According to the following reports, official torture is continuing in Iraq. But now we have a "sovereign" Iraqi government. So the American soldiers who try to prevent these crimes from continuing - crimes which vastly increase the danger our soldiers face in the field every day and night in Iraq - are ordered to turn the victims back over to their torturers.
Because we must respect the new Iraqi government's "sovereignty." And we make quiet diplomatic protests to the Iraqi government. Because we must respect its "sovereignty."
Ordered to just walk away Oregonian 08/07/04
Oregon soldiers say they were ordered away from scene of Iraq prison abuse San Francisco Chronicle 08/08/04
As the Oregonian story explains, an Oregon National Guardsman assigned to service at the prison saw prisoners being tortured in the Interior Ministry.
He immediately radioed for help. Soon after, a team of Oregon Army National Guard soldiers swept into the yard and found dozens of Iraqi detainees who said they had been beaten, starved and deprived of water for three days.
In a nearby building, the soldiers counted dozens more prisoners and what appeared to be torture devices -- metal rods, rubber hoses, electrical wires and bottles of chemicals. Many of the Iraqis, including one identified as a 14-year-old boy, had fresh welts and bruises across their back and legs.
The soldiers disarmed the Iraqi jailers, moved the prisoners into the shade, released their handcuffs and administered first aid. Lt. Col. Daniel Hendrickson of Albany, Ore., the highest ranking American at the scene, radioed for instructions.
But in a move that frustrated and infuriated the guardsmen, Hendrickson's superior officers told him to return the prisoners to their abusers and immediately withdraw. It was June 29 -- Iraq's first official day as a sovereign country since the U.S.-led invasion.
The incident, the first known case of human rights abuses in newly sovereign Iraq, is at the heart of the Americandilemma here.
Note that this event occurred on the first day of the new "sovereign" government's rule.
And it's important to recognize that these abuses were being exposed by American soldiers, who were disgusted and dismayed as human beings and as American soldiers by what they saw:
The guardsmen who later gave their account of that day said they wanted Americans to know about the actions they took to protect unresisting prisoners -- and that they were ordered by U.S. military officials to walk away.
"The guys were really upset," said one soldier. Said another who talked to them immediately afterward, "They were really moved by what they'd seen."
The torture scandal is not going away. And for several reasons. The torture has been widespread and systematic. It had to be sanctioned by senior military and civilian officials to have unfolded in the way it has. There have been too many witnesses to keep it secret, which is how it finally became a scandal. There are photographs and videos. And the nature of the torture was so perverted it's hard to pass it off as interrogation techniques gone wild.
And we're talking about criminal actions. For this to take place in the way it has, senior officials had to approve, promote and facilitate actions which they knew to be very serious violations of the law. A breakdown of the legal system military discipline has taken place, a breakdown of very serious proportions.
Rolling Stone has published and article using information from the still-officially-unreleased appendices of the Taguba report on torture in Abu Ghuraib: The Secret File of Abu Ghraib by Osha Gray Davidson 07/28/04. This article adds some sickening details of the torturers' treatment of prisoners. It also reinforces the grim story of how legal discipline in the military has been seriously compromised by the toture regime in the gulag:
[Maj. Gen. Antonio] Taguba was only authorized to investigate the role of military police in the torture at Abu Ghraib -- even though the Hard Site was controlled by military intelligence when the worst abuses occurred. Nevertheless, the classified annexes indicate that responsibility for the torture extends at least as high as several top-ranking officers in Iraq who have yet to be disciplined or removed from command. Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, who remains director of military intelligence in Iraq, was aware of the conditions at Abu Ghraib and received regular reports from officers at the prison. Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, who directed intelligence at the prison, admitted to Taguba that he did not actually report to the British colonel who was supposedly his supervisor. "On paper, I work directly for him," Jordan told Taguba. "But between you, me and the fence post, I work directly for General Fast." Fast is currently under investigation, but unlike lower-ranking officers and soldiers, she has not been reprimanded or charged in the abuses.
Davidson also reminds us that Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who seems to have been responsible for recommending the institution of a Guantanamo-like system of torture in Abu Ghuraib was the one who Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld installed as head of the Abu Ghuraib prison and torture center after the scandal there broke.
No, this scandal is not going away.
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