----- Original Message ----- From: "Gautam Mukunda" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2004 6:35 PM Subject: Re: Disturbing evidence of torture
> --- Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm a bit disturbed that Rumsfeld, just now, appears > > to have been shocked > > as I have, and as you haven't. My shock was > > partially based on the > > assumption that the US occupation force was > > competent enough to provide as > > good a prison environment as possible. I expected > > there to be good > > supervision, and for treatment to be > > exemplary...mainly because it is very > > much in our self interest to do so. > > Well, my lack of shock was more based on a (very) > cynical opinion of how organizations react under > stress, and an equally low opinion of how bad prison > conditions are in the US. From what I could see, it > looked like the Stanford Prison Experiment run in real > life - but given what happened in that experiment, > nothing we saw was all _that_ suprising. But, that's what standard procedures and planning are for. I've quickly read the Army report, and it appears that there was a massive breakdown on a number of levels that fostered this. > > She is not some private, she is a general. > > To be fair, she also has a very high incentive to > claim that she was unable to succeed in her position, > whether or not that was the case. I realize that; my point is either way, it looks very bad. If she was able to suceed in her position, then to have a general whine like this is unacceptable. Someone who does this poorly when given all the needed resources to do a good job should never have been put in that position. But, the Army report indicates to me that things were just slapped together. MPs who were use to traffic control and who were told they'd come home quickly were pressed into long term prison duty, with virtually no training. They were severly understaffed for a normal prison population...and the actual population was twice capacity. Further, the prison was 60% full of people who should have been released. They couldn't even figure out who was there. I certainly do not absolve her of responsibility. While I think she was not given the resources to do the job properly, she still had the resources to do the job far better than she did. Issuing orders to fix problems and not following up to see if the orders were carried out is inexcusable. Not instituting real training is inexcusable. Not setting up a means of tracking prisoners is inexcusable. My arguement is that all the blame cannot be placed on her and her subordinates. Management by wishful thinking and denial also seems to be involved. > At any rate, in a purely analytical sense, here's my > guess as to what happened (assuming that this wasn't > ordered by higher-ups, which strikes me as unlikely > just because that would be too stupid for words). > Some high-value prisoners were probably being > aggressively interrogated. That ethos spread through > much of the prison. The particular guards involved > with this were a bunch of fuck-ups. They picked up > that ethos, had no adult supervision (because, at > least in part and from my experience with them, > American officers tend to have a blind spot about > things like this, in part because of their excellent > historical record and in part because they're used to > dealing with highly competent regulars, not idiots > like these clowns, and those regulars would - I'm > guessing - never do anything so unimaginably stupid > and vile) and normal group dynamic behaviors - ones > that we see in experimental psychology all the time - > promptly asserted themselves, until you got the > atrocity that we saw here. > My take is a bit different from that. From what I've gathered, at least one picture shows additional people being involved. Civilians contractors were freelancing in the prision. That lack of control in the prison would all G. Gordon Liddy types to strut their stuff and give wink and nod orders to the MPs. Talking about "making sure that prisoner has a hard night tonight" is an example of this. In addition, public comments about not having to follow the Geneva convention, the use of other countries to do dirty work for the US with terrorists, as well as agreesive interrogations may have contributed to a change in the climate. It would be easy for freelancers who need to produce results to justify their consulting fees to think that 9-11 produced a whole new world. It is also possible that more senior officers were looking the other way when boundaries were pushed. Not as far as shown in the pictures, mind you, but enough to promote the idea "if you get results, I won't ask how you got them." Finally, the folks involved did have adult supervision. We are not talking about a bunch of 19 year olds here. I couldn't get every age, but the NCO was 37. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
