Lynndie England is just the beginning
By ROBYN E. BLUMNER
Published October 2, 2005
Lynndie England is about to get a taste of her own hospitality. The Army private of Abu Ghraib fame who mugged for the camera with a Beavis and Butt-head grin and a penchant for leashes has been sentenced to three years behind bars for participating in the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners.
England deserves what she got, if not more, but she was just a convenient fall-gal for higher ups who set the stage for her untethered conduct. To suggest that the close of England's trial in any way marks the end of the military's prisoner-abuse problems is to say that insider trading was resolved by jailing Martha. There are plenty more where England came from, and their misdeeds have been encouraged by people at the very top of our military and nation.
Thanks to Army Capt. Ian Fishback, a 26-year-old graduate of West Point, we know that some of the prisoner abuses uncovered at Abu Ghraib were also occurring at his base in Iraq. For 17 months, Fishback tried in vain to get someone within his chain of command, up to the secretary of the Army, to define the limits of detainee treatment. But his entreaties were met with buck-passing, big yawns and veiled threats to watch out for his own career. Finally, he went to Congress and a human rights organization.
Fishback exemplifies the honor of the services. I wonder how long before he's drummed out or has to go into seclusion due to the threats, like Joseph Darby, the Abu Ghraib whistleblower.
Fishback's story, as well as those of two anonymous sergeants who were also part of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, is detailed in a report by Human Rights Watch. The three say the abuse of prisoners was routine at Camp Mercury, their base near Fallujah. From September 2003 to April 2004, even as the terrors of Abu Ghraib were coming to light, prisoners known as PUCs, for "person under control," were beaten as a way to soften them up for interrogation and as entertainment, to relieve stress.
One sergeant detailed Camp Mercury's daily activities:
"To "F--- a PUC' means to beat him up. ... This happened every day.
"To "smoke' someone is to put them in stress positions until they get muscle fatigue and pass out. That happened every day. ...
"People would just volunteer just to get their frustrations out. We had guys from all over the base just come to guard PUCs so they could f--- them up."
In one episode, an Army cook used a metal bat to break a prisoner's leg. In another, prisoners were beaten with a chemical light stick that burned their eyes and skin.
Broken bones would be covered up by medical reports indicating that the detainees were injured during capture.
According to Fishback and the others, prisoners were forced to engage in physical exertion until they lost consciousness. Some were put in painful positions, piled into human pyramids, denied sleep, water or any food beyond crackers and subjected to extreme temperatures.
None of this should come as any surprise. When President Bush decided to make the Geneva Conventions disposable, when the Justice Department was dispatched to justify torture and when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed off on many of these very interrogation techniques for use against detainees in Guantanamo, the administration was inviting depravity - purposely.
Fishback told Human Rights Watch that when the pictures of Abu Ghraib started appearing, he thought many of the techniques were "in accordance with interrogation procedures" because of what went on daily at Camp Mercury. (More horrifying Abu Ghraib pictures may soon be released. Last week, a federal judge ordered that the Pentagon stop hiding more than 70 new pictures and three videos.) In a letter to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Fishback said he tried to get guidance on detainee treatment but was "unable to get clear, consistent answers from my leadership." (The Army has since opened an investigation.)
Here are some examples of clear guidance: The Geneva Conventions prohibit detainees of any stripe - POW or not - to be subject to "violence to life and person," "cruel treatment" or "outrages upon personal dignity." The Uniform Code of Military Justice explicitly demands punishment of soldiers who mistreat prisoners and their superior officers who allow it. The Army Field Manual directs that all interrogations be done in conformance with the Conventions and the UCMJ.
But in the Bush/Rumsfeld military, none of these humane standards are worth the paper they are written on.
When three Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, including former POW McCain, tried to amend the Pentagon spending bill to limit interrogation methods to those outlined in the Field Manual, Vice President Dick Cheney was personally enlisted to defeat the effort. If bill comes to the floor this week, as expected, McCain will try again. But the administration is dead set against clear rules of decent treatment, just as it has scuttled any attempt for a truly independent look at the prisoner abuse scandals.
This administration's moral stains are intentional.
At Camp Mercury, one sergeant said that half the prisoners held and abused were subsequently released "because they didn't do nothing." He worries that "if (the prisoner is) a good guy, you know, now he's a bad guy because of the way we treated him."
And how is this making us safer?