Rumsfeld’s soulmate at the heart of culture of brutality

[drfemoe]

By Diplomatic Editor Trevor Royle

When Private First Class Lynndie R England put a leash round an Iraqi’s neck and dragged him like a dog she knew exactly what she was doing. When she engaged in consensual sex with other soldiers in front of Iraqi detainees (according to the latest evidence of even grosser misbehaviour from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison) the diminutive reservist in the US Army’s 372nd Military Police Company was not pandering to a perverse whim. She was simply doing something which soldiers always say they were doing when caught out: acting on orders.
...
Miller wasted little time. Conditions at Abu Ghraib were abysmal, there were no proper methods of handling the detainees as they were brought in, the staff, mainly reservists, were aimless and lacking leadership and, above all, the interrogation techniques were brutal and ineffective. Nightly mortar attacks exacerbated the problem and morale was low.

Miller and his team changed all that. Primacy in command and control was handed to military intelligence while the military police were tasked with bringing order to the system. Above all, the main effort was centred on achieving a better flow of intelligence. This meant streamlining the procedure so that the guards became involved in the process by helping to soften up detainees before they were handed over to military intelligence officers or CIA operatives for questioning.

Many of the methods used at Guantanamo Bay – the use of ritual humiliation, sexual abuse, disorientation, physical violence and sleep deprivation, all undertaken by so-called Tiger Teams of intelligence officers, interpreters and police guards – were introduced at Abu Ghraib. In an added twist, the methods were refined to offend the tenets of Islam by introducing an overt sexual element and the taking of photographs. By the end of the year the behaviour inside Abu Ghraib was known to Amnesty International and the Internation Committee of the Red Cross who forwarded their findings to the US supremo in Iraq, Paul Bremer, and through him to Washington.
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http://www.sundayherald.com/42067

[LittleApple81]

1. Boy... If anybody is reading things in the WH, Pentagon, State Department

they must be busy reinforcing their bunkers. They are being pelted with sh*t from every corner of the earth.

[soothsayer]

2. hey, cool poll at the end

77% said NO, the do not believe that bush or blair had no knowledge of prisoner abuse