Iraqi prisoner abuse
MSNBC : "There were no rules, by her account, and there was little training. But the mission was clear. Spec. Sabrina D. Harman, a military police officer who has been charged with abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, said she was assigned to break down prisoners for interrogation."
Probably true - young part time reservists were put in charge of prisoners, probably received little training, and may very well have been told by G2 types to break down prisoners for interrogation. There probably was an atmosphere of 'permission' at the prison.
But it's still no excuse. Every member of our military is taught (in no uncertain terms) the rules of conduct for POW's outlined by the Geneva convention. This isn't taught with a wink and a nod -- it's taught with the same level of gravity that's given to the 'hey - don't sell secrets to the enemy' lessons. It's treated as inviolable military law. Period. (And what's happening now is the exact reason, btw).
The folks who were involved in all levels of prisoner mistreatment in violation of military law, US law, the Geneva Convention, and the rules of common decency should be punished severely. No exceptions. And 'orders from above' doesn't wash either. Military personnel are also taught that they are obligated to refuse an illegal order from a superior officer, and to report this at the earliest possible time to the Inspector General, an independent arm of military investigation and law that exists outside of the unit command structure. They are also taught what orders are legal and what orders are illegal. They do happen to mirror the basics of common decency, so it's not as though they're all that hard to remember if you have a kindergarten education.
Many members of the military apparently did report the situation upstream, to their credit.
That said, these reservists are all serving in a country where non-military US citizens have been lit on fire, strung from bridges, dragged through the streets, and who's corpses have been hit by the shoes of children grinning on international TV while grownups around them cheer.
And they come from a US environment in which entire sections of the constitution have been suspended, where everyone is suspect, where the government can indefinitely detain POW's (Camp X-ray), where US citizens are arrested, thrown in a hole, and denied access to lawyers, counsel, or due process of law (Padilla). Maybe this is a natural extension of the police state / siege mentality.
We're not big fans of Wesley Clark, but he did say something this week that we agree with: "The president made mistake after mistake as commander in chief, taking us into a war we didn’t have to wage, alone and under false pretenses, and is now managing it poorly."
No one has a monopoly on bad behavior here -- but ours cost us what little credibility we had in the Middle East. And at home.
