US treatment of prisoners (actual video footage)

[Memnoch]

I don't want this to become a "let's bash the US" thread as that's not the intention. On the positive note operational transparency in US military operations, while not perfect, is at least better than most. Let's hope that via that transparency the root cause of this situation is identified and addressed ASAP.

[Dreamer128]

More claims of abuse at Abu Ghraib

Notorious for torture under Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib prison is now widely seen as a hell-hole of abuse by the Americans.

Iraq's largest jail, outside Baghdad, is the focus of world attention and further shocking revelations of what went on within its walls could soon be on the way. One man who says he knows only too well what horrors were carried out behind closed doors at the prison is Iraqi journalist and former inmate Suhaib al-Baz.

Arrested six months ago while reporting on clashes between the coalition and Iraqi fighters, he says prison guards organised a daily competition to see who could take the most gruesome picture of the torture of detainees. "The winner's photo would be stuck on a wall and also put on their laptop computers as a screensaver," he said. Although his claims cannot be independently verified, the US military says it will investigate.

And there are more allegations of humiliation.

Hashim Lazim Mohsen says he and others were subject to enforced masturbation and physical abuse.

He says they were made to take part in the so-called "pyramid game," referring to detainees being forced to lie naked on top of one another.

"If we fell, we had to try again," he said.

"We remained like that for 30 minutes and they took pictures of us."

Adding to the photographs and testimonies, there are now revelations from the International Committee of the Red Cross, which visited detention centres last year. It says the abuse of Iraqis, in some cases, was "tantamount to torture."

(EuroNews)

[Skunk]

Originally posted by Memnoch: I don't want this to become a "let's bash the US" thread as that's not the intention. On the positive note operational transparency in US military operations, while not perfect, is at least better than most. Let's hope that via that transparency the root cause of this situation is identified and addressed ASAP.

I think that the problem was the chronic *LACK* of transparency in military operations.

We now know that that the abuses were continuing for months and that the Red Cross had been complaining and demanding corrective action over a very long period. Had it not been for the leaked photos, the abuses would still be ongoing right now. The only watchdog for the military is the press - and the US press at least is kept on a very TIGHT and managed leash.

This isn't a 'country-bashing' thread (although I think that the current administration deserves a bit of bashing for what has been happening) and it is quite clear from the tone of the hearings into the affair that this is *NOT* the kind of behavour expected from the US's armed forces.

Let's hope that the neccessary transparency is introduced to prevent these kinds of abuses from ever happening again. Waiting on reporters to act as policemen is clearly not sufficent.

[Davros]

Well there is no excusing the actions of these people, and I am glad that the US administration is taking this seriously. I was repelled by something I sighted from that twat Rush Limbaugh decrying the apologies of the administration and describing the antice in the prison as mere pranks and "college hazing". Even when I agree with the line the administration takes I can't stomach all that much of that Limbaugh prat.

[Memnoch]

Originally posted by Skunk: quote: Originally posted by Memnoch: I don't want this to become a "let's bash the US" thread as that's not the intention. On the positive note operational transparency in US military operations, while not perfect, is at least better than most. Let's hope that via that transparency the root cause of this situation is identified and addressed ASAP.

I think that the problem was the chronic *LACK* of transparency in military operations.

We now know that that the abuses were continuing for months and that the Red Cross had been complaining and demanding corrective action over a very long period. Had it not been for the leaked photos, the abuses would still be ongoing right now. The only watchdog for the military is the press - and the US press at least is kept on a very TIGHT and managed leash.

This isn't a 'country-bashing' thread (although I think that the current administration deserves a bit of bashing for what has been happening) and it is quite clear from the tone of the hearings into the affair that this is *NOT* the kind of behavour expected from the US's armed forces.

Let's hope that the neccessary transparency is introduced to prevent these kinds of abuses from ever happening again. Waiting on reporters to act as policemen is clearly not sufficent. [/QUOTE]Fair enough, Skunk. Let me try and revisit it from another angle. Which nation do you feel would be the benchmark when it came to operational transparency, particularly in this kind of situation and with respect to treating hostages? Without making any excuses for this kind of appalling behaviour (we're shocked about it in OZ too) I'd like to see where you think the US ranks in the operational transparency scale, particularly with respect to comparable militaries worldwide (eg the UK, Germany, France, Russia, China, etc).

[Dreamer128]

While not a World Power, I found the Dutch treatement of prisoners to be most admirable. Because our troops fall under British commando, prisoners are handed over to UK forces. Dutch troops, however, come over twice a month to insure they get proper treatement. Also, the last Iraqi to get shot by our militairy was flown all the way to the Netherlands to get the best possible medical treatement [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Skunk]

Originally posted by Memnoch: Fair enough, Skunk. Let me try and revisit it from another angle. Which nation do you feel would be the benchmark when it came to operational transparency, particularly in this kind of situation and with respect to treating hostages? Without making any excuses for this kind of appalling behaviour (we're shocked about it in OZ too) I'd like to see where you think the US ranks in the operational transparency scale, particularly with respect to comparable militaries worldwide (eg the UK, Germany, France, Russia, China, etc).

I couldn't speak for the standards of other western states - I havn't personally witnessed any abuses by other forces during my time in the British army.

I have certainly seen a number of detainees after they had been injured falling down the stairs in single-storey detention blocks and have been troubled by the number of prisoners who had walked into doors during my time in Northern Ireland. I only witnessed injuries sustained after the event - not the actual events themselves mind you.

However, things *did* improve and civilians were given access to lawyers etc. - making these abuses more and more difficult to carry out.

I don't think that the United States treats POW's any better or worse than any other western nation - the treatment of uniformed combatents appears to have been comparable to that of the British - generally good.

What we are seeing here though is a unique situation. The prisoners currently being held are not classified as POW's by the US - and as such, the rules of conduct laid down by the Geneva convention are being treated as guidelines - but not law. Furthermore, since they are being treated as criminals (but without any judicial system to provide oversight), there is a lot of room for abuse.

The United States did provide a mechanism for oversight in the prisons - they allowed the Red Cross to make regular inspections. Under normal circumstances, that should have been sufficient. However, the Red Cross's complaints were *not* addressed by senior officers - leading to the mess that US now finds itself in.

Clearly then, the failure lies in the senior commanders responsible for the prisons to answer the complaints of the the Red Cross as much as the Lynndie England's who carried out the abuses (if not more so).

Yet since no senior officers have been actually charged and placed under arrest (despite negligently failing to follow up the Red Cross's complaints), one can't help but muse upon the idea that the problems arising from this affair are far deeper and more structural than Rumsfield has been willing to admit. A couple of wrist slaps from those who were really responsible, and a couple of court-martials for a few low ranking scapegoats is not the kind of 'transparency' required to solve this problem.

Is the US any worse than other countries in this respect? Hard to say - no other country has found itself in such a unique situation for more than fifty years - except Britain. And Britain currently has a black cloud hanging over it at the moment too.

But are comparisons really relevant anyway? The United States is a democracy, a country where the principles of freedom and human rights are enshrined in its constitution and lovingly taught to its children. Shouldn't the only standards that matter be the principles that Americans are raised to believe in and follow at home?

Shouldn't the standard of treatment of foreign detainees be no worse than domestic detainees? Isn't that the only comparison worthy of making?

[Memnoch]

You're right, comparisons are probably not relevant as this issue should deals in absolutes - what you should do and what you should not do. It's binary, in other words. I made a comment about the comparison as I wanted to get some perspective of where you were coming from, that's all, which your latest post has provided me.

Regarding your posts, I agree with you that clarifying the uncertain status of these detainees is critical in arriving at that transparency, as well as some form of accountability - it's harder to pin down accountability if you don't have something concrete to pin it against.

[Chewbacca]

Excellent artical with lots of background info. It seems clear to me we have another example of a job to be done that was not adequately prepared for before the invasion.

It also seems that the old oxymoron "military intelligence" has reared its ugly head in this case if it turns out, as claimed, that the torture was ordered by Intel operatives.
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Link

The road to Abu Ghraib: A prison on the brink

Usual military checks and balances went missing


First of three articles


For U.S. military police officers in Baghdad, the Abu Ghraib prison was particularly hellish. Insurgents were firing mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades over the walls. The prisoners were prone to riot. There was no PX, no mess hall, no recreation facilities to escape the heat and dust. About 450 MPs were supervising close to 7,000 inmates, many of them crowded into cells, many more kept in tents hastily arranged on dirt fields within the razor-wired walls of the compound. Around the perimeter, GIs kept wary eyes on Iraqi guards of questionable loyalty.

Precisely how many prisoners were being held at Abu Ghraib was anyone's guess. Roll calls were spotty. Escapes were commonplace. Prison logs were replete with flippant and unprofessional remarks. MPs were occasionally out of uniform, and some were out of control. Discipline was breaking down. So was the chain of command.

Abu Ghraib was on the brink.

"Most of the time, I felt like my life was in danger," said Sgt. William Savage Jr., a Florida corrections officer sent to Abu Ghraib as a reservist with the 320th Military Police Company. "I always thought something was going to happen."

Few could imagine what was about to happen at Abu Ghraib. The photographs featuring piles of naked Iraqis seem as though they were taken from a pornographic magazine, not from the digital cameras carried by American servicemen and women. But an examination of military investigative reports and interviews with soldiers and officers in Iraq at the time reveal that there were early warnings, and that a combination of conditions inside Abu Ghraib produced a culture of licentious behavior and abuse. Confusion was high. Morale was low. The checks and balances established to hold soldiers accountable during the vagaries of war were virtually non-existent.

By the fall of 2003, rumors of abuse began to circulate. Sgt. Blas Hidalgo heard them while working the guard towers of Abu Ghraib as a member of the 320th Military Police Company. He dismissed the talk as made-up military gossip.

"It sounded too crazy," he told The Washington Post in a recent interview.

A morale problem
The problems at Abu Ghraib, which have unleashed an international scandal and shaken the Bush administration, were foreshadowed by experiences at two earlier prison camps set up by U.S. forces after the invasion in March 2003.

As U.S. troops marched north, Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, near Basra, quickly became the largest facility for captured Iraqi prisoners. For two months, military commanders sent thousands of prisoners to the makeshift camp. Soon the camp held more than 7,000 prisoners.

At Bucca, there were troubling signs in a military police unit that would later be at the center of what took place at Abu Ghraib.

On May 12, four soldiers from the 320th Military Police Battalion, based in Ashley, Pa., were charged with beating prisoners after transporting them to Camp Bucca. MPs from a different unit reported the incident, saying the legs of prisoners were held apart while soldiers kicked them in the groin.

Around that time, President Bush had announced the end of major combat operations, and spirits in many military police units were high. Camp Bucca was to be emptied. It appeared that many MP units would be headed home. By the end of May, the several thousand members of the 800th Military Police Brigade, which included the 320th Battalion, were told that they would instead be managing the Iraqi prison system and its detention facilities.

For many of the MPs, it was a crushing blow.

"Morale suffered, and over the next few months there did not appear to have been any attempt by the Command to mitigate this morale problem," Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba would later conclude in his 53-page report examining the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Camp Cropper
Located on the outskirts of Baghdad, Abu Ghraib, a symbol of torture and repression under Saddam Hussein, had been looted. It was decrepit and falling apart. While renovations were underway, the military came up with a temporary alternative: Camp Cropper, a collection of tents and small buildings at the Baghdad airport.

Cropper was originally designed to hold 200 captives. But with street crime on the rise and the insurgency in Baghdad becoming bolder, Cropper was teeming with prisoners by the summer of 2003. On some days, with temperatures routinely topping 100 degrees, more than 1,000 prisoners were in the camp.

It became a dangerous place that smelled of sewage and sweat. Flies infested the camp. Those who have been there describe it as an outdoor cesspool where detainees stockpiled their feces to throw at MPs. The prisoners also turned the dust beneath their feet into weapons by pouring their water rations and fashioning hardened dirt clods.

"It was worse than you can imagine on days when there was no breeze," said one MP assigned to the camp who requested anonymity because he signed a "nondisclosure" agreement before leaving Iraq. "If there was a hell, I can imagine that's what it smelled like."

The poor conditions had consequences.

"Abu wasn't running, none of the satellite prisons were running, so we had nowhere to send these guys," said one military officer assigned to the camp who has been ordered not to discuss Cropper. "They started piling up. We couldn't refuse them, and we couldn't let them loose. So as a result, any time it got real hot, there were riots."

The uprisings rattled even the most seasoned of soldiers. Detainees would cut themselves on the concertina wire that surrounded the camp and try to smear their blood on MPs. They rushed the wire and threw rocks they had stored up in empty meal containers.

"It was unnerving as hell," the officer said.

On June 9, the detainees rioted after one of the prisoners hit an MP. The prisoner was subdued, and one of the MPs took off his camouflage shirt and "flexed his muscles to the detainees, which further escalated the riot," according to the military report.

Rocks started to fly. One soldier was hit in the head. Another was struck by a tent pole. A prisoner pulled an MP through the concertina wire.

"This thing was out of control," the officer said.

The MPs were overwhelmed, and guards opened fire. Five prisoners were wounded. An investigation into the incident concluded that the shooting was justified, and no soldiers were punished. Still, the incident symbolized a severe lack of training, said another officer familiar with the incident.

Officers said they complained about the conditions at Camp Cropper, but no one seemed to listen. They said they were told that Cropper was a temporary facility, and the military was preparing to open Abu Ghraib as quickly as possible.

"It was a constant battle of saying, 'We've got to get these numbers down, or we have to have more people or a bigger camp,' " one officer said. "The challenge was trying to find a place to take them."

Consolidating two functions
For 18 months, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller had run the detainee operation at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. On Aug. 31, he and a team of inspectors arrived in Baghdad to examine prison operations in Iraq. They visited Camp Cropper and the refurbished Abu Ghraib prison, which had opened Aug. 4.

Miller recommended that Cropper be closed. He made another recommendation: that MPs and military intelligence officers work closely to gather information from the prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

At Guantanamo, where suspected al Qaeda terrorists and Taliban fighters are kept and interrogated, Miller said, he found that separating MPs, who serve as jailers, from intelligence officers, who conduct interrogations, was counterproductive. He viewed MPs as key players in the process because they could serve as the ears and eyes of military intelligence officers on the cellblocks. Miller recommended that the new commander in charge of the 800th MP Brigade, Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, consolidate the two functions, permitting MPs to set "conditions for the successful interrogation and exploitation" of the prisoners.

One month after Miller's team left Iraq on Sept. 9, another inspection team arrived in Iraq. This one was headed by Maj. Gen. Donald J. Ryder, the provost marshal in charge of Army military police. Ryder arrived in Baghdad on Oct. 13, two weeks after Camp Cropper was closed.

Ryder conducted a "comprehensive review of the entire detainee and corrections system in Iraq." He found flawed operating procedures, improper restraint techniques, a lack of training, an inadequate prisoner classification system, understrength units and a ratio of guards to prisoners designed for "compliant" prisoners of war and not criminals or high-risk-security detainees.

But Ryder also found "there were no military police units purposely applying inappropriate confinement practices."

Descending into chaos
At Abu Ghraib, the guard-to-prisoner ratio was about one to 15, with one battalion guarding 7,000. Army doctrine calls for one battalion per 4,000 enemy soldiers. In civilian prisons, one guard per three inmates is considered ideal.

In his report submitted on Nov. 6, Ryder recommended that military police not "participate in military intelligence supervised interrogation sessions." He concluded that allowing MPs to "actively set favorable conditions for subsequent interviews runs counter to the smooth operation of a detention facility."

But even as Ryder was writing his report, Abu Ghraib was descending into chaos and worse.

There was an almost complete breakdown of discipline at the prison, according to Taguba's report, which details numerous lapses:

Standard operating procedures and copies of the Geneva Conventions were not distributed to the guards handling the prisoners. No one knew for sure how many prisoners were being kept at Abu Ghraib. It took MPs four days to document transfers of detainees within the prison, making it nearly impossible to determine who was where at any given time. Roll calls were supposed to be conducted twice a day. Instead, they were conducted twice a week. MPs variously referred to them as "band checks," "roll-ups" and "call-ups."

When MPs did count prisoners, there was no standard method. Sometimes MPs lined up detainees in rows of 10 and counted them in bulk. Other times, the soldiers moved prisoners to one end of a cellblock, ordered them to walk and counted them as they passed by.

Sometimes, "Other Government Agencies," a common expression for the CIA, would bring prisoners to Abu Ghraib. MPs were kept in the dark about the prisoners' identities and the reasons behind their captures. On at least one occasion, MPs moved these captives around the Abu Ghraib complex to keep them away from inspectors with the International Committee of the Red Cross. MPs called the prisoners "ghost detainees." Military investigators called the practice of keeping them from the Red Cross team an apparent "violation of international law."

Prisoners learned to exploit the chaos. Military investigators said they discovered one report that documented at least 27 escapes from the facility. Karpinski said 32 had escaped. No one knew for sure because oversight was so poor.

"It is highly likely that there were several more unreported cases of escape that were probably 'written off' as administrative errors or otherwise undocumented," military investigators later wrote.

After escapes, follow-up and accountability were lacking. Investigations into escapes were "rubber-stamped" and approved by Karpinski, but there was no evidence that any of the general's orders for changes were followed, Taguba found.

If the recommendations had been followed, investigators concluded, "many of the subsequent escapes, accountability lapses and cases of abuse may have been prevented."

'They didn't carry themselves like soldiers'
The real trouble started after Oct. 15, when the 372nd Military Police Company, a segment of the 320 Battalion based in Cresaptown, Md., took over Abu Ghraib from a military police company based in Henderson, Nev. The 372nd soldiers, reservists from small-town America, were not trained to be prison guards. An MP officer from another unit at Abu Ghraib said he was struck by their unprofessionalism.

"It was lots of things, from the way they wore the uniforms to the way they interacted with each other," said the officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "There was lots of grab-ass going on. They didn't carry themselves like soldiers. They were doing what they wanted to do."

And their ranks were thinly stretched. Savage, the Florida corrections officer, said soldiers were far outnumbered by the prisoners, most of whom were common criminals. For the guards, the sense of a siege was ongoing. At night, the soldiers on the towers squeezed off hundreds of rounds into the darkness in response to the incoming mortar and small-arms fire.

The 372nd company commander was Donald J. Reese, 39, a salesman from New Stanton, Pa. His unit was given perhaps the most sensitive mission: control of Tier 1A, where "high priority" detainees were held for interrogation by civilian and military intelligence officers. The 203 cells of Tiers 1A and 1B were in a two-story cinderblock building known as the "hard site" at Abu Ghraib, so called to distinguish it from the many tent compounds on the prison grounds. 1B held "high risk" or trouble-making detainees.

With little experience in corrections to fall back on, the unit deferred to MPs who had civilian prison backgrounds.

"Detainee care appears to have been made up as the operations developed with reliance on, and guidance from, junior members of the unit who had civilian corrections experience," Taguba later found.

Those members included Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II, 37, who had worked as a correctional officer at Buckingham Correctional Center in Virginia, and Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr., 35, a divorced father of two who worked as a prison guard in Greene County, Pa. Frederick was the top enlisted man in charge of 1A, where he and Graner worked closely with intelligence officers, their colleagues said.

The officer in charge of the prison was Lt. Col. Jerry L. Phillabaum, a reservist who commanded the 320th Military Police Battalion. Taguba found that Phillabaum was "an extremely ineffective commander and leader" who did little after the Camp Bucca beating incident five months earlier to put his soldiers on notice about proper detainee treatment.

Phillabaum's boss was Karpinski, the reservist general in charge of the 800th Military Police Brigade. She rarely visited Abu Ghraib, Taguba's report found. Karpinski was based at the Baghdad airport.

Different rules
Karpinski, a corporate management consultant from Hilton Head, S.C., was called to active duty in June. She said she tried to visit regularly each of the detention facilities under her command. But she scaled back as the insurgency stepped up attacks. She was responsible for 3,400 soldiers at 16 facilities, including Abu Ghraib.

Soon after the 372nd arrived at Abu Ghraib, it became clear that there was a problem at the top of the prison's chain of command: Karpinski sent Phillabaum, a 1976 West Point graduate, to Kuwait for two weeks to "give him some relief from the pressure he was experiencing," the report states. Phillabaum later told The Post he was gone from Oct. 18 to Oct. 31.

Also during this period, military intelligence made a focused push on interrogations in Tiers 1A and 1B, Karpinski would later say.

"The MI said -- they specifically came to me in the September-October time frame, and said, 'Man, could you talk to those prison guys and ask if we could have those cells?' " she later told The Post. "They explained why. I said, 'I will go down and campaign for you because I understand.' "

Taguba's report and interview with MPs and their attorneys reveal what happened next.

Spec. Sabrina D. Harman, 26, of Alexandria told Taguba's investigators that Graner and Frederick were responsible for getting "these people to talk." She told The Post that military intelligence officers "made the rules as they went."

Sgt. Javal S. Davis, 26, also with the 372nd, supported that account.

"In Wing 1A we were told that they had different rules," Davis, a college dropout from New Jersey, told investigators. He said intelligence officers frequently said things such as "loosen this guy up" and "make sure he has a bad night." Davis said he was told: "Good job. They're breaking down real fast. They're giving out good information."

Davis said Graner told him agents and military intelligence personnel "would ask him to do things, but nothing was ever in writing," the report states.

The methods moved from the unorthodox to the perverse.

'Done at lower levels'
"They made them do strange exercises by sliding on their stomach, jump up and down, throw water on them and made . . . some wet, called them all kinds of names such as 'gays' do they like to make love to guys . . . ," Adel L. Nakhla, a U.S. civilian contract translator, told military investigators. Then "they handcuffed their hands together and their legs with shackles and started to stack them on top of each other by insuring that the bottom guys penis will touch the guy on tops butt."

The Post obtained a series of digital photographs that were taken by MPs. Scattered among the hundreds of travelogue images of Iraq were some depicting prisoner abuse, most of them stamped with dates. The earliest of the abuse pictures, stamped Oct. 17, shows a naked man handcuffed to a cell door. A photograph of a naked man handcuffed to a cot with a pair of women's underwear stretched over his head was stamped Oct. 18. A photograph of Pfc. Lynndie R. England holding a chain or strap that is wrapped around the neck of a naked man outside a cell was stamped Oct. 24. A picture of a pile of naked men was stamped Oct. 25.

England, 21, who grew up in a West Virginia coal town, worked as a processing clerk in the cellblock and is reportedly engaged to Graner.

Military investigators said prisoners endured many other forms of abuse at Abu Ghraib. Soldiers jumped on their feet, kept some detainees naked for days at a time and forced others to masturbate in front of female soldiers. They attached wires to the fingers and genitals of a man and threatened him with electrocution. One male MP had sex with female detainees. In one case, a detainee was severely injured during a dog attack. MPs broke chemical lights and poured the phosphoric liquid on detainees. One prisoner was sodomized with a chemical light, and perhaps a broom stick.

Karpinski later said she was unaware of the abuse and blamed much of it on military intelligence personnel, who she said gave the MPs "ideas" that led to the abuse.

The Taguba report found that command of the prison was placed under military intelligence on Nov. 19, well after the abuses began. But Karpinski says that order formalized changes made earlier. The report also says that although there was not a clear order that the MPs were to "set conditions" for military intelligence interrogations, "it is obvious . . . that this was done at lower levels."

Phillabaum also said he did not know what was going on and blamed it on a few rogue soldiers, particularly Frederick.

"I have been made the scapegoat in this event," Phillabaum wrote in an e-mail to The Post. "Frederick was the NCO [noncommissioned officer] in charge of that wing of the prison. No one higher in his chain of command, starting with his platoon sergeant, knew what was occurring. If he thought that his actions were condoned, then why were they only conducted between 0200-0400 hours for a few days in late October and early November?"

Phillabaum added, "The acts of a couple of demented Reserve MP guards who are prison corrections officers at home were their own idea."

The soldiers' attorneys and relatives have said the MPs were following orders.

'He did what he was told'
"It is clear that the intelligence community dictated that these photographs be taken," said Guy L. Womack, a Houston lawyer representing Graner, who has since been charged in the case.

The father of another charged soldier, Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits, 24, a mechanic from Hyndman, Pa., also said his son did the bidding of others. "He was asked to take pictures, and he did what he was told," Daniel Sivits told The Post.

It is unclear when the abuses ended, though Taguba said in his report, "I think it is important to point out that almost every witness testified that the serious criminal abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib . . . occurred in late October and early November 2003."

On Jan. 13, a soldier in the battalion, identified by the New Yorker magazine as Spec. Joseph M. Darby, placed an anonymous note describing the photographs under the door of an Army criminal investigator.

The next day, an Army Criminal Investigation Division team set to work.

"On 14 Jan 2004 at approximately 0230 hours there was a knock at the door to my room," Frederick wrote in a statement sent to his family. "Cpt. Reese opened the door and said, 'Freddy, CID is here and they want to talk to you.' "

Frederick was told to dress and surrender his weapons. He wrote in his statement that he "questioned some of the things that I saw, such as leaving inmates in their cell with no clothes or in female underpants. . . . I questioned this and the answer I got was this is how Military Intelligence (MI) wants it done."

Over the next three weeks, investigators would interview 50 people, including several 372nd MPs and 13 detainees.

Harman and Davis gave statements to investigators. They, along with five other MPs -- Frederick, Graner, Sivits, England and Spec. Megan M. Ambuhl, 29 -- were eventually charged in the abuse incidents and face courts-martial.

The military told the media that about the investigation in a one-paragraph news release on Jan. 16. But no details were provided -- and the release attracted little attention.

On Jan. 31, Taguba was assigned to investigate the officers involved. In March, he recommended that Karpinski and Phillabaum be relieved of their commands and given reprimands for various command failures. He recommended the same for Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade and his liaison officer, Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan.

Taguba said Reese, the commander of the 372nd soldiers, should also be relieved and reprimanded. In all, administrative actions were recommended against seven officers, three sergeants and two employees of a private contractor, CACI International. Steven Stephanowicz, an interrogator, and translator John Israel both worked with military intelligence officers. The contractors are receiving intense scrutiny on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers learned last week that 37 civilian interrogators worked with the military in Iraq.

Six of the seven criminally charged soldiers are now stationed in Camp Victory, a U.S. base near the Baghdad airport, where they are awaiting their fate.

Staff writer Jackie Spinner, correspondent Sewell Chan in Baghdad and research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.

[ 05-09-2004, 02:16 AM: Message edited by: Chewbacca ]

[shamrock_uk]

Very interesting and informative Chewie. It looks like heads should roll high up. A culture of "never mind the geneva convention if we can get our information" does seem to pervade amongst the intelligence community, although clearly there were a few individual soldiers who you wouldn't call 'nice people'. But it looks like most were just caught up in a deteriorating and poorly planned situation and didn't have the training and discipline to cope.

A question then to further the discussion: does behaviour like this stem from the fact that the US army is often the employer of last resort in these small town areas?

[ 05-09-2004, 05:29 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]