sorry, i see

[rodeodance]

babylon beat me by a few minutes.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=robotripping_at_abu_ghraib



Robo-Tripping at Abu Ghraib

Soldiers' videos and photos show how obscene games and simulated violent acts became part of everyday life and led to a culture of abuse in Iraq's detention facilities.


Tara McKelvey | June 15, 2007 | web only


Adapted from Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War (Carroll & Graf)

One fall morning in 2003, Sam Provance was wandering around a building complex, the 519th/325th Logistical Support Area of Abu Ghraib, and found himself alone in a small room. Part of the area had been blown out -- in some kind of mortar explosion, apparently. "There were brains splattered across the wall. The wall was red -- a really old, dark, dried-blood red. There were pieces of matter in it," he says, sitting at a table in the Hartley Inn Restaurant in Carmichaels, Pennsylvania, more than three years after the incident. "I was like, 'Oh, my God, where am I?'"

At 32, Provance has blond hair, blue eyes, and a slightly dated Goth look with a black, lace-up tunic-style shirt and "Harley Davidson boots," as he describes them. A former student at Holmes Bible College in Greenville, South Carolina, Provance is now an avid reader of the late Anton Szandor LaVey, author of The Satanic Bible. Like many whistleblowers, Provance is unconventional.

He belongs to a small group of individuals who alerted the world to the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib and in U.S.-run detention facilities in Iraq. From September 2003 to February 2004, Provance says he saw how detainees were mistreated at Abu Ghraib: A 16-year-old boy, for example, was hooded, shackled, and interrogated not because he knew anything about the insurgency but because it would upset an Iraqi general, Hamid Zabar, who was his father. Provance also heard about beatings and assaults of other detainees. He reported the abuses, but he says no one aggressively pursued the leads. Out of frustration, he agreed to appear on ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings on May 18, 2004.

Three days later, Provance was reprimanded, he told lawmakers on Capitol Hill at a briefing, "Protecting National Security Whistleblowers in the Post-9/11 Era," for the House Committee on Government Reform on February 14, 2006. "There were all sorts of intimidating acts against him," says Scott Horton, a human-rights lawyer who met with Provance in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2004. "His commander wanted to court-martial him."

Timeline of a Scandal .............

[seemslikeadream]

1. hope you get more replies than I did

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1123444&mesg_id=1123444

[rodeodance]

3. just noticed

[seemslikeadream]

5. sorry I didn't mean for you to delete

I really meant I hoped more people would see it :hi:

[whistle]

2. Just to show what it says toward the end....

<deep snip>
"When I came back here, I got 21 questions. People were trying to tell me they know more about Abu Ghraib than I do. I'm like, 'You work at Value City.' One of them -- well, she was like, 'There are people who want to get on with their lives and, there are people like you who want to keep bringing this shit up.'"

"I'm like, it's not just Abu Ghraib. It wasn't just a few bad apples or an outbreak of sadism. It was policy. Those MPs thought what they were doing was acceptable. So acceptable that they would use them as wallpaper for their laptops. It wasn't just mischievousness. A kid goes over there and busts glass out -- " he points to the First Federal Savings across the street -- "and he's not going to take a picture of himself doing it and mail it to his parents."

"Generals were shooting at the feet of the interrogators and telling them to dance," he says. "But for all eternity, the only thing people are going to say is, 'Oh, it was that one little girl.'"

He is describing Lynndie R. England, the soldier who became the symbol of criminal wrongdoing at Abu Ghraib. There were individuals higher in the chain of command who were responsible for the abuse, he says, but they were not punished. His descriptions of women in the army may sound sexist. But similar observations could be made of the male soldiers -- at least in his version. The soldiers were objectified as "muscle" and got lavish attention (boxes of fancy computers); they indulged themselves (beating detainees and treating it as a joke); and found their reputations in the gutter (some are serving time).

It looks like a rave party on the computer screen.. The lights flicker in the dark prison cell and create a mesmerizing neon glow. "I always tell people Abu Ghraib was Apocalypse Now meets The Shining," Provance says. He puts his elbows on the table and stares at the light display. "A surrealist combat zone with the horror and haunting of The Shining."
<end of snip>

[rodeodance]

4. It wasn't just a few bad apples or an outbreak of sadism.

[acmavm]

6. No, it was/is a symptom of the sickness that develops when people

start thinking of other people as being beneath them, unworthy of any form of respect or regard, deserving only of abuse and ridicule (or worse). And what makes this especially disgusting is that those who are doing the torturing are the ones who are guilty of aiding the bush** regime in attacking and destroying a nation with a history that goes back for five thousand years. A nation that never wanted them there. A nation that is now full of children that will never forgive or forget. A nation of children that will fight the occupiers, just like we would be expected to fight if we were attacked.

[whistle]

8. That's right, based on the interviews it appeared to be systemic

...the total opposite to what Donald Rumsfeld and other high ups testified before congressional investigation committees. Donald Rumsfeld and other top military commanders should be charged with war crimes.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. He got it right

apocalypse now was also about a unit who lost all coherence... but most people miss that

I hope Mr Provance will have more luck in his telling, but somehow I doubt it

Readying Al Gore's book, Provance asking us to look at reason and in a reasoned at what happened

This country ain't gonna do that.... not any more

We are no longer about reason...

[ninkasi]

7. The criminal Bush administration

has completely trashed America's reputation in the world, and brought nothing but shame to us. People who abuse others, like the guards and interrogators, are not going to be able to revert to being decent human beings again, just because they are back in the U.S.

I can well understand the rage the Iraqi people against us. We were wrong to invade their country, we are wrong to kill their people, and wrong to destroy their country. We are wrong to steal their oil. Bush and his cronies are the most criminal, corrupt, arrogant, hateful people ever to inflict their damage to us, and the rest of the world. They should be in prison.