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Tully Mars · 04-24-2009, 02:51 AM

Quote:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Defense Department will release "a substantial number" of photographs showing abuse of prisoners at prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Aggressive techniques to interrogate terror suspects are making headlines again.

Aggressive techniques to interrogate terror suspects are making headlines again.

The release will be in response to an open-records lawsuit filed by the ACLU, the group said in a written statement. The statement released late Thursday said the photos were taken at facilities other than Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

"These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib," Amrit Singh, an ACLU attorney, said in the release. The photos are to be released by May 28, the ACLU said.

The Department of Defense announced in a letter addressed to the federal court on Thursday that it would release the photos.

In a copy of the letter posted on the ACLU's Web site, acting U.S. Attorney Lev L. Dassin said that 21 photographs would be released and that the government "also is processing for release a substantial number of other images."
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The lawsuit was filed in 2004 after the Bush administration denied a 2003 open-records request by the ACLU.

The 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled last year that the photos should be released. The Defense Department will not appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, Dassin said in the letter.

Attempts by CNN to reach the White House and Department of Defense for comment were not immediately successful.

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The Defense Department has been ordered by the 2nd Circuit to release photos of abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib. What do you think about this? Is it necessary to show the photos to public? Personally I'm not sure this the right thing to do. Not sure it's the wrong thing to do either. Myself I don't need to see them they can just tell me about them.

I also read this this morning...

Quote:

CNN) -- She said she was a scapegoat. She said she was just following orders. She said she was demoted unfairly.
Retired Army Col. Janis Karpinski was one of two officers punished over Abu Ghraib.

Retired Army Col. Janis Karpinski was one of two officers punished over Abu Ghraib.

Now, retired Army Col. Janis Karpinski can say: I told you so.

Karpinski was one of two officers punished over the aggressive interrogations at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Pictures of detainees caused outrage around the world when they were leaked to the news media in May 2004. The photos showed naked prisoners stacked on top of each other or being threatened by dogs or hooded and wired up as if for electrocution.

Throughout the ordeal, Karpinski maintained that she and her troops were following interrogation guidelines approved by top brass. Today, Karpinski has found validation in a few Bush-era memos released last week by the Obama administration.

"The outrage was over the photographs, because the photographs were living color of what those top-secret memorandums authorized," Karpinski said in an interview Wednesday. "So, it is unfair ... the soldiers may have moved through [the military justice] system, but they never had a fair court-martial. Not any one of them, because they were condemned as one of the 'bad apples.' "

Karpinski, then a brigadier general and commander of Abu Ghraib, was demoted to colonel because of the scandal. A second officer, Col. Thomas Pappas, the commander of the military intelligence unit assigned to Abu Ghraib when the offenses occurred, was relieved of duty and fined in May 2005. Seven low-ranking guards and two military intelligence soldiers -- described by then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz as "bad apples" -- were disciplined.

The memo, by then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee and then-Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven G. Bradbury, allowed the use of such tactics as keeping a detainee naked and in some cases in a diaper, and putting detainees on a liquid diet. One memo said aggressive techniques such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and slapping did not violate laws against torture absent the intent to cause severe pain.
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"I will tell you that when I read those memorandums, when they were first released a few days ago, I did -- I did feel this sense of being able to exhale after five years," Karpinski said.

"That is what we have been saying from the very beginning, that, wait a minute, why are you inside pointing the finger at me, why are you pointing the fingers at the soldiers here? There's a bigger story here."

The Senate Armed Forces Committee released a report Tuesday, five days after the memos were released, stating that senior Bush administration officials authorized aggressive interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists, despite concerns from military psychologists and attorneys.

The report points to then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's approval of such techniques -- including stress positions, removal of clothing, use of phobias (such as fear of dogs), and deprivation of light and auditory stimuli -- in December 2002 for detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His OK prompted interrogators in Afghanistan and Iraq to adopt the aggressive techniques.

The guidance was delivered to Abu Ghraib by then-Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was summoned to Baghdad from Guantanamo to evaluate the prison system.

"We had a myriad of problems in our -- in the prison system, not with detainees who were undergoing interrogations, but with Iraqi criminal prisoners," Karpinski said. "And instead of coming to give us support, he was sent specifically to work with the military intelligence interrogators to teach them the harsher techniques that were being used down in Guantanamo."

Shortly before he left office in late 2006, Rumsfeld said the day the Abu Ghraib scandal broke was the worst in his tenure as defense secretary.

"Clearly the worst day was Abu Ghraib, and seeing what went on there and feeling so deeply sorry that that happened," he said at the time. "I remember being stunned by the news of the abuse."

But Karpinski said the condition of detainees at the prison should have come as no surprise for the Bush administration.

"I think it was torture, absolutely. You know, I was never inside an interrogation room where they were conducting interrogations, but I read the memorandums many times over," she said. "Waterboarding is torture."

Karpinski said that while she was the commander of Abu Ghraib, she didn't personally witness any of the interrogation techniques.

"The first time I saw the photographs was at the end of January [2004]," she said.

Karpinski said she was ordered by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the U.S. commander of operations in Iraq at the time, not to discuss the photographs or the investigation with anybody.

Now, despite any relief felt by the release of the memos and the Senate report, Karpinski said she will have a hard time shaking off the humiliation and disgrace brought on by the Abu Ghraib scandal.

"I think that, you know, you cannot dismiss five years of having to live under these accusations," she said, "and people associating my name and these soldiers' names with what they were so unfairly accused of."

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So Karpinski feels vindicated. What about the soldiers sitting in the brig? Are they going to let them out? Do you think they should be let out? The UCMJ is pretty specific about following ordered. But there's also a sections about the responsibility to refuse illegal orders. Seems like a complex issue to me. But if i were a young soldier and my officers ordered me to "release the dogs" I think there a damn good chance I'd have done as ordered. I think if these people, as it seems clear now, were indeed following orders they should be released and given honorable discharges. I think it sucks that the people issuing the orders let them hang and claimed they knew nothing about it. they expressed shock and outrage about shit they ordered. Then they allowed people carrying out their orders to be sent off to the brig while they retired with big fat pensions. I think Charles Graner and Donald Rumsfeld should trade current residences.