National Disgrace

US Army abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan is systematic, says West Point grad Army Captain Ian Fishback, the man behind the latest Human Rights Watch revelations, who is profiled today by the Los Angeles Times:

...This summer, after weighing the possible effects on his career, he stepped outside the Army's chain of command and telephoned the Human Rights Watch advocacy group. He later met with aides on the Senate Armed Services Committee. On Friday, he authorized them to make public his allegations, along with those of two sergeants, of widespread prisoner abuse they had witnessed when they served in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 as members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division.

Within hours, the Army announced it had opened a criminal investigation.

The review is the first major investigation by the military of widespread prisoner abuse outside the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and the first time such a review has targeted soldiers in the regular Army rather than the National Guardsmen and reservists in the Abu Ghraib case.

But for Fishback, whom friends describe as a deeply religious Christian and patriot who prays before each meal and can quote from the Constitution, the ordeal may be just beginning.

Army officials have temporarily furloughed him from Special Operations training school at Ft. Bragg, N.C., to make him available to the Criminal Investigation Command as it sorts through his allegations.

And sources close to the case said investigators are pressing him to identify the two sergeants who have backed up his accusations — something he does not want to do for the sake of all their careers.

"He's a very decent, fine young man," said Col. Dan Zupan, who teaches the rules of war at West Point and was one of Fishback's mentors. "He doesn't have an ax to grind. He's just in search of the truth."

At Human Rights Watch, Tom Malinowski, the group's Washington director, recalled escorting Fishback, his uniform adorned with two bronze stars, to meet with staff aides on the Senate Armed Services Committee two weeks ago.

For an hour they chatted behind closed doors in the committee's hearing room in the Russell building. Malinowski said Fishback answered all their questions unflinchingly.

"He answered them just as you would imagine an officer would — very factual, very unemotional," Malinowski said.

A former soldier close to Fishback, who asked not to be identified out of respect for Fishback's own decision not to talk to the media, said Fishback "really doesn't care what happens to him."

"He wants to stay in the Army. But he also says, 'This is bigger than me. I've got to do the right thing here.' "

Fishback maintains that he witnessed detainees being stripped, deprived of sleep and exposed to the elements at the behest of Army intelligence officers, who wanted the prisoners softened up for interrogation.

To back up his claims, two as-yet-unnamed sergeants came forward, telling Human Rights Watch they saw soldiers break a prisoner's leg, kick and punch others and force others to hold large water jugs for long periods of time or stack themselves into human pyramids.

Will our lame Congress continue to let the White House suppress a proper, timely investigation of this? The White House led by Cheney specifically ordered killed an amendment in a defense authorization bill draft in August that would have called for an independent commission to look into detainee treatment issues. Warner has to step up to the plate and defy those in his party who are going along with this disgrace. Here's the Human Rights Watch report based on testimony of three members of the 82nd Airborne. Here are excerpts from the lead 82nd Airborne witness's account:

...We got to the camp in August [2003] and set up...Shit started to go bad right away. On my very first guard shift for my first interrogation that I observed was the first time I saw a PUC pushed to the brink of a stroke or heart attack. At first I was surprised, like, this is what we are allowed to do? This is what we are allowed to get away with? I think the officers knew about it but didn’t want to hear about it. They didn’t want to know it even existed. But they had to.

On a normal day I was on shift in a PUC tent. When we got these guys we had them sandbagged and zip tied, meaning we had a sandbag on their heads and zip ties [plastic cuffs] on their hands... If I was told they were there sitting on IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices, homemade bombs] we would fuck them up, put them in stress positions or put them in a tent and withhold water.

The “Murderous Maniacs” was what they called us at our camp because they knew if they got caught by us and got detained by us before they went to Abu Ghraib then it would be hell to pay. They would be just, you know, you couldn’t even imagine. It was sort of like I told you when they came in it was like a game. You know, how far could you make this guy goes before he passes out or just collapses on you. From stress positions to keeping them up fucking two days straight, whatever. Deprive them of food water, whatever.

To “Fuck a PUC” means to beat him up. We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs, and stomach, pull them down, kick dirt on them. This happened every day.

To “smoke” someone is to put them in stress positions until they get muscle fatigue and pass out. That happened every day. Some days we would just get bored so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid. This was before Abu Ghraib but just like it. We did that for amusement.

Guard shifts were four hours. We would stress them at least in excess of twelve hours...We would withhold water for whole guard shifts. And the next guy would too....And we withheld food, giving them the bare minimum like crackers from MREs [Meals Ready to Eat, the military’s prepackaged food]. And sleep deprivation was a really big thing. Someone from [Military Intelligence] told us these guys don’t get no sleep. They were directed to get intel [intelligence] from them so we had to set the conditions by banging on their cages, crashing them into the cages, kicking them, kicking dirt, yelling. All that shit...

On their day off people would show up all the time. Everyone in camp knew if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC tent. In a way it was sport. The cooks were all US soldiers. One day a sergeant shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the guy’s leg with a mini Louisville Slugger that was a metal bat. He was the fucking cook. He shouldn’t be in with no PUCs. The PA came and said to keep him off the leg. Three days later they transported the PUC to Abu Ghraib. The Louisville Slugger [incident] happened around November 2003, certainly before Christmas.

People would just volunteer just to get their frustrations out. We had guys from all over the base just come to guard PUCs so they could fuck them up. Broken bones didn’t happen too often, maybe every other week. The PA would overlook it. I am sure they knew.

All three witnesses testify that it was their understanding that the US military was not following the Geneva Conventions, and this guided the abuse occurring by their units. HRW's conclusion:

...The abuses alleged in this report can be traced to the Bush administration’s decision to disregard the Geneva Conventions in the armed conflict in Afghanistan.

On February 7, 2002, President George W. Bush announced that the Geneva Conventions concerning the treatment of prisoners did not apply at all to al-Qaeda members or to Taliban soldiers because they did not qualify as members of the armed forces. He insisted that detainees would nonetheless be treated “humanely.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told journalists that day: “The reality is the set of facts that exist today with the al-Qaeda and the Taliban were not necessarily the set of facts that were considered when the Geneva Conventions was fashioned.”

The accounts presented in this report are further evidence that this decision by the Bush administration was to have a profound influence on the treatment of detained persons in military operations in Iraq as well as in the “global war on terror.” In short, the refusal to apply the Geneva Conventions to Guantánamo Bay and Afghanistan was to undermine long-standing adherence by the U.S. armed forces to federal law and the laws of armed conflict concerning the proper treatment of prisoners....

Warner needs to get Rumsfeld in a stress position before the frigging Armed Services committee for several days to explain this stuff in live televised hearings. What in the world is he waiting for? Don't even Republicans in Congress feel some responsibility to exercise real oversight of the executive branch, or is their sole purpose to go along with and cover up for this behavior?

Update: More from Greg Djerejian.

Posted by Laura at September 25, 2005 09:48 AM