I was only following orders...

[gridlore]

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.

Comments

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

You taking bets on whether that will happen?

[soldiergrrrl.livejournal.com]

You'd better not send that cord to Rummy. Vets and active duty soldiers standing up and saying "This is *not* my Army and I *refuse* to let the American people judge my brothers- and sisters-in-arms by these pieces of trash. My Army is the peopel that you *don't* hear about." is the only way that we're going to be able to reclaim our pride and turn the tide that washing our foundation of support out from under us.

[dafydd.livejournal.com]

We hear about a lack of training.

I especially don't buy this one. They were a Military Police company. Even if they didn't have military-sponsored training, most of them were likely cops in civilian life. That training should have taught them better.

[tsjafo.livejournal.com]

I don't by that "I didn't know." I got regular, yearly briefings on the Law of Armed Conflict. LOAC briefings had to be signed off allow with Protection of the President, Social Actions and half a dozen more.

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."

[aurictech.livejournal.com]

We hear about a lack of training. What in the hell is an untrained unit doing in charge of an EPW camp?

This is even worse than it appears. The 800th Military Police Brigade (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/army/800mp-bde.htm) is specifically "responsible for the command and control of Enemy Prisoner of War (EPW) Headquarters; and provides guidance, plans and procedures for EPW operations and doctrine for 14 wartrace battalions and subordinate units composed of over 4000 personnel." [Quote taken from the 800th MP Bde's home page (http://www.usarc.army.mil/77thrsc/copy_of_77thweb/msc/800mp/800_mp_history.htm).]

For such a unit to be untrained in handling EPW would be like a brigade of the 82d Airborne Division to be untrained in parachuting and light infantry operations.

What will happen...

[murphymom.livejournal.com]

...is that the lieutenant immediately in command will be court-martialed, the captain above will be reprimanded and reduced in rank, and the higher brass that condoned, if not directly ordered, the behavior will get off unscathed. Think not? Go research Calley, William, Lieutenant, and/or Medina, Ernest, Captain.

[deathbytamarind.livejournal.com]

w3rd

[peverel.livejournal.com]

Beautiful post -- I was referred to it by a friend after I went off on something similar.

But see...'I was just following orders' didn't die at Nuremberg. Oliver North turned 'I was just following orders' into the slogan of the true patriot in the late 80s, standing up there like a divinely righteous Boy Scout who would blindly and loyally follow his Commander in Chief with unending devotion, because he was Representing His Country. He parlayed that image into a great political career -- he was a man who would follow the orders of his leader, no matter what. And people respected that.

I never understood that...I never understood why that was a good thing. I suppose it's the anti-establishment streak in me; I've always had a problem with authority.

You say that the military, now, trains incoming soldiers never to follow an illegal order. I believe you, and I think that's a very good thing. But does the military train soldiers to distinguish an illegal order from a legal one? Does it teach them to think for themselves? At the level of Private, when the only response desired to an order is 'Sir, yes sir' -- to the point at which it's instinctive -- when should that Private be stopping to question whether or not an order crosses the line?

I am not being argumentative here. I've never been in the military; I genuinely don't know the answers to these questions, and I'd like to know. I don't know whether or not the soldiers in charge of Abu Ghraib were the kind of people who were really good at independent thought...or if they simply handed all their decision-making responsibility to the chain of command and turned off their brains, and 'just followed orders.' Either way, I don't have a whole lot of respect for them. I certainly don't have any respect for their superiors, who should have been able to prevent this recent atrocity from happening.

Pev

Well said, and also echoed elsewhere

[zyxwvut.livejournal.com]

gridlore, meet (http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/9416.html?style=mine) seawasp.

Z

P.S.: You two might have much else to talk about, too.

[dandelion-diva.livejournal.com]

Good rant, and very true. I'm hoping this blows up rather than blows away and that everyone involved truly gets what sie deserves.

And for the people who say the people involved didn't have the right training? I say Bullshit! I've *never* been in the military and *I* know this was wrong and fucked up. There's no way these people didn't know.

Gessi