as we may blog

Law-talkin’ guy hired in the defense of Grade Z Bootlick Lynndie England tells us just why she was having so much fun posing for TortureTV:

"You don’t see my client doing anything abusive at all," one of England’s attorneys, Giorgio Ra’Shadd, said after meeting with England at Fort Bragg. "I think she was ordered to smile."

…

She said the leash photo was taken for psychological operations, or psy-ops. "I was instructed by persons in higher rank to stand there, hold this leash and look at the camera. And they took a picture for psy-op, and that’s all I know."

Ra’Shadd said England was not pulling on the leash. In other photos, he said, she was pulled into the photographs by CIA and other intelligence agents who subverted the military chain of command.

"The spooks took over the jail," said Ra’Shadd, a former Army lawyer who once worked in psychological operations. "Everything about that command was wacky."

Ahh, the ol’ wacky command defense. I have to say that it’s a real relief to read she wasn’t pulling on the leash, the liberal media was making this whole prank out to be some sort of, you know, degrading and physically harmful experience for the Iraqi prisoners (up to 90% of whom were innocent civilians according to the "humanitarian do-gooders crawling around" at the Red Cross).

Apparently 60 Minutes II is airing footage of similar treatment of Afghan prisoners by US soldiers tonight. This whole story and all its tangents is almost too much to think about (a really scary thought), but Talking Points Memo and the Whiskey Bar deconstruct the news with intelligence and historical insight that somehow make me feel a little better even if the actual news is nothing but horrific.

The American media is finally, reluctantly, putting the Iraqi prison torture (and that’s what it is, by the way, not "abuse," not "mistreatment") story in the spotlight where it belongs. CNN and MSNBC are currently featuring stories about the Taguba Report, in which Major General Antonio Taguba alleges that torture we’ve seen on TV was not, sadly, an isolated event:

Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community.

There’s not a whole lot to add, really. It’s worth your time to read Sy Hersh’s New Yorker piece (linked above). I find it interesting and even somewhat surprising that the President has yet to read the Taguba Report, a tidbit I mention not in the interest of politicizing human rights offenses but only to illustrate how little communication seems to be occuring between the military and this administration.

QUICK UPDATE: It will be interesting to see if word of this meeting makes into the mainstream press. Juan Cole reports that Paul Bremer was told in November 2003 by Abdul Basit Turki, the Iraqi Minister of Human Rights, of the abuse occuring at Abu Gharib and took no action.

…the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners by US troops or the responses of the parents of the troops involved.

A Sun reporter on Thursday showed a photo of one of the nude prisoner scenes to Terrie England, who recognized her daughter, reservist Lynndie R. England, 21, standing in the foreground with her boyfriend.

?Oh, my God,? she told the newspaper from the stoop in front of her Fort Ashby, W.Va., trailer home. ?I can?t get over this.?

The alleged abuses of prisoners were ?stupid, kid things ? pranks,? Terrie England said. ?And what the (Iraqis) do to our men and women are just? The rules of the Geneva Convention, does that apply to everybody or just us??

Fuck this war.

Something makes me think that US war planners assumed Sunni-Shiite cooperation in Iraq would be realized under less, uh, fiery circumstances.

“We have orders from our leader to fight as one and to help the Sunnis,” said Nimaa Fakir, a 27-year-old teacher and foot soldier in the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia. “We want to increase the fighting, increase the killing and drive the Americans out. To do this, we must combine forces.”

This new Shiite-Sunni partnership was flourishing in Baghdad on Thursday. Convoys of pickup trucks with signature black Shiite flags flapping from their bumpers hauled sacks of grain, flour, sugar and rice into Sunni mosques.

But it’s not like anyone saw this coming.

Iraqi insurgents wave their national flag as they celebrate in front of a burning US military tanker after attacking it with rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) in Abu Gharib. Not pictured: won over hearts and minds.

There’s a valuable lesson in this commentary about historical perspective (or the lack thereof) in America today.

However, it shouldn’t be necessary — but apparently is — to point out that the destruction and, yes, savage mutilation of other human beings isn’t a uniquely Iraqi, or Arab or Islamic spectator sport. And we don’t need to visit the killing fields of Bosnia or El Salvador to find the proof. It’s tucked away in the attic of our own national memory. And it isn’t all that dusty, either…

I’m not asking anyone to excuse what happened in Fallujah yesterday. Far from it. I’m always struck, though, by how morally righteous the tone from Americans is when our hands are just as dirty.