I wish I could say that I was surprised.
Almost exactly a year since 60 Minutes II first splashed those minicam photos
of Lynndie England, Charles Graner, and Sabrina Harman in classic
lynching snaps, the generals who ignored or encouraged the abusive practices there have been cleared of any wrongdoing by the Army. (Janis Karpinski, on the other hand, is getting a reprimand: Truthout headlined the story "Karpinsku is Scapegoat," which is true if a bit beside the point.)
After all the inquiries, after a bookshelf full of cases for the prosecution presented by Seymour Hersh's Chain of Command, Mark Danner's Torture and Truth and the damning paper trail ensconced in The Torture Papers, the military court has cleared General Sanchez and three others of all responsibility for what happened at Abu Ghraib.
An independent panel led by former Defense Secretary James R.
Schlesinger concluded last August that General Sanchez had failed to
make sure that his staff was dealing with Abu Ghraib's problems. A
separate Army investigation, called the Kern-Fay-Jones report, found
that at one point General Sanchez approved the use of severe
interrogation practices that led indirectly to some of the abuses.
The Schlesinger inquiry last summer also determined that General
Sanchez's deputy, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, failed to act quickly
enough to make urgent requests to higher levels for more troops at the
understaffed prison.
But those inquiries were not empowered to impose any punishments; that was left up to the Army.
The new review, by the Army inspector general, Lt. Gen. Stanley E.
Green, exonerated General Sanchez and General Wojdakowski of the
allegations that were included in one or more of the 10 major
investigations over the past year into detainee abuse.
It also found to be "unsubstantiated" allegations against Maj. Gen.
Barbara G. Fast, the former chief intelligence officer in Iraq who
oversaw the interrogation center at Abu Ghraib, and Col. Marc Warren,
the command's top legal officer. The Schlesinger panel said Colonel
Warren had failed to report prisoner abuses witnessed by the Red Cross
to his boss for more than a month, and that General Fast had failed to
advise General Sanchez properly about the management of interrogations
at the prison.
While General Sanchez and the other top officers may not have done
everything right, the inquiry said, their failures came as they
struggled to combat a fast-growing insurgency and a booming prison
population, all with an understaffed headquarters.
Wait a minute. You let them off because they were working so hard? An "understaffed headquarters" turns off your moral compass? Sanchez wrote that memo , those director's guidelines for a creative gulag, some late night under pressure when then IED explosions had gotten to be too much? Fast and Warren were just under too much stress, and just forgot to mention what the Red Cross had seen? I've had undegraduates with late or missing term papers come up with better rationales than that.
(As for the "booming prison
population," I spoke with a Reserve MP a few months back who said he had spent hours trying to help a grieving family figure out why their husband/father had been taken there; after that, he occasionally turned his back to let an ordinary Iraqi leave the wrong place at the wrong time, rather than bring him to that black hole. The conversation comfirmed the impression, left by other sources, that the boom was caused equally by panicked GIs arresting every male with a pulse.)
By now, the fiction that Abu Ghraib was an anomaly, that similar
practices weren't common in U.S. detention facilities from Bagram to
Guantanamo or that no official sanction had been provided, has long
since melted away. But what has happened to public outrage? When politicos talk of "values," of "moral politics," they mean prying into your sex life. (Tomorrow, on the anti-constitutional orgy known as 'Justice Sunday," a
bunch of neo-Calvinists will pound away in obeisance to the Republican
Party without mentioning the most amoral behavior exhibited tbis year.)
Update: And even before John Bolton's possible arrival, the U.S. has managed to bully the U.N. into firing its human rights monitor for Afghanistan. and even eliminating the post, to prevent more alarms like this one.
How can we honor this anniversary -- while also reminding people that the highest-level perpetrators have been promoted?
Well, with Schiavo and JP2 safely dead, the cable death cults have a need for ghoulist images. They can do an Anniversary Torture Special, hosted by Maher Arar, with dramatic readings of the testimony of torture survivors across eras.
Perhaps someone can read from the legal case on behalf of one Abu Ghraib survivor represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights in Saleh v. Titan (full complaint in PDF here) .The phrase "Torture Conspirators" is used to identify the alliance of
MPs and private contractors, who were, he says --
(a) During interrogation, hitting him with electric cables and kicking him with
boots if he did not answer or did not answer in the manner desired by the Torture Conspirators;
(b) Tying his hands behind his backs and terrorizing him by shooting electric
guns at him;
(c) Stripping him, tying his hands behind his back and releasing dogs to attack
his private parts;
(d) Using demeaning and dehumanizing language;
(e) Depriving him of sleep by use of loud music or loose dogs roaming around the tent;
(f) Stripping his clothes off and forcing him to stand on one leg for as long as five hours, during which they would hit him with a rifle if he showed any sign of fatigue or moved in any manner;
(g) Hitting his private parts repeatedly.
116. During a particular interrogation, the Torture Conspirators asked Plaintiff Ismael a
question that he refused to answer. As a result, they stripped off his clothes and covered his face with a bag. Hours later they removed the bag and showed him two photographs of sexual torture committed on detainees known to Plaintiff Ismael. The first photograph showed a young boy (age 12-15) being sexually molested by a person in a United States uniform. The Torture Conspirators told Plaintiff Ismael that he would be treated in the same fashion if he did not answer their question.
The Torture Conspirators then showed him another photograph of a different detainee, also known to Plaintiff Ismael, who was being forced to perform oral sex on a person in a United States uniform. The Torture Conspirators again threatened Plaintiff Ismael with similar treatment if he refused to answer questions.
The italics and bolds indicate acts also confirmed by photographs that only Congress has so far seen.:
The images, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
told Congress, depict "acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic,
cruel, and inhuman." After Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) viewed some of them in
a classified briefing, he testified that his "stomach gave out." NBC News reported that they show
"American soldiers beating one prisoner almost to death, apparently raping a
female prisoner, acting inappropriately with a dead body, and taping Iraqi
guards raping young boys." Everyone who saw the photographs and videos seemed
to shudder openly when contemplating what the reaction would be when they
eventually were made public.
But they never were. After the first batch of
Abu Ghraib images shocked the world on April 28, 2004, becoming instantly
iconic—a hooded prisoner standing atop a box with electrodes attatched to his
hands, Pfc. Lynndie England dragging a naked prisoner by a leash, England and
Spc. Charles Graner giving a grinning thumbs-up behind a stack of human meat—no
substantial second round ever came, either from Abu Ghraib or any of the other
locations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay where abuses have been
alleged. ABC News broadcast two new photos from the notorious Iraq prison on May 19, The
Washington Post printed a half-dozen on May 20 and three more on June 10,
and that was it.
That's how to mark this anniversary. That's the equivalent to the Schiavo show. Blur the faces and the genitals and let the public know what they voted for in December, what the baby-faced Attorney General and his minions at Justice claim they can paper over and brush off with a smile.
Call this my modest proposal.