On Abu Ghraib, the Big Shots Walk

[kliljedahl]

By BOB HERBERT

Published: April 28, 2005


When soldiers in war are not properly trained and supervised, atrocities are all but inevitable. This is one reason why the military command structure is so important. There was a time, not so long ago, when commanders were expected to be accountable for the behavior of their subordinates.

That's changed. Under Commander in Chief George W. Bush, the notion of command accountability has been discarded. In Mr. Bush's world of war, it's the grunts who take the heat. Punishment is reserved for the people at the bottom. The people who foul up at the top are promoted.

It was a year ago today that the stories and photos of the shocking abuses at Abu Ghraib prison first came to the public's attention. It was a scandal that undermined the military's reputation and diminished the standing of the U.S. around the world.

It would soon become clear that the photos of hooded, naked and humiliated detainees were evidence of a much larger problem. The system for processing, interrogating and detaining prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq was dangerously out of control, and the command structure responsible for it had collapsed. Detainees were beaten, tortured, sexually abused and, in some instances, killed. Many detainees should never have been imprisoned at all, as they had committed no offenses.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/28/opinion/28herbert.html?oref=login



Keith’s Barbeque Central

[Loki]

1. I wonder if any one can feel shame anymore.

This administration of morally bankrupt men has led by example - no one is responsible. There is no honor left in our military - that long tradition that my father and all those men in my family who served believed in - honor, duty, service - is no more.

[whistle]

2. But, we have an all volunteer army/military of highly trained...

...people, who know what is right and what is wrong. So how can the commanders be held accountable and responsible for the actions of a few renegade soldiers? :sarcasm: :rant:

[DinahMoeHum]

3. Speaking of the lower-echelon peons getting the shaft here. . .

here's an essay from last year about the infamous Lynndie
England, the "poster girl of Abu Ghraib":

Link:
http://www.counterpunch.org/bageant06132004.html

(snip)
Lynndie England never had a chance. Abu Ghraib, or maybe something even worse (an RPG up the shorts, for instance) was always her destiny. Nearly half of the 800 Americans killed in Iraq to date came from small towns like hers, like mine. Forty-six percent of the American dead in Iraq came from towns of less than 40,000. Yet these towns make up only 25% of our population. Most of the young soldiers were fleeing economically depressed places, or dead end jobs like Lynndie had at the chicken processing plant. These so-called volunteers are part of this nation's de facto draft---economic conscription. Money is always the best whip to use on the laboring clasess. Thirteen hundred a month, a signing bonus and free room and board sure beats the hell out of yanking guts through a chicken's ass.

And there are those big bucks for college later. Up to $65,000. Lynndie was supposedly going to college after her enlistment to become a "storm chaser," like in the Helen Hunt movie "Twister." Yeah, right. There are millions of openings in the tornado chasing business. And I'm going to be the centerfold in the next Playgirl beefcake issue. I suppose lots of poor kids do go to college on their military benefits. But personally speaking, I can count the number I know who actually did it on one hand. Let's be honest here: graduating from a small town redneck white high school not knowing where Alaska is on a map of the US is not exactly the path to the fountain at Harvard Yard. But I suspect that down inside Lynndie knew her lot in life from the start---she wore combat boots and camo outfits to high school. Swore she loved it. If you are doomed to eat shit, you may as well bring your own fork.
(snip)
(snip)
To talk about Lynndie's class you have to talk about that other class, her betters. The class that would not piss on her if her shirt was on fire---the flag people. The kind who smirk at "the mutt girl." I live among them now, on a street where the American flag hangs from nearly every Antebellum or Georgian or Greek Revival front porch, in the part of town where every man is a business man, solidly "patriotic." All went to college and few if any have been in the armed services. The regional tire distribution kingpin across the street (who is also a Republican city councilman with, they tell me, a contract for the city's vehicles) flies his flag. Next door the local office supply hotwire (former mayor and born-again chairman of the city GOP) flies two flags, one American and on of his alma mater. The bigtime landlord up the street, another steel bottomed Republican, flies her colors. She too is on council and her daughter is state GOP chairman to boot. Next house down is the daughter of a mogul hard-right-wing developer. She has never worked a day in her life; Daddy just bought her a half million dollar home. They are all waving a flag. They are all super GOPers and shitting in the tall cotton.

Waving a flag and making a mint. What the folks on the "good streets" understand but never say is that America's class war is over and they, the business class, won. Now they can sit back and be outraged by the pics of an ignorant girl in the testosterone choked air of an American torture chamber. They won on the backs of the other nine tenths in these non-union towns where the annual wage is less than three-quarters of the national average. And they won because god wants it that way. Their families got here first and stole early. Their daddies stole land from farmers during the Depression and they made millions later selling it to Wal-Mart, the new medical center, and all those low wage non-union factories (after conveniently rezoning it to suit their interests while on city council.) Contrary to common belief, the bedrock of this nation's rip-off by the rich is in the small and medium sized towns, where the so-called "small" business associations have a direct phone line to the state capital, where they can stymie any increase in minimum wage or snuff anything even remotely resembling a fair tax structure. And if Lynndie England wants a piece of their American pie, well, she can start in the Army reserves by posing for mock crotch shots in the belly of Abu Ghraib, then claw her way up from there. Just like their great granddaddies did.
(snip)


much more...


:evilfrown:

[kliljedahl]

4. I remember that piece

I even saved & printed it. I can't help thinking of Harry Truman & thinking "the buck stops where?"


Keith’s Barbeque Central

[Joey Liberal]

5. Bush never punishes senior officers

The Bush Cartel only goes after the enlisted personnel and junior officers. That's the "Army of One" *giggle* for you.

[wallwriter]

6. A few bad apples?

How can it just be a few underlings run amok when we have a new attorney general who wrote opinions saying that torture was OK. This is like Holocaust denial. They argue that it didn't happen, but if it had happened, it would have been OK. But it didn't happen.