rumsfeld's long initial silence on the Abu Ghraib photos.

It is my understanding he did not know about the photos at the time. Rumsfield does not micromanage what happens in Iraq.

Posted by CrazyFool 2004-05-18 11:53:27 AM|| 2004-05-18 11:53:27 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 Bowden makes a few mis-statements:

1) apparently 17 different members of congress did know about this investigation as far back as January - their mock surprise is duplicitous and Bowden needs to get his facts straight.

2) the Geneva convention (afaik) doesn't call for cushy treatment of non-uniformed combatants.

3) I'm still waiting on what these inmates were in for in the first place. All these media-morons make it sound as if all these inmates were just mere victims of circumstance (cue the little violins) - It's one thing to abuse their ordinary army soldier pow (which I don't condone at all) and it's quite another to beat the shit outta some asshole they just found w/a green scarf on his head planting IEDs. For the latter category I say whoop that ass or summarily execute BlackJack style.

Posted by Jarhead 2004-05-18 11:55:54 AM|| 2004-05-18 11:55:54 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 If political correctness is going to be the way we interrogate known terrorists, we have no business blaming them for successful terror attacks - we are looking at the culprit in the mirror every single morning.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2004-05-18 11:57:30 AM|| 2004-05-18 11:57:30 AM|| Front Page Top

#8 "There was sodomy with electrical lights and a broom handle included in the abuse at Abu Ghraib. That goes far beyond "hazing" IMO."

Aris> If that proves to be true, then your correct - far beyond hazing or anything ever done in a military boot camp from my experience. However, I'm still waiting on the military judicial system to see this through to the end. I know what the allegations are (besides the above) and have seen some pictures of the hazing stuff that everyone's seen but I am still waiting for what the court's can prove or not based on evidence. Anybody can make an allegation, the bottomline is what can or cannot be proved in the court and how the Geneva convention plays into it. As of right now, I beleive there a seven guards pending legal proceedings, actually a small percentage in the big picture and I am confident those found guilty will be dealt w/appropriately.

Posted by Jarhead 2004-05-18 12:11:35 PM|| 2004-05-18 12:11:35 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 Let's not forget the statement of the first one facing trial (his name eludes me at the moment): if the officers knew about it, they would have put a stop to it. The Abu Ghraib story is not the result of policy.

Posted by Robert Crawford 2004-05-18 12:15:28 PM|| [http://www.kloognome.com] 2004-05-18 12:15:28 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 RC> Sivit? The other 3 I know about are Grainer, Javal?, and some guy w/the first name Ivan.

Posted by Jarhead 2004-05-18 12:17:55 PM|| 2004-05-18 12:17:55 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 Lessons of Abu Ghraib : Anyone with a digital camera will be sent to Leavenworth for life plus 99 years.

Abu Gharib Defendants : Jeremy Sivits, Javal Davis, Sabrina Harman (female behind pyramid), Lyndie "Leash" England, Charles Grainer, and IVAN Frederick.

Posted by BigEd 2004-05-18 12:50:11 PM|| 2004-05-18 12:50:11 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 The US Armed Forces have doctrine and regulations in order to guide military operations on the basis of experience and proper coordination of various considerations. This interrogation scandal will forever be a great example of the disasters that might occur because doctrine and regulations are ignored and deliberately evaded during wartime.

One small group of people with one narrow focus have caused enormous problems for many other members of the Armed Forces and for many other participants in our national-security efforts.

Posted by Mike Sylwester 2004-05-18 12:58:52 PM|| 2004-05-18 12:58:52 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 This is apparently built on an article on torture that Bowden did for the Atlantic Monthly.

I highly recommend that article.

Posted by Carl in N.H 2004-05-18 1:35:28 PM|| 2004-05-18 1:35:28 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 It's still the lady general's fault, IMO. Dumb-head backwater twerps are just not that hard to recognize as such, and it was her job (and nobody else's) to recognize them and/or at least have adequate inspections, assignments, etc. in order to prevent such heinous monkeying around. Any competant, trained military manager could have foreseen something like that getting started considering the circumstance and people involved, and could've stopped it before it happened Sure, the underlings did it. But she let them do it. It happened on her "watch."

Posted by ex-lib 2004-05-18 2:30:40 PM|| 2004-05-18 2:30:40 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 It's still the lady general's fault, IMO.

Which is why her career is over.

Posted by Robert Crawford 2004-05-18 4:17:16 PM|| [http://www.kloognome.com] 2004-05-18 4:17:16 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 Bowden has gone totally over board with a "tsk, tsk" judgmental perspective in this new article.

#13, I agree, Bowden's October/03 article was much better. It was quite informative because he gave the reader a good overview of the use of coercion by various agencies in the past decade to extract intelligence from a detainee. That's why I referenced the October article in another thread. Also in his October article, Bowden made an effort, though not always successful, to restrain himself from moralizing on the use of "torture lite." This new article is pretty transparent and rather off-putting, IMO.

Posted by rex 2004-05-18 11:01:27 PM|| 2004-05-18 11:01:27 PM|| Front Page Top

13:58 Jarhead
13:25 11A5S
09:45 Robert Crawford
07:55 Mitch H.
04:44 Anonymous4617
04:13 Phil B
02:52 Mark Espinola
01:21 Lucky
01:14 Anonymous4617
00:32 Mike Sylwester
00:25 Zenster
00:19 RMcLeod
00:16 Bomb-a-rama
00:15 Mike Sylwester
23:53 Mark Espinola
23:46 Anonymous2U
23:40 Anonymous2U
23:34 JDB
23:23 Pappy
23:12 Edward Yee
23:10 Edward Yee
23:01 rex
22:59 ex-lib
22:52 Mike Sylwester