Soldiers' warnings ignored abuse not cause by a handful of soliders

[MSgt213]

WIESBADEN, Germany - The two military intelligence soldiers, assigned interrogation duties at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, were young, relatively new to the Army and had only one day of training on how to pry information from high-value prisoners.

But almost immediately on their arrival in Iraq, say the two members of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, they recognized that what was happening around them was wrong, morally and legally.

They said in interviews Friday and yesterday that the abuses were not caused by a handful of rogue soldiers poorly supervised and lacking morals but resulted from failures that went beyond the low-ranking military police charged with abuse.

The beatings, the two soldiers said, were meted out with the full knowledge of intelligence interrogators, who let military police know which prisoners were cooperating with them and which were not.

"I was told, 'Don't worry about it - they probably deserved it,'" one of the soldiers said in an interview, referring to complaints he made while trying to persuade the Army to investigate. "I was appalled."

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-te.guard09may09,0,2180279.story?coll=bal-home-headlines
The two soldiers are the first from a military intelligence unit known to speak publicly about what happened at Abu Ghraib, and they are the first from such a unit to contend publicly that some interrogators were complicit in the abuses. The soldiers stressed that not all interrogators were involved.

[Hubert Flottz]

1. Pandora's Box is open now!

Congress will start bringing in these witnesses and the shit will hit the fan! Some bigtime heads will roll! It makes me sick to see what has happened to the military since 9/11! The blame starts at the top and the officers knew better too! The officers I feel sorry for are the ones who spent their lives trying to make the Army better than it was during Nam and now the trash from Washington have screwed it ALL up for everyone in the service! I know one four star and I think he has kept his nose clean! I know him to be honest and fair and I feel sorry for him!

[MSgt213]

2. Notice that no supervisors seemed to ever be in the prison. It seems to

me that officers were assigned as in charge of these prisons that had other duties besides running the prisons. Why else would they never be there. Either that or they were assigned to many prisons to run so that there is no way they could be at any particular one for the required time to provide appropriate supervison. This is a command failure.