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I was only following orders...
The Army private facing a court-martial for being photographed with naked Iraqi prisoners says she was following orders to create psychological pressure on them.
Folks, on my first day in the United States Army, before my haircut, before my uniform issue, before anything, I and all my fellow proto-soldiers were herded into a theater and given a lecture. The subject of the lecture was "Legal Orders." We covered the concept of a legal order, and what constituted an illegal order. The Geneva Conventions were brought up, along with the UCMJ. They hammered this issue so hard that twenty years later I can still recall the details. The lesson that was highlighted, made crystal clear, to us sloppy civilians trying to be infantrymen, was this:
"I was only following orders" is NOT A DEFENSE!
This lesson was given again and again. During OSUT, some of the trainees were detailed to go score rifle qualifications for some staff officers from Building 4 (post HQ). Some of these officers ordered the brand-new troops to falsify scores. We're talking about career officers dealing with still-new basic trainees. What happened? Several officers were retired. Our guys did the right thing, and reported the illegal order to their chain of command.
Now, we come to the insanity at Abu Ghraib. PFC England claims she was ordered to pose for those pictures, claims it was a pysop. Wrong! It was torture and she had a moral and legal obligation to say no! What if she had been ordered to machinegun children? Would she have shrugged and said "orders are orders"? To a soldier, there is no difference.
We are hearing about breakdowns in command up to the brigade level. To put that in perspective, that means that for PFC English to do what she did required failures at five different levels of command. This passes beyond incompetent and goes directly to malicious. We hear of lack of supervision. Where the hell were the NCOs? We hear about a lack of training. What in the hell is an untrained unit doing in charge of an EPW camp? Now we hear it was our old friends in the CIA and DIA who ordered these pictures taken. Still no excuse. Abu Ghraib is a military facility. It was our responsibility. We dropped the ball.
Frankly, I've never been so ashamed to be a veteran of the United States Army as I was when I saw those pictures. Simply disgusted. I thought about sending my blue cord to Rummy, with a note stating "under your leadership, this has become meaningless."
Our only hope of salvaging anything from this mess is to vigorously prosecute everyone involved in the command and control of that prison, as well as the enlisted people involved in the actual abuses. Careers need to be broken. I don't care if you've got 19 years and 11 months in service. Colonel.. you're gone and so is your pension. Those who performed these abuses need to be jailed, busted to PVT, and given dishonorable discharges. If civilian intelligence agencies were involved, criminal action needs to be taken.
Folks, on my first day in the United States Army, before my haircut, before my uniform issue, before anything, I and all my fellow proto-soldiers were herded into a theater and given a lecture. The subject of the lecture was "Legal Orders." We covered the concept of a legal order, and what constituted an illegal order. The Geneva Conventions were brought up, along with the UCMJ. They hammered this issue so hard that twenty years later I can still recall the details. The lesson that was highlighted, made crystal clear, to us sloppy civilians trying to be infantrymen, was this:
"I was only following orders" is NOT A DEFENSE!
This lesson was given again and again. During OSUT, some of the trainees were detailed to go score rifle qualifications for some staff officers from Building 4 (post HQ). Some of these officers ordered the brand-new troops to falsify scores. We're talking about career officers dealing with still-new basic trainees. What happened? Several officers were retired. Our guys did the right thing, and reported the illegal order to their chain of command.
Now, we come to the insanity at Abu Ghraib. PFC England claims she was ordered to pose for those pictures, claims it was a pysop. Wrong! It was torture and she had a moral and legal obligation to say no! What if she had been ordered to machinegun children? Would she have shrugged and said "orders are orders"? To a soldier, there is no difference.
We are hearing about breakdowns in command up to the brigade level. To put that in perspective, that means that for PFC English to do what she did required failures at five different levels of command. This passes beyond incompetent and goes directly to malicious. We hear of lack of supervision. Where the hell were the NCOs? We hear about a lack of training. What in the hell is an untrained unit doing in charge of an EPW camp? Now we hear it was our old friends in the CIA and DIA who ordered these pictures taken. Still no excuse. Abu Ghraib is a military facility. It was our responsibility. We dropped the ball.
Frankly, I've never been so ashamed to be a veteran of the United States Army as I was when I saw those pictures. Simply disgusted. I thought about sending my blue cord to Rummy, with a note stating "under your leadership, this has become meaningless."
Our only hope of salvaging anything from this mess is to vigorously prosecute everyone involved in the command and control of that prison, as well as the enlisted people involved in the actual abuses. Careers need to be broken. I don't care if you've got 19 years and 11 months in service. Colonel.. you're gone and so is your pension. Those who performed these abuses need to be jailed, busted to PVT, and given dishonorable discharges. If civilian intelligence agencies were involved, criminal action needs to be taken.
no subject
The "I was only following orders" defense went out at Nuremberg. We executed people because their actions constituted a "crime against humanity." (As a side note, one of the crimes against humanity we executed people for was performing medical experiments on human beings without their informed consent, yet the US Government administer "investigational new drugs" on American service members without their knowledge or consent.)
I do not believe that giving an officer a "career ending" letter of reprimand has the same value of punishment as putting an enlisted person in jail for several decades. That is what the military will tell you, although I suspect the motives of the officers who tell you that. I do believe that the greater crimes lay with the officers who were in charge, the officers who were responsible for overseeing the actions of the troops assigned to their command. I believe these officers should face a much stiffer penalty than a "career ending reprimand."
no subject
I happen to be involved in the internal disciplinary system of Ordo Templi Orientis, a fraternal society with some military overtones. We make it a matter of policy that the higher your position and the greater your experience, the harder you'll get kicked if you screw up. There are things a new member would get slapped on the wrist for that I'd be shitcanned for, and rightly so. Officers must be held to higher standards, and they can't delegate away their responsibility for upholding those standards.
If you don't like operating under those rules, then don't become an officer.
no subject
Agreed. Leavenworth has officer-shaped cells, too.
no subject
no subject
Not to mention what happened (or didn't happen) to Detachment 731 after WWII.
Then there's the CIA-sponsored experiments on Montreal mental patients, some of the uranium work at Oak Ridges with pregnant women, etc... The Cold War was used as a justification for a lot of nastiness, and double-standards were very much in evidence.