cause pain and humiliation bothers you, or if near-drowning a man or giving him an "ice bath" disturbs you, it's because you have morals and a conscience and all the alarm bells are going off in your soul that you're doing something horribly wrong. This is not a good position to place your employees in.

Last edited Sun Dec 14, 2014, 03:36 PM - Edit history (2)

Army Strong!

A damned disgrace to millions who put on that uniform.

A despicable damned disgrace to every American POW ever held behind wire.

A traitorous despicable damned disgrace for every Human Rights worker who ever tried to ensure imprisoned human beings were treated according to international conventions.

how little integrity the torture programs chain of command had.

It was (and is) the chain of command that has little integrity.

of the sort that the Army let in by the truckload back then, and wasn't sharp or moral enough to overcome the atmosphere she lived and worked in. But she was, if I recall correctly, a PFC. That's basically a "nothing and nobody" in the military. Her superiors and commanders set the tone, but she became the iconic grunt dumbass caught on camera. I don't know if any officers were ever truly held accountable for Abu Ghraib. Par for the course.

England stated numerous times that she was following orders from superiors in her chain of command (notably those of her love interest, Graner, who himself testified that he was following orders of officers in the oxymoronically-named Military Intelligence).

England's story personifies, imo, the contempoary American trait of kow-towing to superiors or authority figures because of their superior status or status as authority figures. See Milgram's experiments at Yale U. for more on that.

who beat and tortured work camp laborers...

Frankly I find torturing to satisfy a love interest a perverting twist to criminal behavior rather than exculpatory

The units of MI that I worked for were in the electronic intercept/signal intelligence game. They were 100 percent volunteer units where admission required being in the top 2% of induction aptitude scores...that was interpreted as equating to a minimum IQ of 125.

Which isn't to say we were better than anyone else, but rather that when one of us decided to be a smart ass it was true on both terms.

of a love interest to be 'exculpatory'. Exactly the opposite, in fact. But I do think England's claim does go to 'explaining' the conduct somewhat. (Graner testified that he received orders from his officers in MI to do it.)

I also don't think it's entirely fair to lay it all on England and Graner and the other two soldiers (Frederick and Davis, the few 'bad apples') and not lay it at the feet of the architects of the policies who, mostly, walk around today freely without having suffered any material consequences and have no fear of repercussions, at least in this lifetime.

not satisfied until -ALL- are held accountable. Picking up those who can be picked up is a start, and it clearly begins with the least powerful... even among the high placed enablers, people like John Yoo will be easier to get than Cheney.

Those who set the goal at getting the high ranking are at a significant disadvantage...unlike Wiesel, they aren't seeking to punish the losers of a war who destroyed their reputations... they are looking to punish those whose crimes helped them gain and or maintain position among the hidden global elite.

why bother to hide it?

Or, was calling the sadists "patriots" advertising?

...and still wasn't treated as a human being.