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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Orcastraiter who wrote (7725)	5/17/2004 5:56:51 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

"If you are referring to Abu Gharaib, the soldiers there were clearly following direction for the top." ....Spc. Jeremy Sivits .... maintained, according to the documents, that all of this was done without the knowledge of their superiors in the Army chain of command. "Our command would have slammed us," he said. "They believe in doing the right thing. If they saw what was going on, there would be hell to pay." He said Graner warned him not to say anything, telling him: "You did not see (this)."....... Message 20128582 ....This guy's (Staff Sergeant Chip Frederick) supposed to be a correctional officer at a Virginia prison, but apparently when it comes to performing his job outside the confines of the Commonwealth, he turns into Sergeant Stupid..... Message 20081004 ....Startlingly, in his journal.... Frederick wrote that Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad was nothing like the Virginia state prison where he worked in civilian life. Message 20128629 ....The lawyers say they will rely on findings of the military's own investigation, by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba of the Army, which found that military commanders, eager to extract more information from detainees, used guards to set conditions for "successful interrogations." In practice, the lawyers said, that policy translated into instructions that the guards "soften up" detainees before questioning. But lawyers for two defendants acknowledge that they are unable to say precisely who ordered what. Mr. Womack conceded that the orders Specialist Graner would cite in his defense were often general. "Most are not specific," he said. "Some are pretty clear. The exact wording, it's hard to say.".... ....On the one hand, the military's manual for courts-martial says orders requiring the performance of "a military duty or act" are lawful and are "disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate." On the other, it says this "does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime." A lawful order must "be a specific mandate to do or not do a specific act." Rather than a regulation or policy, such an order "must be directed specifically to the subordinate.".... ....Prosecutors have already presented evidence contending the defendants acted on their own. According to court records, several witnesses have testified in pretrial hearings that military intelligence officers might have authorized or ordered some harsh behavior, like depriving detainees of sleep or food, intimidating them with dogs or pouring water over them. But, the witnesses continued, the officers would never have called for the things the soldiers are charged with: hitting detainees, piling their naked bodies in human pyramids, photographing them, having them pose as if performing oral sex and forcing them to masturbate. "If I were ordered to do these acts, I would not carry them out," Warrant Officer Edward J. Rivas, who worked in the interrogation unit at Abu Ghraib, testified at the preliminary hearing for Specialist Ambuhl. She is charged with conspiracy and dereliction of duty but has not been implicated in the most serious abuse. Special Agent Tyler Pieron, a Army investigator who also testified at the hearing, concluded: "There was absolutely no evidence that the military intelligence or military police chain of command authorized any of this kind of maltreatment. These individuals wanted to do this for fun.".... Message 20133344