Subscribe...all of them needing to face Ivan's question, whether they consciously would be able to accept that their dreams of heaven depend on an eternal inferno of distress for one innocent human being or whether, like Alyosha, they would softly reply: "No, I do not consent."
Allen Dulles, the director of Central Intelligence who planned the Bay of Pigs invasion, was allowed to step down quietly after some period of time and avoided resigning publicly. In the Iran-Contra scandal, National Security Adviser John Poindexter took a dive for covering up illegal conduct, and was later indicted for conspiracy to defraud the United States government.
More recently, Les Aspin resigned honorably as President Clinton's Secretary of Defense after Aspin refused to authorize the use of tanks to support a mission in Somalia. Tanks would be too obtrusive, Aspin concluded, and would alienate our allies in the United Nations. The results of his decision were 18 dead American soldiers, two of whom were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in what has become known as the Black Hawk down incident. Aspin's excessive deference to international opinion got soldiers killed, and cost him his job.
Abu Ghraib is an outrage and a tragedy, but it looks nothing like these precedents for resignation. Most importantly, there was no cover-up. Quite the opposite; the army had been investigating the matter for weeks before the press ran the story. Furthermore, Abu Ghraib was not a policy failure but a very local, site-specific failure of discipline. It did not flow directly from a decision Rumsfeld made, as with Dulles and Aspin.
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One of the new photographs shows a young soldier, wearing a dark jacket over his uniform and smiling into the camera, in the corridor of the jail. In the background are two Army dog handlers, in full camouflage combat gear, restraining two German shepherds. The dogs are barking at a man who is partly obscured from the camera’s view by the smiling soldier. Another image shows that the man, an Iraqi prisoner, is naked. His hands are clasped behind his neck and he is leaning against the door to a cell, contorted with terror, as the dogs bark a few feet away. Other photographs show the dogs straining at their leashes and snarling at the prisoner. In another, taken a few minutes later, the Iraqi is lying on the ground, writhing in pain, with a soldier sitting on top of him, knee pressed to his back. Blood is streaming from the inmate’s leg. Another photograph is a closeup of the naked prisoner, from his waist to his ankles, lying on the floor. On his right thigh is what appears to be a bite or a deep scratch. There is another, larger wound on his left leg, covered in blood...
The photographing of prisoners, both in Afghanistan and in Iraq, seems to have been not random but, rather, part of the dehumanizing interrogation process. The Times published an interview last week with Hayder Sabbar Abd, who claimed, convincingly, to be one of the mistreated Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib photographs. Abd told Ian Fisher, the Times reporter, that his ordeal had been recorded, almost constantly, by cameras, which added to his humiliation. He remembered how the camera flashed repeatedly as soldiers told to him to masturbate and beat him when he refused.
U.S. soldiers tell of more Iraq abuses
"It was not just these six people," said Sindar, the group's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons specialist. "Yes, the beatings happen, yes, all the time."
Some say investigators went out of their way to keep the allegations under wraps. When military investigators were looking into abuses
several months ago, they gave U.S. guards a week's notice before inspecting their possessions, several soldiers said.
A year of warnings
When potential problems were pointed out by lower-ranking officers and enlisted men and women, nothing was done to correct them. The chain of command inside the many battalions and companies under the umbrella of the 800th was a failure, the interviews and the report show.
When former Master Sgt. Lisa Girman, of Pittston, Pa., an expert on military prisons and a Pennsylvania state trooper, told Newsday she informed a superior about her concerns over conditions at Camp Bucca near Basra in Southern Iraq, she said he told her, "If you're going to cry, take your weapon and go back to your tent."
Some commentary:
BBC News: Mid-East press spurns Bush apology
The Price of Arrogance
Leave process aside: the results are plain. On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq--troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani--Washington's assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been reversed, often too late to have much effect. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw in the eyes of much of the world.
U.S. officials refuse to take responsibility
But it is the failure to take responsibility for anything that has become the Bush administration's hallmark. The military did its job. The Army's report on the abuse was completed in February, but the top brass and the Bush administration didn't act until CBS broadcast the pictures. For the White House, that was a familiar response. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who ran the Iraq prisons, also claims no knowledge of the abuses taking place under her watch. Karpinski has done little to promote equality of the sexes in the military, except in showing the same eagerness to disavow responsibility. Of course, President Bush doesn't claim responsibility, either. The bad news didn't work its way up to him, just as the threat of al-Qaida didn't seem to register. No one in the Bush administration admits mistakes. That policy trickles down.
No Good Defense
Donald Rumsfeld likes to be in total control. He wants to know all the details, including the precise interrogation techniques used on enemy prisoners. Since 9/11 he has insisted on personally signing off on the harsher methods used to squeeze suspected terrorists held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The conservative hard-liners at the Department of Justice have given the secretary of Defense a lot of lee-way. It does not violate the spirit of the Geneva Conventions, the lawyers have told Rumsfeld, to put prisoners in ever-more-painful ''stress positions'' or keep them standing for hours on end, to deprive them of sleep or strip them naked. According to one of Rumsfeld's aides, the secretary has drawn the line at interrogating prisoners for more than 24 hours at a time or depriving them of light.
The minister of ambiguity
''The real issue," he said, ''is that a secret report was given to the press." It is hard to know what the real issue is here. Is it the abuse of prisoners or the leak to the media of the proof of that abuse? Is it the inadequacy of words to describe inhumane behavior? Rumsfeld said this at one point Friday, explaining why the gravity of the situation didn't hit him until he saw the pictures. He didn't look at them until Thursday night.
Official U.S. Reaction Compounds the Rage
After every dreadful event in Iraq, the administration's reaction reveals its dangerous attitude: It's all about the United States. Already, we have a pile of news articles and commentary on the effects the prisoner abuse scandal will have on the future of the occupation, U.S. credibility, Bush's chances for reelection and the reputation of the Army. What's missing is anything about the scandal's effect on the hearts and souls of the Iraqis. They are the ones who will carry the scars of this sad episode for generations to come.
U.S. officials' pretentious displays of disgust over the abuse photos have frustrated and angered Iraqis. They know that steps taken in early days of the U.S.-led occupation made it inevitable that such atrocities would occur. Most notorious was Bremer's Order No. 17, which immunized all foreign soldiers in Iraq against any local Iraqi scrutiny; practically speaking, coalition authorities recognized a complaint against a soldier only if it was filed by a fellow soldier.
On those rare occasions when an Iraqi's complaint is addressed, insult is often added to injury. According to the New York Times, one Iraqi man was given $5,000 in compensation for the accidental killing of his wife and three children by a U.S. missile. Iraqis say that a gallon of gas is more precious than a gallon of blood these days. Yes, Iraqis have not tasted freedom and have not practiced true democracy. But they are masters at detecting oppression and contempt.
The Smell Of Najaf In The Morning?
All week an image has been popping into my head. It is from James Cameron’s film Aliens--the one where the space marines, high on bravado and high-tech weaponry, travel to a remote planet to liberate it from --well, whatever. There is a critical moment when the soldiers, deep in the alien compound, suddenly realise that they are up against a force they don’t understand. The commander panics and loses control as casualties mount. The remaining marines start firing wildly at anything that moves. Eventually, Ripley screams at the traumatised commanding officer: "Get them out of there. Now!"
posted by y2karl at 12:05 PM on May 9, 2004