Chapter Ends in Abu Ghraib Cover-Up

No doubt the Bush adminstration is breathing a sigh of relief that Army Pfc Lynndie England was sentenced yesterday to three years in prison for her role in the notorious Iraq prison abuse scandal.  We can now forget about this episode.  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Saff Richard Myers smugly announced that the verdict represented ''one more example of holding people accountable, because that's who did it." He said, ''We had a problem, and we dealt with the problem and dealt with it in an appropriate way."  Trouble is, nobody really believes this - certainly not reporter Seymour Hersh who documented how the responsibility for the horrible abuse reaches up to the top levels of the Pentagon.  And we can't forget the important role played by Alberto Gonzales - a contender for the open slot on the US Supreme Court - in opening the door to torture. 

Today's taz has a brief interview with Human Rights Watch president Kenneth Roth, who dismisses the verdict as an attempt to scapegoat low level individuals for a policy that was sanctioned by the military command.  Without an independent inquiry, the responsible individuals will never be  held accountable:

Das Pentagon hat alles getan, um die Verantwortlichkeiten ganz unten in der Hierarchie anzusetzen. Es hat alles abgeblockt, was auf die Verwicklung irgendwelcher oberen Offiziere in die Misshandlungen deuten könnte, die ja nicht nur in Abu Ghraib stattgefunden haben, sondern überall in Afghanistan, Irak, Guantánamo und anderen US-Haftanstalten. Wegen dieses kompletten Versagens fordert Human Rights Watch die Ernennung eines unabhängigen Sonderermittlers und die Bildung von so etwas wie der 9/11-Kommission, um die Vorgänge zu untersuchen.

But Abu Ghraib is only the tip of the iceberg.  The Washington Post today publishes an open letter from an officer in the 82nd Airborne Division about the rampant detainee abuse he experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan. He urges clarification on the standards for prisoner treatment:

Some do not see the need for this work. Some argue that since our actions are not as horrifying as Al Qaeda's, we should not be concerned. When did Al Qaeda become any type of standard by which we measure the morality of the United States? We are America, and our actions should be held to a higher standard, the ideals expressed in documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Andrew Sullivan has the appropriate response on his blog:

The bottom line, as the NYT reports today, is that the military and the Bush administration are determined to stop any real investigation about how torture and abuse came to be so widespread in the U.S. military. The scapegoating of retarded underlings like Lynndie England is an attempt to deflect real responsibility for the new pro-torture policies that go all the way to the White House. It's a disgusting cover-up and it rests on breaking the will and resolve of decent servicemen and women brave enough to expose wrong-doing.

The problem is that Sullivan was a huge supporter of the Iraq invasion, and even today he advocates "staying the course" there for at least "another five years". The atrocities that outrage him today are a consequence of the immoral war he so fiercely defends.

Comments

[Joerg]

One chapter ends, the next starts. It's a page turner:
"US soldiers allegedly trading pictures of dead Iraqis & Afghanis for porn"
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/us-soldiers-allegedly-trading-pictures.html

This stuff makes winning hearts and minds in Iraq and the Muslim world impossible. Especially since they are exaggerated, but this stuff always gets exaggerated and even a few pictures are bad. The website www.nowthatsfuckedup.com is still online. Jesus.

It's bad for the US as well. It indicates war traumatization, psychological damage etc.

"The posts on www.nowthatsfuckedup.com are
not meant to subvert the sanitized mainstream media with
the goal of waking the general public up to the horrors of
war. Rather, all of the posters - and many of the site's
patrons - appear to regard the combat photos with sadistic
glee, and pathological wisecracks follow almost every
post."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051010/the_porn_of_war

Juan Cole's "first reason to get the ground troops out now is that they are being fatally brutalized by their own treatment of Iraqi prisoners. Abu Ghraib was horrific, and we who are not in Congress or the Department of Defense have still only seen a fraction of the photographs of it that exist.
http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/why-we-have-to-get-troops-out-of-iraq.html

Similarly, Rootless Cosmopolitan:
"I fear that long after the last U.S. troops have left Iraq, America is going to be paying a heavy price for the psychological brutalization the occupation has inflicted on many of the soldiers who served in it."
http://tonykaron.com/2005/09/27/abu-ghraib-as-america/

[David]

Excellent links, Joerg, even if the content is extremely distressing.
Many thanks!
David