Real perpetrators not held accountable for Abu Ghraib

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/191427,CST-EDT-NAT30.article

In his farewell address at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld said that the worst day of his nearly six years as secretary of defense was the disclosure to the world of the photographs of the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib. Those pictures might never have been known were it not for Joseph Darby, then a specialist with the Army's 372nd Military Police Company at Guantanamo Bay. Because his moral code told him ''it had to stop,'' Darby may never be able to return home to Maryland.

In a Dec. 10 interview with Darby on CBS' ''60 Minutes,'' he told how the photos had been given to him by one of the perpetrators of the abuse, his friend, Charles Graner, now in prison. Knowing, as he says, the difference between right and wrong, Darby, anonymously, turned the pictures over to the Army's Criminal Investigation Division. But they knew where he worked, and the investigation began on who gave him the pictures.

Darby told ''60 Minutes'' interviewer Anderson Cooper that he had no idea the photos would go around the world; ''but you can't stand by and let this happen.''

Several months later, ''60 Minutes II'' obtained the pictures from another source; a New Yorker magazine article revealed Darby's name, and Rumsfeld said, at the time, in testimony before Congress that among those ''who did their duty professionally'' when the story broke was ''First Specialist Joseph Darby, who alerted the appropriate authorities that abuses were occurring.''

While still at Guantanamo, Darby, in fear of retaliation, slept with a gun under his pillow. The Army decided to bring him back to the United States. Back home in Cumberland, Md., the whistleblower was a pariah. The commander of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post, Colin Engelbach, told ''60 Minutes'' Darby ''was a rat. He was a traitor. He let his unit down, he let his fellow soldiers down.''

[G_j]

1. k&r

[1monster]

2. Darby deserves a Congressional Medal of Honor.

It is rarely easy to stand up to and expose injustice, but it is incredibly difficult to do so when the perpetuators of the injustices are your own people.

Darby is a hero. But prophets and heros often go unsung in their own communities.

K&R

[young_at_heart]

3. Rumsfeld sealed Darby's fate when he testified

Was it a revenge type of thing that caused Rumsfeld to call out Darby's name at the hearing? He certainly didn't help Darby in any way.

[ninkasi]

4. Strange, isn't it?

From the article...

The commander of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post, Colin Engelbach, told ''60 Minutes'' Darby ''was a rat. He was a traitor. He let his unit down, he let his fellow soldiers down.''

Engelbach has strange ideas about honor, if he considers somebody trying to stop the torture and humiliation of prisoners a "traitor". I suppose he must think that the torturers were heroes. Strange times, indeed.