Persecuting soldiers who criticize the torture policy

[Notice: Light posting until July 12 or so.]  I can't find this online. But it's from the Vorarlberger Nachrichten (Austria) 06/23/04: "'Held von Abu Ghraib' wird verfolgt".

It's about Joseph Darby, the American soldier who complained to his superiors about torture in the Abu Ghuraib branch of the gulag, and provided a CD-ROM with photos as evidence.  According to the Vorarlberger Nachrichten article by Peter Schoreder, he has been the target of threats by other soldiers in Iraq, to the point that the Army has reassigned him.

It quotes Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who we know from published reports authorized at least some of the torture personally, as saying that Darby handled himself honorably by exposing the abuses.  (Anyone who finds it credible that Rummy actually thinks that, contact me privately for some more of those hot deals I mentioned before helping children of deposed African dicatators recover lost fortunes.)  It also quotes an Army spokesperson, Dov Schwartz, saying that the Army is trying to decide what kind of medal to give him.  Given everything else that's going on with Darby, that sounds more like a threat than a promise, too.

Schroeder claims that in bars in Darby's hometown of Corrigansville, MD, photos of some of the torturers are displayed to honor them as heroes, and he didn't seem to have trouble finding people in the area who attacked Darby for doing what he did. One fool even blamed Darby for the murder of Nick Berg, who was beheaded by kidnappers several weeks ago.  And let's be clear: Darby did his duty as a soldier in reporting this seriously criminal activity.

Darby's mother Margaret suffers from cancer and has had one eye removed as a result, and may lose the sight in her other eye.  Her local church refuses to pray for her because he son did his duty as an American soldier.  Apparently their God approves of sadistic torture and lawless conduct by soldiers in Iraq.  Maybe it's the same God who speaks to George Bush.  She hopes to be able to see her son again before she loses her remaining vision.

Even Darby's brother and sister-in-law have been threatened.

Darby was reassigned outside Iraq for security reasons, according to the Army. They aren't saying where he was reassigned, except that it is in the US.  They claim it's to prevent acts of revenge against him.  But I suspect that keeping his current location secret has at least as much to do with making it difficult for reporters to find him.

It won't matter to the stab-in-the-back crowd, who are already saying that war critics are dishonoring our soldiers, blah, blah, and who in later years will accuse antiwar civilians of insulting poor, noble American soldiers.  But it's worth noting for the sake of, oh, recognizing reality, that this is Joseph Darby is an active-duty American soldier who helped expose the criminal torture at Abu Ghuraib, and did so because he was doing his duty as a soldier.

It's also important to remember that his action was not "antiwar" in the sense of attacking the Iraq War as a whole.  I don't know what he thinks of the larger policy.  It was an anti-torture, pro-law, pro-basic-decency act.

But in one sense it was an antiwar act, because the torture policy is not just a case of local excesses or failing discipline.  It is an organized policy promoted by senior US officials, and justified by the irresponsible, unethical attorneys in the Justice Department and the Defense Department who encouraged the behavior with their phony claims that the president has the authority to set aside any law or Constitutional provision he chooses in the name of wartime necessity.

In that sense, the torture policy is very much part of Bush and Rummy's war policy, and the criticism of the torture is very much a criticism of the particular kind of war they are pursuing, both in Iraq and Afghanistan.  This torture policy didn't have to be part of either war.  But Bush and Rummy chose to make it that.

As a final thought on this for now, I'll say that we can't blame the blowhards of Oxycontin radio for this situation of the threats against Darby and the trashy treatment of his mother by her own church.  That is, unless particular ones of them took part in the threats or explicitly encouraged them.  But the bile spewed over rightwing talk radio encourages exactly this kind of behavior.