Abu Ghraib: England and Karpinski???

[quote]Mufasa wrote:

But what about the argument that we as Americans are supposed to be better than what we saw?

Mufasa[/quote]

why are we supposed to be better? I understand that’s the theory, but why?
In the Arab culture–as I understand it, and I’d be happy to be corrected/educated–but as I understand it being “nice” is to often perceived as weakness, which leads to disrespect and attack.
I’d rather they all feared us and left us alone than have us be nice and be attacked.

[quote]mark57 wrote:
Yes, but you can’t plead guilty and THEN call witnesses to testify that you really aren’t guilty. She should have plead not guilty and based her defense on the fact that she was following orders. A lot of dirty laundry is about to be aired if this goes to trial.

[/quote]

I think she probably got really bad legal advice in the interest of expediency.
I also wonder if this sudden “she was just following orders” might be a ploy on someone’s part to screw the whole mess up.

I’m not sure I care about the dirty laundry being aired, it’s probably a good thing.

And, just to reiterate, I don’t give a shit about putting panties on their heads or making them stand naked in front of women.
That’s a lot better than the gang rapes of US female POW’s.
My theory is something like “we’ll respect you if you respect us, but if you hurt one of ours, we’ll kill ten of yours.”
Probably wholly impractical, but I’m not sure I care.
Flame away.

If all that happened is panties on the head and collars or leashes, then there would not even need to be a trial. If that is in fact all that happened then I’d be inclined to believe it is political too.

Somehow, I think some folks are turning a blind eye?

[quote]vroom wrote:
If all that happened is panties on the head and collars or leashes, then there would not even need to be a trial. If that is in fact all that happened then I’d be inclined to believe it is political too.

Somehow, I think some folks are turning a blind eye?[/quote]

show me the money, O Canada.
:wink:

Karpinski is clearly responsible. When I saw her do the rounds on CNN, MSNBC and Fox I wanted to throw up.

England has a room temperature IQ. Her boyfriend is no prize either.

I believe there are likely quite a few more people involved, but they will never catch them all.

[quote]vroom wrote:
If all that happened is panties on the head and collars or leashes, then there would not even need to be a trial. If that is in fact all that happened then I’d be inclined to believe it is political too.

Somehow, I think some folks are turning a blind eye?[/quote]

The level of brutality, in war, is often defined by your enemy.

These incidents happened about the time they were beheading, burning and hanging the corpses of our guys from bridges.

That wasn’t what I got out of it. She (England) pleaded guilty, but then during the sentencing hearing she tried to argue, and had witnesses testify, that she should receive a light sentence because she wasn’t really guilty.

I think the judge’s point was more that you can’t have it both ways. You either plead guilty and accept your punishment, or plead not guilty and defend yourself against the charges.

But wasn’t it a witness who testified that she was actually following orders?
And that’s what brought everything to a standstill?

Yes, but you can’t plead guilty and THEN call witnesses to testify that you really aren’t guilty. She should have plead not guilty and based her defense on the fact that she was following orders. A lot of dirty laundry is about to be aired if this goes to trial.
[/quote]

i wanted to point out following orders does NOT get her off. It is Illege to fallow an Illega order. if it was proven she was fallowing an order from the presdent himself she would still be found guility.

Would she know enough to know they were illegal orders? She seemed pretty numb.

Unfortunately for her, ignorance of the law (or the illegality of something) is generally not an acceptable excuse.

Now, if she were to be mentally incompetent in some way she could get off for reasons of insanity. Might make the military look bad though.

I doubt those convicted were following any orders. It does seem an extension of the things demented below-average intelligence young people would do in their spare time.

One of Graner’s former wives has come out and said that he is a sexual pervert, into bondage and golden showers and use of excreta etc. So it is no stretch that most of it is the product of his mind.

Lyndie England, I feel a teeny tiny bit sorry for. She clearly got the short end of the genetic stick- short, ugly and stupid. She fell under Graner’s influence and will suffer for it. But she should have known better.

I doubt that they were following orders. However, anyone who had Psych 101 knows that these prison type abuses are going to happen (see the Stanford Prison Study). Therefore, someone higher up, should have been keeping close watch on this situation. Apparently, that did not happen.

You guys all know the CIA’s extensive torture history I hope? If not do some searches. Dan Mitrione comes to mind. Also William Blum has documented the evidence fairly well. The CIA is above the law and Abu Graib is just another example of that.

[quote]Mufasa wrote:
Let’s look at this as carefully as we can (without having access to all the facts)…

Based on testimony and reports, there are thee major players in these prisons: The Military Police, Military Intelligence/Linguistics/etc…and the ever-present CIA/FBI etc…

Now…these low-level guards seem to imply that not only were they “encouraged” to do the things that they did BY MILITARY INTELLIGENCE in order to get information from prisoners…they were “taught” some of the techniques…(Now…why they were not taught to be dumb enough to take pictures that end up in the hands of CBS is WAY beyond me…)…

So…the Civilian arm (CIA/FBI/State Dept., etc) have completely washed their hands…

Military Intelligence SEEMS to have done the same thing (yet they are an intergral part of these prisons)…

So we are left with the one arm (Police) that has a female Commander…and a lot of low-level Non-coms and enlisted people under her command?

As Commander of the Prison…I agree with BB…the General is where the “buck” stops…but what about the Chain of command of both HER branch (Police) and Military Intelligence (Which has a General ALSO in that chain of Command/Responsibility)?

Again…I’m asking merely for opinions, guys (because we don’t have all the facts…)…but I think the Judge at Fort Hood is the only one seeing that making an example out of England (the “poster girl” of the whole thing) is not going to fly…

Thoughts?

Mufasa[/quote]

Mufasa,

Is there anything pointing to military or other intelligence other than the defendants’ claims that they were, in effect, “just following orders”?

I don’t want to give too much credence to that claim unless there is something else establishing that they were in fact “encouraged” to do the things that they did BY MILITARY INTELLIGENCE in order to get information from prisoners…they were “taught” some of the techniques."

Basically, I want to know two things: 1) Did the accused guards make specific claims as to who was showing them the techniques or encouraging them, or are they just making vague claims that “intelligence people” did this?

  1. Is there any independent evidence, such as records of orders or testimony from other guards who are not charged with having engaged in systematic abuse of prisoners that military or other intelligence did in fact provide such encouragement or instruction on techniques?

Without that, it just looks like the accused trying to switch focus and blame off of themselves with a fairly standard defense tactic.

An interesting look at the backgrounds of the abusers, and some testimony – definitey a can’t-miss read for Springer fans…

May 10, 2005
Behind Failed Abu Ghraib Plea, A Tangle of Bonds and Betrayals
By KATE ZERNIKE

In a military courtroom in Texas last week was a spectacle worthy of “As the World Turns”: Pfc. Lynndie R. England, the defendant, holding her 7-month-old baby; the imprisoned father, Pvt. Charles A. Graner Jr., giving testimony that ruined what lawyers said was her best shot at leniency; and waiting outside, another defendant from the notorious abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Megan M. Ambuhl, who had recently wed Private Graner - a marriage Private England learned about only days before.

To some, the grave misdeeds at Abu Ghraib, where the three soldiers worked for six months in 2003, have become a twisted symbol of the American military occupation of Iraq. But the scandal is also one rooted in the behavior of military reservists working at the prison, an environment that testimony has portrayed as more frat house than military prison, a place where inmates were routinely left naked and soldiers took pictures of one another simulating sex with fruit.

The reservists’ treatment of Iraqi prisoners and their entanglements with one another - pieced together from documents, court testimony, e-mail and interviews - have produced a dark soap opera, one whose episodes have continued to play out in the months since the scandal erupted, and culminated in the Texas courtroom last week.

As with any soap opera, past episodes help explain the most recent.

Private England, who is now waiting for charges to be filed against her again, and Private Graner began dating while they were training with their Army Reserve unit, the 372nd Military Police Company, based in Cresaptown, Md.

A hell-raising young woman from West Virginia, Private England, now 22, was married at 19, on a whim, she told friends, and violated her parents’ wishes when she joined the Reserve in high school to make money for college.

Private Graner, 36, a Pennsylvania prison guard and a former marine, had rejoined the military in a burst of patriotism after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

He was fresh from an ugly divorce in 2000. His ex-wife, Staci Morris, had taken out three protective orders against him, and after he was arrested for harassing her in 2001, Private Graner admitted that he had dragged her around by her hair.

He introduced the two women, and Ms. Morris said she felt “selfish relief” that with someone new, her ex-husband would stop being obsessed with her. And she liked Private England, finding her quiet and adoring.

“If he was as charming with her as he is with most women at the beginning, I can understand it,” Ms. Morris said. “Charming, compliments, you name it. The things you would love to hear as a young woman.”

Just after the 372nd received orders to go to Iraq in February 2003, Private Graner, Private England and another soldier had a last party weekend in Virginia Beach. They drank heavily, and when their friend passed out, Private Graner and Private England took turns taking photographs of each other exposing themselves over his head.

In Iraq, Private England was disciplined several times for sleeping with Private Graner, against military rules. She flouted warnings to stay on the wing where she worked as a clerk, and spent most of her nights in the cellblock where he worked the night shift.

One night in October, he told her to pose for photographs holding a leash tied around the neck of a naked and crawling detainee. He e-mailed one home: “Look what I made Lynndie do.” The now infamous pictures of detainees masturbating, he said, were a birthday gift for her.

Specialist Ambuhl, who has been discharged from the Army, was Private Graner’s partner on the nightshift. If he and Private England were loud and bawdy - they made a video of themselves having sex - Ms. Ambuhl was soft-spoken and serious. Private England had joined the army to see the world; Ms. Ambuhl had already been on college study trips to Kenya and the Galapagos Islands. She had worked as a technician in a medical laboratory in Virginia, where she grew up, and like Private Graner, signed up to defend the nation after Sept. 11.

She had been involved with another soldier in the unit. But by late December, she had ended that relationship and started one with Private Graner. In e-mail messages, the two dreamily recalled their nights stolen away in the crowded prison cells where the military police lived.

“I was missing u too,” she wrote just after Christmas 2003. “When I heard your voice coming up the stairs, it made me happy and kinda nervous too (good nervous).” She reassured him that she would not get back together with her ex-boyfriend.

But Private Graner had not completely cut off relations with Private England. On Jan. 2, 2004, he was caught sleeping in Private England’s quarters and demoted.

A few days later, Ms. Ambuhl e-mailed him again. “I really do care about you,” she wrote. “It’s just that part of me says I just got hurt from a relationship so don’t put myself in the position to get hurt again.”

She fantasized about when they might be truly alone. “Is it going to feel strange for just the two of us to be in a room together, with no chance of anyone walking in??” she wrote a few days later. “Just kidding, I can’t wait.” They talked about taking a leave together in February.

But on Jan. 13, a soldier slipped investigators a disk with the graphic photographs of detainees. The investigation began the next day.

Private Graner, quickly identified as the ringleader in the abuse, e-mailed his father in early March to discuss the accusations against him, then popped “more good news:” Private England was two months pregnant - he spelled her name Lynndee - and the pregnancy would most likely get them sent home from Iraq.

They found out she was pregnant two days after breaking up.

“I stopped seeing her back in january but when all this garbage came out i started seeing her again,” he wrote. “chances are very good that it is my child…o well…daddy what did you bring home from the war???”

Ms. Ambuhl sent Private Graner e-mail in mid-March, after stumbling over old photos of them. “it seems like a dream that we were ever together, if you could call it that.”

“doin ok lately?” she asked. “U seem kinda distant.” She let off a flash of exasperation with Private England. “We never tried to exclude u and England,” she wrote. “You never wanted to go to chow or anything with us. And she does exactly what you do so you can’t help that.”

Private England - but not Private Graner - was sent back to the United States because of the pregnancy. The Army moved Private Graner and Ms. Ambuhl, along with four other soldiers under investigation, to a tent apart from the rest of their unit. And they resumed their relationship.

In April, Ms. Ambuhl e-mailed Private Graner an article headlined, “Study Finds Frequent Sex Raises Cancer Risk.” She added, “We could have died last night.”

Privates England and Graner were no longer speaking when their son was born in October. She named him Carter Allan England.

Ms. Ambuhl, who had by then pleaded guilty and been discharged, was subpoenaed to testify at Private Graner’s trial at Fort Hood, Tex., in January.

On the stand, prosecutors forced her to acknowledge the relationship, and accused her of lying to protect Private Graner.

“You don’t want your friend to go to jail, do you?” the lead prosecutor, Maj. Michael Holley, asked.

“No, sir,” she said quietly.

The two spent evenings together during the trial, and it was there that Private Graner proposed. He was convicted, sentenced to 10 years in a military prison and demoted from specialist to private. He had earlier been demoted from corporal.

Ms. Ambuhl had gone back to work at the laboratory and was living with her parents. They accompanied her to Fort Hood for the wedding in April. Another man stood in for Private Graner, because he had begun serving his sentence and Ms. Ambuhl, as an admitted co-conspirator, is not allowed to see him.

Private England heard about the wedding from her lawyers, who heard about it from a reporter the Friday before her trial was to begin. She had worked out a plea agreement that limited her time in prison to 30 months, and the jury could have given her less time. She planned to have her son live with her mother while she was in prison.

Ms. Morris, Private Graner’s ex-wife, had been subpoenaed to tell the jury that Private Graner was a bad influence, and over pizza in a hotel room, she befriended Private England. She told Private England that she regretted not warning her away from him at the beginning.

"She said, ‘I guess I should be grateful for Megan?’ " Ms. Morris recalled, "And I said, ‘Yeah, honey, you should be.’ "

The day before his testimony, Private Graner sent a note to reporters saying he regretted that “Lynn” had pleaded guilty and hoped her plea would get her a light sentence. Private England did not return any such affection. She leaned down to a courtroom artist sketching Mr. Graner: “Don’t forget the horns and goatee.”

Prosecutors advised defense lawyers against putting Private Graner on the stand, but they did it anyway. He testified that he had ordered Private England to remove a prisoner from a cell by a leash and that it had been a legitimate military exercise. This presented what seemed to be a contradiction - a defendant pleading guilty but presenting a witness who testified that she was innocent. The military judge threw out her plea agreement and ordered that the court-martial process start over.

“It’s nothing you did,” the judge, Col. James L. Pohl, told her, “It’s what he did.”

Private England turned to Ms. Morris. “Well, he screws everything up, doesn’t he?” Ms. Morris recalled Private England saying.

“I have to agree with you,” Ms. Morris replied.

BB:

That’s a VERY interesting artitle that indeeds sheds an additional light on the some of the known players in this whole Abu Ghraib event.

So…now we know that Graner, England and a lot of these lower-level enlisted and non-coms were a bunch on horny, Jerry-Springer-type, low-lifes that thought they were in a big Frat House full of Pledeges…

But my question remains the same:

These peoples’ Chain of Command can know when they are fratinizing and having sex…when those involved are trying as hard as they can to not get caught…while they don’t know that these same people are stacking detainees in the middle of prison floors naked…or making them fake masturbation on each other?

The ignorance that many in the Chain of Command have exhibited just defies logic…

Mufasa

[quote]Mufasa wrote:
BB:

That’s a VERY interesting artitle that indeeds sheds an additional light on the some of the known players in this whole Abu Ghraib event.

So…now we know that Graner, England and a lot of these lower-level enlisted and non-coms were a bunch on horny, Jerry-Springer-type, low-lifes that thought they were in a big Frat House full of Pledeges…

But my question remains the same:

These peoples’ Chain of Command can know when they are fratinizing and having sex…when those involved are trying as hard as they can to not get caught…while they don’t know that these same people are stacking detainees in the middle of prison floors naked…or making them fake masturbation on each other?

The ignorance that many in the Chain of Command have exhibited just defies logic…

Mufasa[/quote]

Mufasa,

I think there’s a problem in equating the “chain of command” here as one unified unit.

A seargent could dock them for fraternization (or a jilted girlfriend could have filed an anonymous complaint…).

That doesn’t equate to the officers in charge knowing what was going on.

And it seems to me the likeliehood of any particular officer in this chain of command having knowledge of what was occurring decreases as you move further up the chain, away from the actors.

Not that they shouldn’t have – that’s another matter, and it seems they were highly negligent in that, to say the least. And that’s what the Army report found.

BB:

The points you bring out go RIGHT back to my original question…how did it all just seem to “hop” all the way up (and OVER and DOWN from other commanders) to Karpinski?

Maybe it IS as simple as she was the Base Commander…and that’s where the 'ole buck stops…

Mufasa

[quote]Mufasa wrote:
BB:

The points you bring out go RIGHT back to my original question…how did it all just seem to “hop” all the way up (and OVER and DOWN from other commanders) to Karpinski?

Maybe it IS as simple as she was the Base Commander…and that’s where the 'ole buck stops…

Mufasa
[/quote]

I think that is the case. Now: Do you think they went TOO high up the chain in apportioning the blame?

I’m pretty certain those lower in the chain are getting in trouble for this too – just not mentioned in reports, where the purpose was to find how high the blame for this highly charged, politically combustible issue went.

Basically we are only looking at two types of info here: 1) The criminal trial for criminal liability, which necessarily focused on those who did the acts (and would have focused on anyone who ordered them to do the acts); and 2) the Army report, which, as I said, was tasked with finding the uppermost level of responsibility. We aren’t getting access to any internal disciplinary measures that are going on.

Does anyone have any info on the actual chain of command there? Staffing and such?

Here’s an op-ed from James Schlesinger in today’s WSJ:

Military Justice

By JAMES SCHLESINGER
May 11, 2005

The decision of Col. James Pohl, judge in the case of Lynndie England at Fort Hood, to declare a mistrial, combined with the Army’s decision not to hold any senior officer culpable for the degeneracies at Abu Ghraib has triggered another spurt of commentary from the media regarding the supposed “failure” to find a high-level culprit.

Let us first examine the decision regarding Private England. The judge was simply following the rules of military justice, when he refused to accept a guilty plea by an individual who did not understand that what she had done was wrong. In an early phase of the Army’s investigation that started in January of 2004, Private England had stated quite straightforwardly that “we did it for the fun of it” – surely not the observation of someone who recognized that her action was wrong. Private England was not part of the night shift at Tier 1 at Abu Ghraib. She had no business being there – and had been warned several times by her supervisors not to hang around. She was there seeking the attention of then-Corporal Charles Graner, leader of the unit and now serving a 10-year sentence for his sadism. Private England simply acted on his suggestions. This unfortunate young woman has been buffeted by life since an underprivileged and unlucky childhood in West Virginia. It is ironical that she has now been portrayed world-wide as a symbol of American harshness and arrogance.

This is not the final word from the Army on the abusive behavior that has been uncovered. Private England will again go through the military criminal justice process. Perhaps other, more senior leaders will yet be charged. The wheels of the Uniform Code of Military Justice turn slowly but inexorably.

The administration was both right and wrong in portraying the abuses in Iraq and elsewhere as perpetrated by a handful of individuals at Abu Ghraib. Abuses (as might be expected) were not confined to Abu Ghraib but were encountered elsewhere in both Afghanistan and Iraq. (One should remember that confirmed cases of abuse remain few in number – about 70 among some 300 allegations of abuse – in relation to the several hundred thousand troops that served in the area.)

But the administration was dead on, when it treated the actions of the night shift at Abu Ghraib as an aberration. By contrast, there was none of this purposeless sadism on the day shift at Tier 1, which enjoyed proper leadership. What we saw on the night shift was an out-of-control unit, untrained in detention practices, which had kept a continuous record of its activities, as it moved north from Kuwait. Through the use of digital cameras, the unit was able to record all of its activities – including its quasi-criminal actions and debaucheries at Abu Ghraib.

These images made their way to the media while the Army was conducting its investigation. The impact was global. The media, here and abroad, leaped to the conclusion that the released photos were representative of the treatment of detainees – and reflected a policy that authorized such behavior in the quest for actionable intelligence. In fact, there was no such policy – and such behavior was strictly unauthorized. Indeed, only one of the detainees abused at Abu Ghraib was there to be interrogated for actionable intelligence. Many were there simply for criminal behavior.

Nevertheless, the instant inference that the abuses had been authorized as a proper method of extracting intelligence was, for partisan reasons, embraced by some members of Congress. Sen. Edward Kennedy, for example, stated unequivocally that using torture to obtain intelligence was DoD policy. False accusations about our defense establishment really should remain the province of foreign critics.

Nonetheless, having misdescribed the situation at Abu Ghraib – and believing that the abuses were, indeed, a reflection of government policy – the media launched its search for high-level culprits, civilian or military or both. Having hyped it from the beginning, the media had developed a vested interest in the theory that the misdeeds at Abu Ghraib reflected government policy – and the search for whoever had authorized a policy of abuse. Guilty or not, somebody needed to be punished.

Consequently, when the Army ultimately concluded that no one at senior levels was culpable, a flurry of protest has erupted. To be sure, at senior levels insufficient attention had been paid to detention practices, but insufficient attention is quite different from culpability for the abuses at Abu Ghraib. (In the midst of an insurgency, whose existence and severity had come as a surprise, the attention of senior officers understandably was not primarily focused on the conditions in detention facilities.)


Perhaps the clearest conclusion from this episode involves neither the fate of Private England nor the finding regarding our senior officers and officials, but rather the attack mentality of the nation’s press. Today’s press tends to confuse the speed of communication with the severity of the offense. Judgment first, evidence later. We are now celebrating the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II. If we had then applied the standards current in today’s press corps, Eisenhower would have been fired after Kasserine Pass, MacArthur would have been cashiered for allowing his B-17s and other aircraft to be destroyed on the ground well after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Patton would never have been restored to command.

The Army has acted properly, if sometimes ponderously, ever since January of 2004. Find the offense. Discover the source of the trouble. Prosecute, when necessary. Follow the procedures appropriate to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Unhappily, some people find that insufficient.

Mr. Schlesinger, a former secretary of defense, chaired the Independent Panel to Review DoD detention operations.

Excellent Op-Ed, BB!

Thanks!

I’m afraid that a LOT of things get “tried” in the media these days…

Mufasa