Abusing Soldiers vs. Abusing Prisoners

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There has been an uproar in the U.S. over substandard (most commonly used word) for outpatient wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In the wake of these reports the commanding officer at the hospital has been fired, and yesterday the Secretary of the Army resigned.

How interesting that having a recovering soldier live in a room with peeling paint and mold gets the highest ranking civilian in the Army to resign, while the prisoner abuse reports from Iraq, involving far worse than substandard living conditions, have almost no effect up the chain of command. Unless I missed something in my distaste for reading Iraq news, of course.

 

Weird. I couldn't help think the same. IMO the difference is who's harmed.

In Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo it was outlandish and outlandish looking scraggy, bearded 'maybe terrorists' for whom to feel empathy seems difficult for Americans, after all they're being told perpetually how bad these guys are. They don't have a lobby, except for those 'terrorist hugging defense lawyers'.

This time it's the courageous men and weman who sacrificed a part of their health serving their country -- you know the sort of folks who look great in uniform even without legs, and who every politico loves to 'support', whatever that means. More, they are Americans and sons and daughters of Americans. They're kin. They have a lobby.

That's why this time heads roll, and generals get their boot and why a 'few bad apples' won't suffice. Sad.

Abstractly, the underlying problems in WRAMC and Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are the same: Failure in command, dereliction of duty, lack of diligence to say the very least, insufficient contractor oversight. One would wish there would be equal punishment for equal crime.

 

Yes, you're missing something.

The prisoner abuse was found to be criminal acts by a few. The lack of leadership on the part of the officers at the prison costs those officers their careers. One of the up-and-coming women generals in the army reserve was stripped of her command and forced into retirement.

Also, prisons are not supposed to be pleasant places.

Failure to provide for our men and women who have sacrificed greatly for this country is not looked upon favorably by anyone in congress. That the Army failed to upgrade medical facilities to even minimal standards is a budgetary issue. Budgetary issues are blamed (and quite appropriately) on the higher levels of command. The commanding officer was fired because he/she did not prioritize correctly. But just the CO's head is not enough in such cases for congress. They would be looking for one of three heads:

Secretary of the Army
Chief of Staff of the US Army
US Army Surgeon General

In nearly every case it is far better for the military to have a civilian appointee (who has minimal experience) step down instead of a flag officer (who typically have over 30 years of experience).

Edit: Another thing to keep in mind -- military hospitals and doctors cannot be sued. The patients in these facilities must put up with incompetance until higher authority intervenes. I had a shipmate who DIED from incompetance of a medical facility. He left behind four young children and the military only gave his wife $250,000 from his insurance policy (which he payed for) and 50% of his base pay (which comes to ~30% of his overall pay) until his youngest child reached 18. I find it refreshing when military medical facilities get hammered -- it just doesn't happen often enough.

 

T2,
your view requires the interrogation methods used in Abu Ghraib and beyond to be legal and that there were only a few exceptions that were duly punished. This would then be the point where we start disagreeing because I my view that is false.

Loosening the rules of engagement governing coercive interrogations was authorized by the White House, in the form of a Presidential Direct Finding (PDF) issued in the wake of the attacks.

If your talking legal terms, opaqueness and vagueness is the last thing you want. You want precision. When lawyers start being unprecise and opaque, they're either incompetent, or there is something they don't want to adress.

The Bush Administration has been systematically watering down the definition of torture, as well as the definition of those who are protected by humanitarian law. For purposes of confusing the US audience that was successful. International humanitarian law hadn't heared of the 'enemy combattant' until a US administration lawyer presented this new category to which, conveniently, traditional rules can't apply. Not to mention the asinine discussion about what exactly constitutes 'abuse', another term unknown to the relevant international treaties, or as conveniently, US law.

One funny little anectode from then judge Gonzales from his senate confirmation hearings: He stated that it would not be "appropriate" for him to "attempt to analyze" the legality of reported practices such as forced enemas, infliction of cigarette burns, and binding detainees hand and foot and leaving them in urine and feces for 18-24 hours. Judge Gonzales conceded US law prohibits intelligence agents from committing assault within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.
Why didn't he acknowledge that cigarette burns and forced enemas are unlawful assaults? In my dirty mind it was because he tries to preserve the argument that such conduct might not be unlawful if performed by the CIA outside the U.S. special maritime and territorial jurisdiction, e.g., in a foreign-operated detention facility like Abu Ghraib, Bagram, like Gitmo. Bingo. Once in office he made exactly that point.

That is a perversion of what an administration lawyers's job in such cases should be -- providing candid and impartial analysis, even where that candid and impartial analysis would constrain the administration's pursuit of policy goals. What I see here, and as a recurring pattern, is the opposite: An advocacy position arguing for a way around applicable laws to justify things the administration would like to do, but cannot do under a consensus based interpretation of these applicable laws.

My conclusion is that the Bush administration was and is first of all interested in a free hand, and that the vague rules used and the lack of oversight on interrogation and prisoner treatment were intentional and sanctioned from the top, with the option for 'plausible deniability' if things go real bad. You're kidding yourself when you believe in this 'few bad apples' nonsense. The phenomenon was too systematic and widespread to find a satisfactory explanation in a 'few bad apples'.

So we're IMO speaking about decisions from the level of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence at a minimum that were illegal, caused immeasurable damage to the US, and went unpunished because they had top cover. Insofar, I failed to mention the crucial thing, the WMARC scandal doesn't go as far up as Abu Ghraib. That's why comparable stonewalling isn't neccesary to protect places like the Whitehouse from fallout.

 

We've gone over this many times. You express the exact same viewpoint every time... over and over and over. I disagree with you and have said so several times.

You're entitled to your opinion and I am entitled to mine.

 

@T2: I hope the part of Ragusa's opinion you aren't agreeing with isn't the part about the white house endorsing tactics which go against the Geneva Convention. That's kind of an established fact.....and even the (conservative) Supreme Court agreed.

 

T2, you're entitled.

Retired Air Force Lt.Col. Karen Kwiatkowski made a fitting remark in an interview about her sobering term of duty next to the OSP:

I don't expect to be one one to provide that proof. Believe what you want.

 

Sec. Gates is a different man than Donald Rumsfeld. The lack of accountability that went on in the military is gone with Rumsfeld's departure. I think this is a good thing, for the most part. But unfortunately Bush is mostly in the same mode as Rumsfeld - denial, denial, denial, is their mantra.

 

The problem wasn't the military wasn't being held accountable, it was that the administration wasn't being held accountable.

Replacing Rumsfeld with Gates didn't alter that paradigm. Replacing the Republican congressional dominance with Democratic congressional dominance doesn't appear to have altered it significantly either, though it's arguably too early to tell.

 

I think AMaster is right.

However, Gates seems to have a much stronger inclination to listen to his generals. With all his weaknesses, namely 'sailing with the wind', he's a leap ahead from Rumsfeld. And there is no doubt that the officers around him must have been appaled about the conditions at WRAMC, and have strongly and rightly advocated for disciplinary action.
Nobody in his right mind, or in the Bush administration, wants to actually harm or neglect the wounded. This is a failure and correcting it is neccessary.

In the prisoner case the interests lay different as the decisionmakers in question did want these policies implemented and went to great lengths to avoid accountability or oversignt, and ultimately succeeded.

 

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/03/Weightmansubpoena/

This is interesting. Apparently outsourcing services to the private sector doesn't always improve quality.

Just in case the link goes bad, here's a part:

Committee subpoenas former Walter Reed chief

.........

The memorandum “describes how the Army’s decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was causing an exodus of ‘highly skilled and experienced personnel,’” the committee’s letter states. “According to multiple sources, the decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed led to a precipitous drop in support personnel at Walter Reed.”

The letter said Walter Reed also awarded a five-year, $120-million contract to IAP Worldwide Services, which is run by Al Neffgen, a former senior Halliburton official.

They also found that more than 300 federal employees providing facilities management services at Walter Reed had drooped to fewer than 60 by Feb. 3, 2007, the day before IAP took over facilities management. IAP replaced the remaining 60 employees with only 50 private workers.

“The conditions that have been described at Walter Reed are disgraceful,” the letter states. “Part of our mission on the Oversight Committee is to investigate what led to the breakdown in services. It would be reprehensible if the deplorable conditions were caused or aggravated by an ideological commitment to privatize government services regardless of the costs to taxpayers and the consequences for wounded soldiers.”

The letter said the Defense Department “systemically” tried to replace federal workers at Walter Reed with private companies for facilities management, patient care and guard duty – a process that began in 2000.

“But the push to privatize support services there accelerated under President Bush’s ‘competitive sourcing’ initiative, which was launched in 2002,” the letter states.

During the year between awarding the contract to IAP and when the company started, “skilled government workers apparently began leaving Walter Reed in droves,” the letter states. “The memorandum also indicates that officials at the highest levels of Walter Reed and the U.S. Army Medical Command were informed about the dangers of privatization, but appeared to do little to prevent them.”

The memo signed by Garibaldi requests more federal employees because the hospital mission had grown “significantly” during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It states that medical command did not concur with their request for more people.

“Without favorable consideration of these requests,” Garibaldi wrote, “[Walter Reed Army Medical Center] Base Operations and patient care services are at risk of mission failure.”

 

I'm stumped as to why people think it strange that we have far more compassion for our heroes than our enemies.

 

I'm stumped as to why you think everyone in Gitmo or Abu Ghraib or those 'black prisons' in Eastern Europe were/are 'our enemies'.

 

Heroes?

Don't believe what you're pumped full of! The US has no right to be anywhere pushing their weight around. That's the truth, and that's why people have compassion and caring for these unfortunate people who are having their lives ruined forever.

 

TGS,
that is just my point.

T2 said something similar in 'prisons are not supposed to be pleasant places'. The folks in Gitmo, much less in Abu Ghraib or Bagram or the black prisons, didn't have trials, let alone a fair ones. They're basically under imprisonment on remand. And then there is the presumption of innocence, but that went over board in the GWOT a while ago and hasn't been spotted ever since.

According to US army intelligence roughly 90% of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib were bystanders without any info, and were picked up in broad sweeps or at checkpoints. I don't think that Gitmo or Bagram are that much better. So we're talking about, let's be generous, half of the people being innocent, and getting whacked anyway. To not know that in the age of google requires almost willful ignorance. But of course, if you blend all that out, the sentiment you expressed is quite natural.

So when a soldier in WRAMC is neglected and has to lie in his own excrement for a day because there is no one to tend him (=neglect) that is a scandal. And rightly so. If some nameless peon in Bagram or Abu Ghraib is shackled to the floor and lies in his excrement for a day on the purpose (=intent) of humiliating him for easier interrogation or even just the fun of it, that's a non-issue because the prisoner, the possibility of his innocence aside, is an enemy, or close enough to not really bother.

As I said, the troops have a lobby, the prisoners don't.

 

Well, there was an inclination, especially at Abu Ghrab, to blame it all on the low-level officers in the field, which is really just another way of denying acountability at the higher levels. That seems to have changed with the arrival of Gates.

 

Gates is a cabinet officer and answerable only to the president and, under Bush, if time allows, to congress. I'm sceptic about that in reference to the prisoners, because a lot of it seems to come from his boss the decider. I do not think that Gates would challenge Bush, and I don' think he can take on Cheney. It is politically inherently easier to do something about neglect at WRAMC than about a policy of coercive interrogation sanctioned, say, in a secret presidential finding, and implemented by a previous Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.

But then there are always surprises. Take Negroponte who stepped down from the cabinet level job of DNI, and accepted a 'lower' sub-cabinet level job. The say is that he opposed what was asked from him as high risk or questionable, and having been there once, didn't want to go through something like Iran-Contra hearings again. Sounds like intelligence and integrity.

I admit that in WMARC Gates looks good, and the decisions he made look good too. Another point where I disagree with T2 is that firing experienced flag officers is a bad idea. It is not. If they fail they have to go. Every sacked flag officer will encourage a hundred more to do their job diligently, and especially encourage the junior levels that accountability doesn't stop with stars on your shoulder.

[ March 05, 2007, 09:27: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

Ragusa - You may be right about Bush being the "decider" of the policies that led to Abu-Graib. But I doubt it. I feel that Rumsfeld and Cheney were behind the actual policies and just had Bush sign-off on it. In the early years of Iraq, I don't think Bush decided a whole lot of what went on. Given the huge mess it has become, Bush seems to be playing a greater role of "deciding" now that Rumsfeld is gone and Cheney has been largely discredited as a force in US politics. The new policies, and the "surge," as the centerpiece of those policies are assuredly Bush's "decisions."

Gates is a part of the "old guard" - Reagan/Bush I regime. These men are much more pragmatic and less driven by ideology. Reagan and Bush I were largely opportunists, which is why they threw a lot of support Saddam's way back in the 1980s. The Gulf War Bush I had with Saddam changed a lot of the dynamics of course, but Bush I still saw it as a strategic move to leave Saddam in power, and let the forces in Iraq resovle its own post war situation. Who looks the smarter now?

 

Let me think on this one for a second. If I had to make an educated guess without any information who would I consider a hero and who would I consider an enemy. I must admit, every time I come up with the wounded soldiers in the hospital as the heroes, and the prisoners (wherever they may be) as the enemy. Something tells me that this is the way most Americans would see it. Of course the pro-terrorism/anti-American crowd would see it differently. I'm sure to them the prisoners are the heroic freedom fighters and the US soldiers are the evil baby-killing monsters. It is all a matter of perspective.

As a rule of thumb, I do not allow the actions of a few bad apples to rule my decision making.

If this isn't a sign of the apocolypse I'm not sure what is

 

Chandos,
I see the chance that you're whistling in the dark