Here's the names of MANY men more culpable than Lynndie England...

[Junkdrawer]

From Sy Hersh's article in the New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/

....

The military-intelligence officers have “encouraged and told us, ‘Great job,’ they were now getting positive results and information,” Frederick wrote. “CID has been present when the military working dogs were used to intimidate prisoners at MI’s request.” 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.’”

....

Another witness, Sergeant Javal Davis, who is also one of the accused, told C.I.D. investigators, “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.” Taguba wrote, “Davis also stated that he had heard MI insinuate to the guards to abuse the inmates. When asked what MI said he stated: ‘Loosen this guy up for us.’‘Make sure he has a bad night.’‘Make sure he gets the treatment.’” Military intelligence made these comments to Graner and Frederick, Davis said. “The MI staffs to my understanding have been giving Graner compliments . . . statements like, ‘Good job, they’re breaking down real fast. They answer every question. They’re giving out good information.’”

.....

General Taguba saved his harshest words for the military-intelligence officers and private contractors. He recommended that Colonel Thomas Pappas, the commander of one of the M.I. brigades, be reprimanded and receive non-judicial punishment, and that Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan, the former director of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, be relieved of duty and reprimanded. He further urged that a civilian contractor, Steven Stephanowicz, of CACI International, be fired from his Army job, reprimanded, and denied his security clearances for lying to the investigating team and allowing or ordering military policemen “who were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations by ‘setting conditions’ which were neither authorized” nor in accordance with Army regulations. “He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse,” Taguba wrote. He also recommended disciplinary action against a second CACI employee, John Israel. (A spokeswoman for CACI said that the company had “received no formal communication” from the Army about the matter.)

“I suspect,” Taguba concluded, that Pappas, Jordan, Stephanowicz, and Israel “were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuse at Abu Ghraib,” and strongly recommended immediate disciplinary action.

[bleedingheart]

1. I think that the reason the big deal is being made of the woman

involved is to deflect the attention away from the abuse and change the story into some sort of S&M show.....so instead of discussing the abuse of Iraqi prisoners people are saying "how could a woman do that..."

It is subtle form of yellow journalism.

[QC]

4. And a lot of us are falling for that yellow journalism.

To read most of the threads discussing the abuse issue here, you would think that Lynndie England was solely responsible for it all. As if some low-level guardsmen cooked up the whole thing!

Yet whenever anyone brings up the names of those ultimately responsible, people like Doug Feith, who says that the Geneva Convention only protects terrorists, then the thread drops like a rock. I guess it's a lot more fun to sit around devising punishments for the public face of the scandal than to consider who made it all possible.

[Junkdrawer]

5. Here's a thread I started on just that subject...

Why do women make the best scapegoats???

[goddess40]

13. The women got more attention because we have higher standards for women

Most people are willing to accept this type of behavior from men but not form women. We set the bar lower for men for a lot of things, Childcare, faithfulness, boarish behavior, rape...

[TankLV]

14. or - they are already talking about how wrong it is to have women serve

along side men in the armed forces - got to limit them to desk jobs or secretaries.

[kalian]

2. And the CACI.....

has Israeli ties. Sigh...

[0007]

6. Perhaps the civilian contractors could help out for that one?

At the moment the contractors or mercenaries are being held in the shadow of the outrage. It wouldn't surprise me if the Israelis were playing a role. The Brits were in on the inhumane treatment and torture so why not?

[zydeco]

3. My Dad was a L.Col.in the Army and

would never have made a decision, on his own, to violate the Geneva Convention unless he was ordered to by someone much higher up. I doubt then that he would have condoned this behavior. This goes much higher than that and they had better start discovering how high as the whole world is watching.

[OKNancy]

7. Here is another list of more men who are much more culpable

Bush
Cheney
Powell
Rumsfeld
Wolfowitz
Libby
Feith
Pearle............

[QC]

8. Thank you! n/t

[cliss]

9. There you go.

Why are they starting at the bottom? I've posted several times that the GI's did not go into Iraq with plans to rape, sodomize, torture and kill Iraqis. They were told to do that.

Don't forget the CIA while you're at it. There's a great article on CounterPunch about it. It tells the sordid story about what they are up to in Iraq.

[Junkdrawer]

10. And, IMHO, the best way to get to your list is to follow the trail...

back from MI and the private contractors. I'll bet they "stovepipe" right back to Cheney and Rumsfeld through Feith.

[Philosophy]

11. But they're not in any pictures so they must be innocent

Only the MPs in the photos are being prosecuted. If the photos had never been leaked to the media, the MPs would probably have gotten off with a "reprimand" just like their superiors who ordered them to perform these acts. Doesn't matter what the report says.

[Solly Mack]

12. Using Lynndie England has the poster girl for war crimes

allows the focus to be on her-her gender, women in the military, how could a woman do that, etc.

People are discussing HER..not the overall issue. It's Her, her family, her background...on and on and on...

but what it's not is:

Just how far up the chain does this go?

Oh, she's guilty and should be tried...but she's not the only one guilty and she's not where the guilt first began...

but as long as she can be the picture of "abuse" in Iraq...then people can concentrate on her and not delve deeper

many people won't go beyond the soldier faces in the pictures to look deeper ...as a consequence, once they sentence England, many people will consider the matter done.

All their faces should be shown..and the military has pictures of them all to do this with...