[Marxism] There's the right way and the Army way

[Brian Shannon <Brian_Shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

In the civilian world, at least from my daily newspapers as well as the 
fictionalized series such as Law and Order on television, you make 
deals with underlings in order to bring the leaders down. There are 
plea bargains, lesser charges, sentencing agreements, etc., all in 
order to get to criminals higher up on the chain.

So why isn’t that being done in the Abu Ghraib and Bagram prison cases?

As they used to say during my service days: “There are two ways of 
doing things. There’s the right way and the Army way.”

Here and in similar articles, two points are raised: poor leadership or 
supervision and selective punishment.

However, the same newspaper and some of the same reporters have 
reported that the Gonzalez memo and the U.S. Military memo came from 
requests from the military top brass and the CIA to legitimize a 
practice that they were carrying on. It certainly didn’t come from 
lower ranking officers and enlisted men. If they didn’t know of any 
torture that was being carried on, why would they ask for a memo that 
legitimized it?
_____________

New York Times
Abuse Cases Open Command Issues at Army Prison
[The Delegation of Torture and Murder by U.S. Colonels]
By TIM GOLDEN, August 8, 2005

FORT BLISS, Tex., Aug. 4 – In a small courtroom at this vast Army 
training base, military prosecutors have been moving briskly to 
dispense with the cases they have filed in the brutal deaths in 2002 of 
two Afghan prisoners at the American military detention center in 
Bagram, Afghanistan.*
. . . [t]he cases have so far tended to illustrate how unprepared many 
soldiers were for their duties at Bagram, how loosely some were 
supervised and how vaguely the rules under which they operated were 
often defined. [They were prepared just right. They wanted soldiers who 
would follow orders, not question them.]

Along with other information that has emerged, trial testimony has 
underscored a question long at the core of this case: what is the 
responsibility of more senior military personnel for the abuses that 
took place?

Many former Bagram officers have denied knowing about any serious 
mistreatment of detainees before the two deaths. But others said some 
of the methods that prosecutors have cited as a basis for criminal 
charges, including chaining prisoners to the ceilings of isolation 
cells for long periods, were either standard practice at the prison or 
well-known to those who oversaw it. [See above and below. There were no 
problems of preparation, after all.]

None of the nine soldiers prosecuted thus far are officers. . . .

In the first interview granted by any of the accused soldiers, a former 
guard charged with maiming and assault said that he and other reservist 
military policemen were specifically instructed at Bagram how to 
deliver the type of blows that killed the two detainees, and that the 
strikes were commonly used when prisoners resisted being hooded or 
shackled.

“I just don’t understand how, if we were given training to do this, you 
can say that we were wrong and should have known better,” said the 
soldier, Pvt. Willie V. Brand, 26, of Cincinnati, a father of four who 
volunteered for tours in Afghanistan and Kosovo.

. . . , soldiers who served at Bagram have [said] they were acting on 
instructions from military intelligence personnel or on the authority 
of superior officers.
. . .
Private Brand insisted that the knee strikes were taught at Bagram as a 
basic way to gain the compliance of prisoners. Other soldiers have said 
the blows were also part of training overseen by sergeants in the 
reserve unit, the 377th Military Police Battalion, before it deployed 
overseas.
. . .
Specialist Anthony M. Morden, said in a pretrial hearing that witnesses 
he hoped to call [Fat chance!] would testify that the guards were 
“specifically authorized to use force to gain compliance.”
. . .
[L]ike Colonel Pence, Colonel Sposato has thus far entertained few 
questions about the wider responsibility for abuses at Bagram, denying 
requests by Private Brand’s lawyers to call a string of witnesses who 
they said could shed light on the orders and training the guards 
received.

The senior military intelligence official at Bagram, Brig. Gen. 
Theodore C. Nicholas II, WHO WAS THEN A COLONEL [my emphasis] told 
investigators last year that the interrogators were restricted to 
methods codified long before the Sept. 11 attacks in Army Field Manual 
34-52.

General Nicholas said he did “not recall” detainees being shackled with 
their arms overhead to deprive them of sleep, as other officers said 
was commonly done.
. . . But Lt. Col. John W. Loffert Jr., who took over as the 
intelligence operations officer shortly before the deaths, said he saw 
the practice being used as soon as he arrived at the detention center.

“I know they were forced to stand, handcuffed to chains that extended 
from the ceiling,” Colonel Loffert told investigators. “Their hands 
were approximately chest-level. It was plainly visible and discussed as 
a technique”.

In their final report, the investigators recommended that prosecutors 
CHARGE THE JUNIOR OFFICER [my emphasis] who led the interrogation 
group, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, with dereliction of duty, saying “she was 
clearly informed the techniques documented within F.M. 34-52 were the 
only approved interrogation techniques to be used at Bagram.”

But in a statement given in the commander’s inquiry, Captain Wood asked 
for “additional legal guidance” about techniques like stress positions 
and sleep deprivation.

In interviews, other former interrogators said she and the staff 
sergeant who was her deputy had for months been seeking clarification 
from their superiors about the interrogation methods they could use.

“They asked many, many times,” said one former Bagram interrogator who 
agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity because of the 
continuing investigation. “The lack of guidance was a source of 
frustration for them. My own feeling is that it was never given because 
nobody wanted to put themselves on the line.”


_________

Catch 22? If you clarify that it was authorized, you are guilty 
yourself; if you say don’t do it, your superior officers won’t promote 
you from Colonel to General. So there’s your choice: you torture or 
your career stops at Colonel. There is an additional pass: Maybe it 
isn’t torture, after all. There's the Geneva Convention way and the 
Gonzalez/Bush way. For even if you inflict pain up to major organ 
failure and death, the Gonzalez/Bush* memo says that it is only torture 
if it done for the sake of torture. It is not torture if it is done for 
a legitimate purpose.

However in the real world, when there is a death, someone has to pay 
(if you are caught, of course), and the ones to pay will be the 
enlisted personnel and the lowest possible officer. Besides, how far 
can Carolyn Wood expect to go in “this man’s army”?

Brian Shannon

___________
* The people who work for Bush are legally his agents. Thus the 
Gonzalez memo and other work done and promulgated by the White House 
are actions of the President.
_______________________________________________
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