posted
Because of the way our side has been treating prisoners.
This is today's bad news.
You know, China now issues their own report of human rights abuses by America to counter the one we annually send to them.
If GW Bush is given credit for the successes in Iraq and Afghanistan, is also to be given the blame for things like this? If this is a war crime, who is the criminal we'll be punishing?
quote:Army, CIA Agreed on 'Ghost' Prisoners
By Josh White Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 11, 2005; Page A16
Top military intelligence officials at the Abu Ghraib prison came to an agreement with the CIA to hide certain detainees at the facility without officially registering them, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Keeping such "ghost" detainees is a violation of international law.
Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, who was second in command of the intelligence gathering effort at Abu Ghraib while the abuse was occurring, told military investigators that "other government agencies" and a secretive elite task force "routinely brought in detainees for a short period of time" and that the detainees were held without an internment number, and their names were kept off the books.
Guards who worked at the prison have said that ghost detainees were regularly locked in isolation cells on Tier 1A and that they were kept from international human rights organizations.
Best, of course, would be to behave in an honorable fashion always.
That ship has sailed.
Next best would be to own-up to the illegal/immoral behavior, take corrective actions so that it can't be repeated again, and punish the guilty. Thus restoring some of the lost honor with penitent behavior and learning lessons.
I think we're falling a bit short on that. Of the guards involved in prisoner abuse, only a few have actually punished with anything other than administrative actions. NONE of the higher-ups have faced any consequences beyond the administrative.
Now, with this new revelation, directly in contradiction to international law, I wait eagerly to see what our military and intelligence branches do.
Honor. Once you spend it or break it, it's gone. If you don't care about it, then you can claim that honor derives later from brave action, a sort of redemption of "winning" or sacrifice. We have that meme in our society, I suppose. The late life redemptive act that makes up for all the crimes of the past.
In the meantime, that meme also sets you free to continue the bad behavior.
Once again, how it all ends matters more than how you got there.
Except it doesn't. Our honor as a nation is being ripped away from us by our own behavior. Sure, other nations respect us, but it's out of fear now, not out of respect for our values and the way we act on them.
That ship too, has sailed.
I know that some of you will trot out the "traitor" label again, but I will tell you now that I do not trust our military to police itself. I support our soldiers because they are risking their lives. But I do not want their sacrifice in this way. I think our leaders have sold them out and are getting them killed in an action that is at its core immoral and ultimately damaging to our country. Not because we shouldn't be helping the Iraqis -- we should've been helping them all along. But because we are not living up to our own values and the bitter memory of the shameful acts will carry forward. And because this will be the generation known for damaging America's honor more than any before.
And I do not doubt for a moment that the soldiers were ordered to do it, or encouraged by people higher up the chain. To believe otherwise is to believe that our soldiers are just depraved. And I am reluctant to believe that.
And before someone says "oh, this is a few bad eggs." I remind you that our military is made up entirely of volunteers and that these people, presumably, have lots of experience with the chain of command and lots of training. If not, then our military structure has failed in addition to the people involved.
But here's the most damaging part to our honor. That the administration has fought and will continue to fight against owning up to these mistakes and misbehaviors. Not until forced would they allow international observers into Guantanamo. Not until forced would they give those people trials. Not until forced will they ensure that the trials meet the standards set by our own laws.
Not until forced.
That lacks honor. That destroys honor.
They don't care.
That means they have no honor.
They are patriotic, but without honor. What, you historians among us, is the precedent for that?
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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On the home front, I've been thinking strongly about joining the ACLU, except that I don't agree with ALL of their major principles, and I worry about giving money to causes I oppose.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
That is why it is important to have separate intelligence agencies that are not accountable to each other. If one is corrupted, all are corrupted. I'm not terribly fond of the Homeland Security umbrella for this reason. The trouble is, who in the end is a security agency responsible to? Often it is only the principle of security itself.
I recognize that in many small ways, we have to become like the enemy we think of ourselves as fighting. The question is how far we will go before it becomes obvious to ourselves.
P.S. When it comes to the ghost prisoners, I have to wonder how it helped the operation to do that secretly. It may be that the CIA just had a separate method of tracking the prisoners, but I would equally suspect that they wanted to do everything in secret unless forced to do otherwise.
posted
I write letters for Amnesty International -- you know, writing those letters of protest to foreign governments such as Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, China, Uzbekistan, etc. to protest their human rights abuses.
It's incredibly frustrating and embarassing to watch my own government be so active in torture and human rights violations.
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quote: Saturday, March 12, 2005 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kids as young as 11 at Abu Ghraib
MATT KELLEY
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- A boy no older than 11 was among the children held by the Army at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, the former U.S. commander of the facility told a general investigating abuses at the prison.
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski did not say what happened to the boy or why he was imprisoned, according to a transcript of her interview with Maj. Gen. George Fay that was released by the American Civil Liberties Union. The transcript of the May 2004 interview was among hundreds of pages of documents about Iraq prisoner abuses the group made public Thursday after getting them under the Freedom of Information Act.
Karpinski, who was in charge of Abu Ghraib from July to November 2003, said she often visited the prison's youngest inmates. One boy "looked like he was 8 years old," Karpinski said. "He told me he was almost 12."
Military officials have acknowledged that some juvenile prisoners had been held at Abu Ghraib, a massive prison built by Saddam Hussein's government outside Baghdad. But the transcript is the first documented evidence of a child no older than 11 being held prisoner.
Military officials have said that no juvenile prisoners were subject to the abuses captured in photographs from Abu Ghraib. But some of the men shown being stripped naked and humiliated had been accused of raping a 14-year-old prisoner.
The new documents offer rare details about the children whom the U.S. military has held in Iraq. Karpinski said the Army began holding women and children in a cellblock at Abu Ghraib in the summer of 2003 because the facility was better than lockups in Baghdad where the youths had been held.
The documents include statements from six witnesses who said three interrogators and a civilian interpreter at Abu Ghraib got drunk one night and took a 17-year-old female prisoner from her cell. The four men forced the girl to expose her breasts and kissed her, the reports said. The witnesses -- whose names were blacked out of the documents given to the ACLU -- said those responsible were not punished.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman has said three soldiers were given "nonjudicial punishment" for making a female prisoner expose her breasts. Nonjudicial punishments are sanctions short of a court-martial, such as being fined or reduced in rank.
quote:I recognize that in many small ways, we have to become like the enemy we think of ourselves as fighting. The question is how far we will go before it becomes obvious to ourselves.
I couldn't have said it better.
As for joining ACLU and Amnesty International, I joined both this year after many years of fence sitting for precisely the reason Icarus gave. I found many of their efforts to be contrary to the public good -- defending a principle instead of using a yardstick that included consideration of what would be best for the most people. Their advocacy of homeless people's "right" to live in any public space, for example, really made NYC more of a hell hole than it had to be.
But I could always see their point, just not agree with it 100% of the time.
Now I have come to believe that defending a principle is sometimes the only reasonable action and that we need to defend principles all the time or risk losing them forever.
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posted
I will NEVER join ACLU as long as they insist on advocating for legalized abortion. It's really that simple.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I understand Dag. I had a few issues with them that I had to get past before I could join, and it was not an easy decision ultimately. But I decided that there wasn't another entity out there that was fighting this particular fight on the domestic side as effectively as the ACLU.
So, while I strongly disagree with some of their stances, I decided that they are a force to be reckoned with on fundamental constitutional issues and if my dollars help them stop some of the stuff that I don't like, then it's a good thing.
I wonder if conservatives had, as part of their overall strategy in taking over American politics, the thought that many would feel like me and join these organizations that are anathema to them? I mean, the more people are driven to fight back against the conservative program, the more are going to join groups like ACLU. Eventually, that just gives them more power to fight more effectively on ALL fronts.
So, my dollars that I gave them to fight back on things like abuse of prisoner's rights and against things like prolonging or extending the "patriot" act are also going to help the ACLU become stronger in all sorts of areas.
I may not even intend that, but I feel like I've been left so little voice in the direction of this country that I'm willing to swallow some of my concern about these folks and help them to fight ALL their battles, if they'll promise to fight hard on the ones I care most about.
I guess this is how that pendulum is made to swing, eh?
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posted
I can't imagine that many conservatives would think that way, Bob. An awful lot of us are so convinced that our perspective is self-evidently right that we can't think of any reason except sheer perversity to disagree.
Posts: 1114 | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote: An awful lot of us are so convinced that our perspective is self-evidently right that we can't think of any reason except sheer perversity to disagree.
I've encountered this. Not in the situations or arguments in this thread, but over other things, like child care. A woman said to me something like "No, there is no other way to think about it. This is the only opinion that could ever conceivably exist." I was only trying to explain that there were other perspectives. She refused categorically to even consider the possibility.
I gave up on all conversation at that point. Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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