Lawmakers Stunned By New Images of Abuse

By Greyhawk

- That's the headline over a story that begins with this: "Scores of lawmakers yesterday viewed unreleased photos and videos of Iraqi detainees being sexually humiliated and physically threatened."

Apparently the attraction was standing room only:

The private screenings arranged by the Pentagon -- one for senators, one for House members -- surely ranked among Congress's more bizarre scenes. House members silently crammed into a standing-room-only committee room as hundreds of images, some described as pornographic, flashed on a screen for a few seconds each. Lawmakers emerging from that session, and from a less-crowded Senate room, seemed almost at a loss for words.

"There were some awful scenes." Sen. Richard Durbin said of the presentation that included images of "U.S. troops having sex with each other", overcoming his "loss for words" long enough to add "It felt like you were descending into one of the rings of hell, and sadly it was our own creation."

Although a world-wide public release of "more Abu Ghraib images" is pending (though inclusion of those of "US soldiers having sex with each other" is unlikely), the quotes above are from a May, 2004 Washington Post story, published a few days after CBS aired the photos they'd received from Abu Ghraib prison guard Ivan "Chip" Frederick's uncle Bill Lawson.

More:

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said the photos showed a number of soldiers, as many as seven or eight in one photo, observing some of the scenes. He said that is evidence that knowledge of the abuse went beyond the few soldiers who have been accused to committing it.

"The question is how far up the chain of command did this order go," he said.

According to the accused, at least one "higher official" who was aware of the abuse long before CBS broadcast the initial images but failed to take any action was Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

A few days prior, the NY Times:

The irony, Mr. Lawson said, is that the public spectacle might have been avoided if the military and the federal government had been responsive to his claims that his nephew was simply following orders. Mr. Lawson said he sent letters to 17 members of Congress about the case earlier this year, with virtually no response, and that he ultimately contacted Mr. Hackworth's Web site out of frustration, leading him to cooperate with a consultant for "60 Minutes II."

In addition to the pictures, Frederick's family provided a list of those elected officials they had attempted to contact months earlier:

Jack Reed D RI *SASC, emailed Feb. 2004, no response.
Mark Dayton D MN *SASC, emailed Feb. 2004, no response.
Robert Byrd D WV *SASC, emailed Feb. 2004, required by office 500 words or more, no response (1)
Bill Nelson D FL *SASC, emailed Feb. 2004, no response.
Evan Bayh D IN *SASC, emailed Feb. 2004, no response.
Mark Pryor D AR *SASC, emailed Feb. 2004, no response.
Edward Kennedy D MA *SASC, emailed Feb., no response, office requested copy of Frederick notes during senate hearings in May 2004.
Benjamin Nelson D NE *SASC, emailed Feb. 2004, no response, office requested copy of Frederick notes during senate hearings in May 2004 and senator called Frederick 's uncle.
Hillary Clinton D NY *SASC, emailed Feb. 2004, no response.
Joseph Lieberman D CT *SASC, emailed Feb. 2004, no response.
Daniel Akaka D HI *SASC, emailed Feb. 2004, no response.
Roscoe Bartlett R MD hand written letter Feb. 2004, patronizing form letter received and another from the US Army, no further response (2).
Paul Sarbanes D MD hand written letter Feb. 2004, patronizing form letter received, no further response (2).
John D Rockefeller D WV Intelligence Committee, typed letter Feb., patronizing form letter received (unable to help since Frederick is not an immediate family member), remainder of letter on abuse at prison ignored, senator left 3 messages on answering machine in May 2004, no further response (1).
Mark Warner Governor D VA, typed letter Feb. 2004, no response.(3)

And yes - the list included only 15 lawmakers, while quotes indicated 17. But it should be noted that the vast majority of assertions made by the defense in the early days following the broadcast of the Abu Ghraib photos were demonstrably false. Among them, the Frederick's family claim that "The purpose of the photos were to show new arriving prisoners what could happen to them if they did not cooperate with MI interrogators" - a claim echoed by others:

Guy Womack, who represents Spc. Charles Graner, told USA TODAY that military intelligence soldiers worked behind the scenes to tell military police how to pose Iraqis in humiliating positions. Giorgio Ra'Shadd, an attorney for Pfc. Lynndie England, said intelligence soldiers responsible for interrogating prisoners used England to humiliate the prisoners depicted in the photographs.
<...>
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has said he believed some of the photographs were taken to threaten inmates who did not cooperate.

Then-PFC England would initially claim "I was instructed by persons in higher rank to 'stand there, hold this leash, look at the camera,' and they took picture for PsyOps (psychological operations)".

Ra'Shadd said England was pulled into the situations by intelligence agents who subverted the military chain of command. He said they used England to humiliate the men being photographed so they could show the pictures to more important prisoners and threaten them with the same treatment.

The larger narrative was that the guards couldn't possibly have come up with the idea of photographing naked Iraqi prisoners on their own, and therefore must have been instructed from "on high". The Frederick family would take the argument one step farther: "Had the MP's been trained in Arab customs they would not have taken the photos. SSgt Frederick and his entire family are regretful and would like to apologize to the Iraqi people. The MP's intent was to cause the prisoners the least amount of physical pain and accomplish the mission MI had given them [to humiliate prisoners and take photos for blackmail]."

Those long-abandoned claims were effectively derailed by the revelation that long before CBS producer Mary Mapes claimed the story as her own, then-Spc Joe Darby, a fellow member of their unit, had actually first reported the abuses (and provided the photos) to Army authorities.

The earliest pictures were from October of 2003, but I didn’t discover them until January of 2004. I found the pictures on a CD that Graner had given me. To this day, I’m not sure why he gave me that CD. He probably just forgot which pictures were on it, or he might have assumed that I wouldn’t care.

Actually, Graner's history of "accidentally sharing" his home-spun porn collection pre-dated his deployment to Iraq:

In March 2003, she went with Graner and another soldier to Virginia Beach. During the trip, Graner took pictures of himself having anal sex with England. He also photographed her placing her nipple in the ear of the other soldier, who was passed out in a hotel room. Soon, it became their new game: Whenever Graner asked her to, England would strike a pose.
<...>
After the Virginia Beach expedition, England and Graner rented a car and drove to eastern Kentucky, where her parents and grandfather were turkey hunting in Daniel Boone National Forest. Sitting between Graner and her parents at a picnic table, England asked Graner to share some scenic pictures from their trip to Virginia Beach. Graner handed an envelope to England's father, who opened it and scanned the images, then handed them to Terrie. They showed nudity and sexual scenes. Apparently, Graner had given them the wrong vacation shots. "I was really bent out of shape," Terrie says.

*****

Today, one of most ignored voices in the Abu Ghraib debate is that of Ivan Frederick's lawyer, Gary Myers, who recently dismissed claims that newly-released CIA memos "prove" his client's earlier claims.

But in years past, Spc Darby was a lone voice of dissent*:

Everybody thinks there was an order from high up, or that somebody in command must have known. Everybody is wrong. Nobody in command knew about the abuse, because nobody in command cared enough to find out. That was the real problem. The entire command structure was oblivious, living in their own little worlds. So it wasn’t a conspiracy—it was negligence, plain and simple.

And for that he paid a high price:

After my name got out, I knew I had to get home. The media was swarming all over the house like vultures. They were taking pictures every time my wife came in and out, the phone was ringing nonstop, and they were coming to the door one after the other with presents and flowers, even after she told them to go away. Most of the neighbors didn’t support her, either. Some did, like the postmaster—he’s a Vietnam vet, and he told my wife that he understood. But as soon as somebody else walked in, even he stopped talking to her. Because a lot of people up there view me as a traitor. Even some of my family members think I’m a traitor. One of my uncles does, and he convinced my brother not to talk to me anymore. So my wife had to hide in a relative’s house, and when the media tracked her there, she had to be taken into military custody. I still have a lot of bad feelings toward the press.

I was stuck in Iraq, powerless to help her. I needed to get home. I asked for emergency leave, and at one o’clock in the morning they came to my room with a two-hour warning. They said, “Get out of bed, get what you need, turn in your flak vest. You’re getting out of the country.” So I grabbed everything I could fit into two duffel bags, gave my weapons to a friend, and went down to wait for the plane. It’s a long flight, and I managed to sleep for most of it. Finally, we land in Dover, Delaware. We’re taxiing on the runway when all of a sudden, the plane stops. You can hear the hissing of the hydraulics, and the plane door is opening up. But we’re still on the runway. The loadmaster of the plane looks at me and says, “What the hell are we doing?” And then these three guys in suits come on, and they point at me and they’re like, “Let’s go.”

There was a van sitting there on the runway, and I was saluted by a colonel, who said, “Your family’s waiting. We’ll take you to them.” I couldn’t believe it when I walked through the doors and saw my wife. I had no idea she was actually going to be in the airport. I was just hugging her and crying. Then they took us to a house on the post for the night, and after a while, I went outside to talk to Major Chung, the provost marshal for my unit based in Cumberland. He asked me what I wanted to do, and I said, “I just want to go home.” And he said, “You can’t go home. You can probably never go home.”

He was right. I never went back to my home. I’ve only been back to my town twice: for my mother’s funeral and for a wedding. Even then, I was only in town as long as I needed to be. I’m not welcome there.

But in fairness, let's give the last word to the defense - once again, the family of Chip Frederick:

How do mountain people feel about Sgt Darby around West Virginia and his part in all this?

In Appalachia there are three kinds of people. There are those who agree, those who disagree and fence setters. Everyone in the hills who either agrees with you or not, are to be greatly respected whether alive, dead or in the process. Accordingly a fence setter will steal your stove, come back for the smoke, are the lowest form of weasel, far lower than whale feces and bear considerable watching. It is understood that Fort Ashby , West Virginia won't be saving the last piece of pie for Sgt. Darby.

The West Virginia congressional delegation had no comment.

*****

*Update/correction: Others besides Darby were indeed opposing the Ivan Frederick/60 Minutes/Seymour Hersh version of the Abu Ghraib story. Major General Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib incident following Darby's revelation, concurred - testifying to congress (at the same time as the first story above) that ""We did not find any evidence of a policy or a direct order given to these soldiers to conduct what they did. I believe that they did it on their own volition and I believe that they collaborated with several MI (military intelligence) interrogators at the lower level.""

Headlines following his testimony would read "Taguba blames leadership for prison abuse".

Posted by Greyhawk / May 6, 2009 8:50 AM | Permalink