Iraqi Prison Abuse

[OnyxCougar]

Can Someone Explain to Me why everyone is pissed off specifically at Rumsfeld for the abuse of the Iraqi prisoners? I've missed something.

[smoothmoniker]

chain of command. The shit hits the top of the chain.

Plus, they just don't like him.

-sm

[tw]

Originally posted by OnyxCougar
Can Someone Explain to Me why everyone is pissed off specifically at Rumsfeld for the abuse of the Iraqi prisoners? I've missed something.

1) He knew about torture and sexual abuse almost 5 months ago - if not longer - and did nothing. Did not even bother to look at the pictures on those many CDs until the night before called back to testify before Congress.
2) He testified in closed session to Congress only hours before CBS would release the story. He knew the story was going to be released, was in a perfect scenario to notify Congress, and he said nothing. He left even Congress blindsided by a story and facts that were known for months.
3) from The Economist:

He is also, however, the man most identified with the wider culture to which these abuses may be connected.
The approach was epitomised by the setting up of a prision camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in 2001. The decision to detain combatants caught in Afghanistan for an indefinitie period, with no access to lawyers and no legal redress, was understandable as a short-term response to the threat of terrorism and to ignorance about who might actually be terrorists, but it was nevertheless both wrong and disastrous for America's reputation. It was wrong because it violated the very values and rule of law for which America was supposedly fighting, and soon produced evidence of double standards: some American citizens captured in Afghanistan were allowed to stand trial in American courts in the normal way, but such rights were denied to mere foreigners, every single one of whom was labelled as a dangerous terrorist by Mr Rumsfeld, regardless of any evidence. It has been disastrous for America's reputation because of that hypocrisy but also because it has become a symbol of a "we'll decide" arrogance.

Those are only the immediately obvious reasons for Rumsfeld to resign. There is no one killer reason. Just a very long list of mistakes, outright deceptions, and lies going back to the original reasons for a Pearl Harbor attack on Iraq. So many in Congress now feel deceived. Some examples:
1) Rumsfeld said only 30,000 troops would be needed after major hostilities ended even though Chairman of the Joint Cheifs was saying 200,000+ for at least two years. The Chairman basically lost his job for telling a truth that Rumsfeld did not want told. Currently Rumsfeld is only talking force protection rather than a solution to Iraq because of a shortage of troops in country. Force protection is a buzz word meaning we will be there far longer than originally anticipated (duhhhhh).
2) Rumsfeld keeps saying if they need more troops, then they should just say so. But commanders have been repeatedly saying they have been deprived of sufficient resources through the only channel available - retired Generals. Most materials that are missing is because Rumsfeld's DoD had no idea that we would be an occupation army of people who did not want to be liberated. They actually thought we would win the war and just go home.
3) When they got to Baghdad, troops had no orders, no instructions, and no next objective. Same as the mistake made after liberation of Kuwait. 3rd Infantry after action reports make this obvious. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al had no idea what to do and assumed Iraq would solve itself. A wound left open and untreated has now festered.
4) He completely denied there was any looting when literally the entire country was being looted.
5) Rumsfeld and DoD are suppose to be running the reconstructiion of Iraq. It is moving at an almost zero pace. Example: Whereas Saddam could restore the electricity in a month, the DoD under Rumsfeld could not get the system fully working after 6 months. Even then, Saddam's Iraq had still produced more electricity.
6) Far more money is disappearing into Iraq then Rumsfeld will admit. Example: When short troops, then the Pentagon has hired over 20,000 contractor troops at more than $100,000 per man per year to do in Iraq what regular troops are suppose to perform. Massive money is being spent and still Congress remains uninformed how large the bill really is.
7) The entire Iraq torture and abuse occurred when top commanders (probably including Rumsfeld) decided to run Iraqi prisons more like Guantanamo prisons. That is when the torture and abuse began and was condoned, obviously, at very high levels of command.
8) It could be as high as 80% of he prisoners in Guantanamo are innocent. Rumors of this suggest why the intelligence gathering system was expanded to Iraq - because insufficient information was being obtained from Guantanamo. Some theory that Iraqi prisons also must be full of Al Qaeda information - if only we break them down.
9) from CNN and notice how many months ago this was reported:

Meanwhile, a report completed in February by the International Committee of the Red Cross and leaked to media outlets Monday claimed that up to 90 percent of Iraqis held by U.S. and allied troops have been arrested by mistake.

10) Many in Congress don't like enlisted men being made scape goats for only doing what Rumsfeld and others ordered. Did Rumsfeld specifically called for torture and sexual abuse. No. But that is what should and would happen without rule of law and when Guantanamo standard procedures were implemented in Iraq.
11) Warned repeatedly that this was happening, instead Rumsfeld could not even be bothered to read reports or view the pictures. He so little respected Geneva Convention standards as to all but say this sort of thing should be expected. Just more attitude that has so dismayed even his supporters.

Few of so many little things that are directly traceable to Rumsfeld. Even two of his strongest supporters - The Ecomomist and the Army Times - have bluntly called for his resignation. Its no longer retired generals that note the bad situation we are in. Now active generals such as commander of the 82nd Airborne are now publically questioning leadership decisions. Rumsfeld's leadership has become that questionable that even active generals are publically asking questions.

We are now in a quagmire with no exit strategy and no apparent solution. And yet Rumsfeld talks as it everything is going according to plan. What plan? That too has finally dawned on Congress. We have no plan other than the force democracy upon people who neither wanted it nor (in most cases) know what democracy is.

There are certain principles fundamental to America. That includes not going to war without a smoking gun, no outright lying to Congress as only an Oliver North might, no torture as is standard practice in Guantanamo Bay, no lies to Congress and the public to justify war, and telling Congress in advance what the real costs will be. Rumsfeld has, to one degree or another, violated every listed principle.

Are those enough reasons or do you want more?

[DanaC]

"The buck stops here"

[tw]

The accusations are just too numerous to even list here. Numbers are in the tens of thousands held with legal process and often moved about so that the International Red Cross cannot find them. This is part of the system setup either by or for and known to Rumsfeld:

Secret World of Interrogation
These prisons and jails are sometimes as small as shipping containers and as large as the sprawling Guantanamo Bay complex in Cuba. They are part of an elaborate CIA and military infrastructure whose purpose is to hold suspected terrorists or insurgents for interrogation and safekeeping while avoiding U.S. or international court systems, where proceedings and evidence against the accused would be aired in public. Some are even held by foreign governments at the informal request of the United States.

"The number of people who have been detained in the Arab world for the sake of America is much more than in Guantanamo Bay. Really, thousands," said Najeeb Nuaimi, a former justice minister of Qatar who is representing the families of dozens of prisoners.

The largely hidden array includes three systems that only rarely overlap: the Pentagon-run network of prisons, jails and holding facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and elsewhere; small and secret CIA-run facilities where top al Qaeda and other figures are kept; and interrogation rooms of foreign intelligence services -- some with documented records of torture -- to which the U.S. government delivers or "renders" mid- or low-level terrorism suspects for questioning.

[Troubleshooter]

I found an interesting bit here:

http://www.reason.com/cy/cy051104.shtml

Cruelty is a human trait that cuts across national lines. As the scandal has shown, it cuts across gender lines as well: At least two female soldiers have been implicated in the mistreatment and sexual humiliation of prisoners, one of them appearing in some of the infamous photos. The prison commander was also a woman, Brigadier General Janice Karpinski.

Ludicrously, a few conservatives—the smirking provocateur Ann Coulter and the usually sensible Linda Chavez—have used this as an argument against women in the military. A more common response, from left and right, has been hand-wringing over the fact that women could do such things—either because women themselves have been victims of sexual violence or because women should be inherently better than that. But there is little basis for such expectations. Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany had their share of female torturers.

When given power over others, some human beings (including women) will abuse that power in sickening ways. This is a fact of life. The responsibility of the US military was to prevent such abuses or at least nip them in the bud. This responsibility has not been met—a failure that we are only now, perhaps too late for the war effort, beginning to correct.

[LN]

The famous Stanford prison experiment ?

I'd say a certain degree of unkind handling is inevitable... it's necessary to (subconsciously) convince soldiers that the people they're killing are not really people, quite apart from the fact that they see their fellow-soldiers killed by such folk, and then they have to take custody of them... you just have to limit it so it doesn't spill over into cruelty.

[DanaC]

I might throw in at this juncture that a fair few of us in the UK think someone at a high level in our government , should be doing the decent thing and falling on their goddamn sword for this outrage. British troops have killed and tortured.

[Elspode]

My personal perception of Rummy since the whole Iraq thing started up was that he was confrontational and arrogant.

[Lady Sidhe]

I wonder how much /of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners is backlash for the allied civilians who were beaten, hanged from the bridge, and burned to death? What about the civilian who was beheaded?

Not saying it's right, mind you, but it seems that all this "iraqi prisoner abuse" came out after the burning of the civilians.

Payback can be a bitch.


And you know, it seems to me that people have forgotten the outrage they felt on 9/11. Back then, we were ready to kick some ass. Everyone was behind Bush. Now, people are more worried about the enemy than they are about the allies. We got Sadaam--which is a good thing, because whomever thinks that he wouldn't have jumped right on the Al-Q bandwagon, if he wasn't on it already, is living in a dream world.

Just because we haven't gotten the big guy yet doesn't mean this was a failure. All of a sudden, people are talking about how Bush did this, and how he did that....they forget that they were right behind him when this shit happened. I'm not a humongous Bush fan, but I think he did the best that could be done at the time, and I still support his decision to go to war. It was what had to be done. Had we not retaliated, it would've been open season on the wussy USA, and everyone knows it.

And speaking of screw-ups, didn't Clinton know about all these threats ahead of time? If anyone should've been forced to resign, it was HIM. I don't think that we've ever had a worse president, IMO. He was like the idiot brother you hid in the closet when company came over, so he wouldn't embarrass you. Interesting, too, I think, that Sadaam thought Clinton was just the shit....

I think we should be more concerned with our (AMERICA'S---remember America? The wronged country?) safety than about bitching after the fact. It's easy to play monday-night quarterback when you're not in the hot seat. Bush did what he felt was right, and everyone backed him then---but now they blame him for everything from the prisoner abuse to the sand flies.

I agree that those who abused the prisoners should pay for it. While I may understand their feelings, I don't agree with their actions. But I also think it's time to start worrying more about the safety of our country, and relaying the fact that we're not going to take this terrorist shit, than we are about giving comfort to the enemy, who'd probably treat allied prisoners the same way, considering how much they hate Americans.

We're rebuilding their frigging country for them, like we always do after we kick someone's ass. If they were smart, they'd let us do it and wait for us to leave, instead of torturing and killing civilians, which is going to result in backlash, no matter what. That's just human nature.


Sidhe


edited to add the rant...sorry, couldn't help it. It pisses me off when people forget what happened that day, and are more concerned with downing the US and whining about the treatment the enemy soldiers are getting....

[Happy Monkey]

All of this is because some people are willing to say that people who are different are not actually people.

Payback never stops being a bitch. Or, rather, the two sides involved become payback's bitch.

[jaguar]

These pics happened before this incident IIRC.

In some ways I admire Rummy, being that teflon coated isn't easy, particularly when you're that arrogant and that single minded. I always enjoy watching the live press conferences with him, he's one of the slickest guys I've seen when it comes to not only fending off questions but taking them, twisting them baloon-animal style and shoving them down the throat of the poor reporter. That takes skill.

On the flipside he fucked up in Iraq, badly.

I find the way they're trying to control troops with cameras and internet access now interesting if expected, embedding reporters was a masterstroke in media control but they didn't see this one coming.

[glatt]

Originally posted by Lady Sidhe
Not saying it's right, mind you, but it seems that all this "iraqi prisoner abuse" came out after the burning of the civilians.

Payback can be a bitch.


Sidhe

The pictures came out after the bridge incident, but they were taken before the bridge incident.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally posted by Lady Sidhe
I think we should be more concerned with our (AMERICA'S---remember America? The wronged country?) safety than about bitching after the fact.

America wasn't wronged by Iraq.

[warch]

So many people still think we invaded Iraq because of connections to Sept 11. No, thats the other war in Afghanistan. Remember the Taliban?, thats not Iraq. Osama is still running around.

We *now* say we attacked and invaded Baghdad to transform the Middle East by building, coercing, forcing if we must, a Democracy there. And to execute this grandiose and expensive plan those hungry for it jumped on the political climate of the US. We were ripe for manipulation, using fear and anger and misinformation. That makes me mad. Freedom fucking fries.

Looks like we've done wonders for Islamic terrorist recruiting.

Another cluster of damning oversites for Rumsfeld was his lack of briefing both the House and Senate defense committees, (or doing his job), at the meetings held just for such updates, the week that he knew CBS was running the images. (To say nothing of notifying Bush who expressed his cluelessness) Interesting to me how hard Rove came down hard on Rumsfeld. Karl doesnt like a media surprise, particularly in a campaign year.