Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

According to Milblogger Citizen Smash, one of the stories I linked to below is false: there is no general order preventing soldiers in Iraq from using e-mail, but rather a localized rule to stop GI's helping themselves to private bandwidth. According to Smash it's an example of how rumors get started:

It would appear that KBR contractors at Ginmar’s camp had set up their own wireless Internet system, and some industrious GIs have since set up their own unofficial Internet café, piggy-backing off the KBR system. But now the KBR folks are upset that the soldiers are slowing down their access (poor babies), so they’ve decided to end the “free ride.”

Not, he says, a general rule blocking access. Rather, the general rule was and remains that e-mail access is spotty, and mostly a matter of private enterprise.

Even the UK's Telegraph is running away from this one.

Rumsfeld is running this operation like a pizza parlour: Mr Rumsfeld has expressed his profound regret, although it is not entirely clear whether that is chiefly for the treatment of the Iraqis or the political damage that the scandal has caused the US government. He has, however, refused to resign, and – according to the recent polls – 70 per cent of the American public agrees with his decision.

I found it rather confusing, however, when Mr Rumsfeld also indicated that he would “resign in a minute” if he felt he could not be an effective leader. On that basis, he should be gone already: he has already proved an ineffective leader, and will be much less effective in the wake of this miserable scandal. For what has leaked out of Abu Ghraib, along with the stomach-churning whiff of chaos and sadism, is the fundamental incompetence in the running of the US military from the top down.

As for George W. Bush, the Telegraph produces the best narrative of events from a bureaucratic perspective I've seen yet. Read this article and ask yourself how it could be that no one told the President?

At some stages the answer plausibly is, 'Because no one showed the pictures to Rumsfeld' (perhaps on the theory that if you keep the pictures locked in a safe in Iraq, they're less likely to leak?) and thus he had no chance to see just how bad it was.

But the plausibility of that answer vanishes once the Pentagon learned that 60 Minutes had the pictures. And still no one told Bush. Rumsfeld et al are trying to say it was just a mistake. No way. Too many people made that mistake. No, it's either a massive CYA attempt gone wrong (and you'd think they'd been around too long the think the press would sit on this story for long? or are they that used to a tame press?) or, most likely, no one thought to tell GWB because, well, why would you?

(I'd sure like to know when they told Cheney — why hasn't anyone asked that question?)

Read Pentagon Okayed Tough Questioning Methods in the Washington Post. Then, at least for the sake of the argument, assume that none of the practices are, legally, “torture” and that none violate international or US law but instead represent the measured outer limit of what can be done to fight terrorism. (Without actually reading them, I'm not prepared to say whether this is a fair assessment, but I would very much like it to be.)

Two things still jump out.

1. The Post doesn't know if these rules applied at Abu Ghraib. We do know that the brass took extraordinary action to keep out a highly trained military lawyer. Were there other rules in effect (and, followed or broken? is there a paper trail?) or no rules?

2. These chilling words: “Separate CIA guidelines exist for agency-run detention centers.” Do they have written rules? Who monitors to see if they re followed? How many camps are there in the American secret prison archipelago? How many prisoners? How long do they stay in? Do they get out?

See BOP News for the relevant parts of the Rummy transcript. Seems the discussion cut off just before it got to the meat.

How to vastly increase the odds you have atrocities:

AP, Pentagon Rejected Lawyer As Prison Adviser

By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Pentagon officials rejected an Army plan last year to send an experienced military lawyer — who is also a Republican member of Congress — to help oversee the unit blamed for prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib complex outside Baghdad.

That left the prison complex, which holds up to 7,000 Iraqis, without an onsite lawyer to guide interrogations and treatment of prisoners.

The top lawyer for the 800th Military Police Brigade, the Army unit in charge of detainees at Abu Ghraib, later came under fire in an Army report about the abuse for being ineffective and “unwilling to accept responsibility for any of his actions.”

The rejected lawyer, Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., and other experts say having had a lawyer at the prison might have prevented or at least mitigated the beatings, sexual humiliation and other abuse detailed in photographs and the Army probe.

“It's always good to have a lawyer around so you've got a conscience for the command and an opportunity to vet questions,” said retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, who commanded an armored brigade during the 1991 Gulf War (news – web sites).

Pentagon officials confirmed there was no onsite lawyer at Abu Ghraib, but spokesmen for Army Secretary Les Brownlee and Pentagon personnel officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment Friday. Bryan Whitman, a spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, referred questions to the Army.

Buyer, a strong supporter of the Iraq war and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves, had volunteered to go to Iraq shortly after the invasion in March 2003.

In a telephone interview Friday with The Associated Press, Buyer said military officials all the way up to the Joint Chiefs of Staff had approved his assignment to the 800th Military Police Brigade, which has handled Iraqi prisoners of war since the beginning of the conflict.

Pentagon personnel officials and Brownlee rejected the assignment, saying the Army could fill the requirement another way. Brownlee also wrote to Buyer that his high-profile status could bring danger to the troops around him.

Buyer said he objected to David Chu, the Pentagon's personnel chief, and Charles Abell, Chu's deputy.

“I expressed the importance of having a (lawyer) at the camp,” Buyer said. “You have to ask, when you had a qualified officer, and the civilian leaders, Dr. Chu and the secretary of the Army, said no, who did you send in his place?” …

Buyer served as a lawyer at a prisoner of war camp run by the 800th Brigade during the first Gulf War. His duties, Buyer said, included helping the International Committee of the Red Cross monitor conditions and ensuring guards followed international law such as the Geneva Conventions. He said he also questioned some Iraqis suspected of war crimes.

“The 800th MP Brigade performed exemplary service in the Gulf War,” Buyer said. “There was no hint of any mistreatment or maltreatment of prisoners. It never happened. They had excellent leadership.”

How to keep the lid on:

Electrolite: If we only had a press. Email from a friend with contacts among American troops in Iraq prompts me to wish some journalist would investigate reports that the military has ordered KBR, which provides net connectivity for US camps and bases in Iraq, to cut off all soldiers’ “inessential” access to email and the net for the next 90 days.

I understand that KBR also handles paper mail services to and from serving soldiers in Iraq, and that pickup and delivery are often little better than once a month.

I’d also like someone to investigate what our soldiers actually know about Abu Ghaib, both the events themselves and their political impact in the rest of the world.

If it’s true that the average soldier’s email is being curtailed, and if (as I suspect) many of them have only a patchy knowledge of the scandal and its impact, it would seem that many of our soldiers are about to lose a major lifeline to home without being told why.

Extend it for three months after that, and you are past the election. Which means that MaxSpeak's prophecy…

“The troops will be the peace movement.” As the Iraqi mission disintegrates, the troops will be the first to know, then their families, then everybody.

…just might have hit a speedbump.