It's a really long piece about Sassaman, the Lt Col whose unit threw two Iraqis off a bridge.
There are a number of incidents reported in the piece not associated with any of the criminal charges. Some of the low-lights include:
-"When his men came under fire from a wheat field, Sassaman routinely retaliated by firing phosphorous shells to burn the entire field down. The ambush site would be gone, and farmers might be persuaded not to allow insurgents to use their land again."
("routinely")-If local leaders didn't remove anti-bush graffiti from buildings, our soldiers destroyed the building
-If kids threw rocks, our soldiers threw rocks back
-"If they caught an Iraqi man out after curfew, they piled him into a Bradley, drove him miles outside of town and told him to walk home."
-"That same winter in Samarra, Sassaman's men moved through a hospital and pulled a suspected insurgent from his bed. When a doctor told the Americans to leave, a soldier spat in his face."
-"...one of Sassaman's soldiers threw a wounded man into a cell and threatened to withhold treatment unless he told them everything he knew....The man's fate was unknown."
-In search of a truck thief, but finding only women at home, the sgt gave them 15 minutes to get what they wanted out of the house..."The women wailed and shouted but ultimately complied, dragging their bed and couch and television set out the front door. Mikel's men then fired four antitank missiles into their house, blowing it to pieces and setting it afire. The women were left holding their belongings."
snip>
Among the enlisted men in Sassaman's unit, one of them, Specialist Ralph Logan, had demonstrated his misgivings about the rough tactics. Logan, 26, was sometimes chided by his peers for the delicacy with which he searched Iraqi houses, carefully pulling blankets out of closets and folding them into piles, while his comrades flung everything onto the floor. "People didn't exactly get beaten up," Logan said. "They got slapped around, roughed up, usually after they were detained. It was gratuitous.
Sassaman didn't do it, but he definitely knew about it. He definitely condoned it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/magazine/23sassaman.html?pagewanted=print(Logan was the one who refused the order to put the Iraqis, one of whom was drowned, in the Tigris. It wasn't the first time this form of humiliation had been used. Soldiers used it as retaliation for things like obscene gestures)
The reporter tells us that these "non-lethal" tactics were "explicitly ordered or at least condoned by senior American officers, and
many units in the Sunni Triangle were already using the same kind of tough-guy methods"Sassaman was "reprimanded" and he retired, receiving a Bronze Star. He's "entertaining a lot of job offers"