Army vows no scapegoats in prisoner abuse

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040501/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/prisoner_abuse_meeting&e=1

CRESAPTOWN, Md. - The investigation into abuse of Iraqi war prisoners will hold accountable anyone found responsible, but there will be "no scapegoats," the Army Reserve said Saturday, as its top commander met with family members of the unit at the center of the probe.

....

Regarding the abuse allegations, Schilf said: "We want to get to the bottom of this, and if these allegations prove true — that any individuals that are responsible need to be held accountable, from the lowest to the highest. No scapegoats."


Schilf said family members were concerned with the unit's extended deployment through early September. The approximately 180 soldiers had been scheduled to return home in April from a 14-month deployment.


He said Helmly was answering every question and that the meeting, which was scheduled before the abuse allegations were revealed, "is going very candidly."


The meeting, closed to reporters, was held in the working-class community of Cresaptown.

....

Frederick's father told NBC's "Today" show that he didn't believe the allegations.


"None of the photos that I've seen has shown my son abusing anybody, which I don't think he ever would," said Ivan L. "Red" Frederick.


President Bush (news - web sites) has condemned the mistreatment, saying that is "not the way we do things in America."

As a US Army Vet,,this where were going.

US Doomed To Fail|
In Iraq - Giap
5-1-4

HANOI (AFP) - Vo Nguyen Giap, the legendary general who masterminded Vietnam´s wars of independence against the French and American armies, warned the United States Friday that it faced defeat in Iraq. The diminutive 92-year-old, whose only military lesson came from an old encyclopaedia entry describing the mechanism of hand grenades, said Washington would fail in its bid to impose its will on the Iraqi people.

"Any country that wants to impose its will on another nation will certainly fail and all nations fighting for their own independence will be victorious," Giap told reporters. "Everyone in the world should acknowledge that each country has the right to independence and sovereignty. Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom."

The general, dressed in a white military uniform and wearing a solitary gold-starred medal, said he was unable to comment on the effectiveness of tactics used by Iraqi resistance fighters against US forces. "I haven´t had a chance to go to Iraq and to study the specific tactics there," he said. However, Giap, who is second only to Vietnamese Communist Party founding father Ho Chi Minh as the most revered figure in the country´s recent history, stressed that "aggressors" would not prevail.

"All attempts to oppress the people of other nations, all plots to encroach on other nation´s sovereignty and independence will be defeated," he added in his "message to the world´s young people". His comments came on the 29th anniversary of the fall of the US-backed Saigon regime to communist forces and ahead of next week´s celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of victory against the French at Dien Bien Phu.

In a 90-minute rambling and often repetitive monologue, a relaxed-looking Giap recounted the tactics he employed during the battle that precipitated the collapse of France´s colonial rule in Indochina.

http://www.arabtimesonline.com/arabtimes/world/Viewdet.asp?ID=2445&cat=a

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

I was the victim of a scapegoating when I was in the Army and it was something rather trivial but required an investigation.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=17&did=300

Servicemen on Death Row; 6 killers await as military justice crawls


By THOMAS M. DeFRANK
Daily News Washington Bureau Chief


It's called the special housing unit at a place known as The Castle. But for the six soldiers on the military's Death Row at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., life is no fairy tale.

Despite intense public and media interest in Timothy McVeigh's execution, little attention has been paid to the six condemned soldiers incarcerated within the pale yellow-and-white walls of the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks.

One of those convicted murderers is in the last stages of a 12-year appeals process that may end with the first execution by the armed forces in more than 40 years.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=192572#192839

WHERE THE FUCK ARE THESE APOLOGISTS TODAY?????????

.
.
.

maybe not in America (at the moment)

but DEFINITELY in Iraq.

and most thinking people can figure out this is not the first time

or last . . .

(sigh)

then we will be able to show how much those Mercenary Corporations and their executives have contributed to the GOP over the years. And we will be able to investigate ALL the no-bid contracts those MERCENARY corporations have received since 911.

Nice tight little package - all wrapped so fucking pretty.

And I thought of the Gitmo fiasco too. The longer we leave justice and dignity in abeyance, the worse the abuse.

Lynching 1930

A mob of 10,000 whites took sledgehammers to the county jailhouse doors to get at these two young blacks accused of raping a white girl; the girl’s uncle saved the life of a third by proclaiming the man’s innocence. Although this was Marion, Ind., most of the nearly 5,000 lynchings documented between Reconstruction and the late 1960s were perpetrated in the South. (Hangings, beatings and mutilations were called the sentence of “Judge Lynch.”) Some lynching photos were made into postcards designed to boost white supremacy, but the tortured bodies and grotesquely happy crowds ended up revolting as many as they scared. Today the images remind us that we have not come as far from barbarity as we’d like to think.

There has been no mention of the MI and contractors the MPs took their orders from.

Scapegoating? :eyes:

Who are MI and those contractors taking their orders from? Who are the real "experts" running the show?

the Mercenaries. I know how much they wanted to keep this all a secret. It was amazing....the four deaths in Fallujah brought it all out in the open. I noticed the newspapers called them "contractors" and they were "just security people delivering pizzas and protecting the military". Later, all sorts of filth came out of the woodwork. They were good at keeping secrets!!

I remember being shocked and outraged when I found out how much the war was costing. It turned out that about half of the $4.2 billion per month was unaccounted for. Now we have a few more clues.

My female intuition tells me we're going to hear more of these guys.

Where there's smoke...

They give us 1 Staff Sergeant, 1 Sergeant, 3 Specialists and 2 Privates. Even throw in a Brigadier General for the show of "the buck stops here".

A chain of command that went from a Staff Sergeant to a Brigadier General with not an officer, an a Senior NCO in sight or a GS officer-level civilian in sight. Amazing how they're doing things these days <sarcasm>


Ask yourself where these people are:

Bush, Rumsefeld, Cheney, Bremer, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Rice, etc

SFC Snider grabbed my prisoner and threw him into a pile.

The military-intelligence officers have “encouraged and told us, ‘Great job,’ <<NAMES PLEASE>>

“CID has been present when the military working dogs were used to intimidate prisoners at MI’s request.” <<NAMES PLEASE>>

At one point, Frederick told his family, he pulled aside his superior officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Phillabaum, the commander of the 320th M.P. Battalion, and asked about the mistreatment of prisoners. “His reply was ‘Don’t worry about it.’”

“They stressed him out so bad that the man passed away. They put his body in a body bag and packed him in ice for approximately twenty-four hours in the shower. . . . The next day the medics came and put his body on a stretcher, placed a fake IV in his arm and took him away.” <<NAMES PLEASE>>

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact


I told the battalion commander that I didn't like the way it was going and his reply was 'Don't worry about it. I give you permission to do it'. Where is Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Phillabaum, the commander of the 320th M.P. Battalion?

From the report:
personnel assigned to the 372nd MP Company, 800th MP Brigade were directed to change facility procedures to ‘set the conditions’ for MI interrogations.” Army intelligence officers, C.I.A. agents, and private contractors “actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses.” <<NAMES PLEASE>>

“I witnessed prisoners in the MI hold section . . . being made to do various things that I would question morally. . . . We were told that they had different rules.” <<NAMES PLEASE>>


Colonel Thomas Pappas, the commander of one of the M.I. brigades
Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan, the former director of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center,
civilian contractor, Steven Stephanowicz, of CACI International,
a second CACI employee, John Israel.

our first pick is squealing like a stuck pig.