Once again, the "boots on the ground" take a boot up the rear, and the senior officers who had the authority and who either gave or approved the orders skate. My Lai all over again.
The lack of, um, mass innocent civilian murders makes the comparison of Abu Graib to My Lai seem kind of... stupid?
As for the rest... well, it is on the face of it illegal to follow an illegal order. If somebody, regardless of rank, tells you to break the law, you are legally obligated to
not do it. Given that soldiers all get training on the laws of land warfare, this is a no brainer, before you even get to the "common sense" of "not sticking things in foreigners' butts." So the perpetrators need to get crushed into fine paste, regardless of if they were ordered to do it or not.
The curious thing is that all the people alleged to have ordered the soldiers to do this stuff
obviously didn't have the legal authority to do so, and even an MP right out of basic training would have known that. Intelligence agencies simply have no authority over military personnel at all. The Army's own intelligence personnel are outside the MP's chain of command, and so can't give them orders to do jack squat, either. As a captain who was a 35E (counter-intelligence officer), I couldn't order the private working at the battalion's dining facility to give me extra hash browns at breakfast; I sure as hell couldn't tell some MPs to go torture some foreigners in their free time.
The other curious thing is that, while I know lots of borderline-illegal things to do to people to make them more cooperative, none of them involve the crimes alleged at Abu Graib, because said crimes, while pretty bad in their own right, were both ridiculously obvious and juvenile as hell. HINT: When spooks are torturing people, they don't allow Polaroids to be taken by some ***** MP along for the ride. And their isn't any forced ass-play, either.
I think there are two possible explanations:
1) The chain of command ordered blanket cooperation with some agency or another, and that agency gave vague and stupid guidance to the MPs to treat certain prisoners crappy, and the MPs came up with moronic yet sadistic things to do, and took pictures of it because they were idiots. In this case the chain of command, the spooks, and the MPs are all responsible in their own way for what happened..
2) The chain of command was just a bunch of retards, the intel folks had nothing to do with it at all, and the MPs in question were just moronically sadistic on their own. In this case, the chain of command is responsible for being retarded, and the MPs are mostly responsible for their actions.
Torture no matter how mild is INDEFENSIBLE.
Um, if it is mild, it is by definition
not torture.
Main Entry: 1tor·ture
Pronunciation: 'tor-ch&r
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from Late Latin tortura, from Latin tortus, past participle of torquEre to twist; probably akin to Old High German drAhsil turner, Greek atraktos spindle
1 a : anguish of body or mind : AGONY b : something that causes agony or pain
2 : the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure
International law is in line with this, e.g.:
The "United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment"(UNCAT) June 1987:
Article 1
1. Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
