"Why The Pentagon Doesn't Want Me To Testify About Abu Ghraib"

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/asoldierspeaks/61241

Why the Pentagon Doesn’t Want Me to Testify About Abu Ghraib

By Sam Provance, AlterNet. Posted August 31, 2007.

No U.S. Army officer or defense official is likely to be held accountable for the torture, "ghost" prisoners, and other abuses at Abu Ghraib.

As an Army intelligence analyst, my job at Abu Ghraib was systems administrator ("the computer guy"). But I had the bad luck to be on the night shift. And so I saw the detainees dragged in for interrogation, heard the screams, and saw many of them dragged out. When I heard that the officer in charge of the interrogation/torture operation at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was being court-martialed, my first thought was: "Finally an officer is being held accountable."

But since my own attempts to stop the torture and identify those responsible were repeatedly rebuffed, you will perhaps excuse my skepticism that justice will be done. Watching Act I of the faux-trial of Lt. Col. Steven Jordan last week at Fort Meade, Md., confirmed my worst suspicions. I know Jordan; I was in place for his entire tenure at Abu Ghraib, including when prisoners were being tortured. He was an immediate boss.

Enter from the wings reserve Maj. Gen. George Fay. MG Fay was handpicked to run interference for then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by conducting the same kind of "full and thorough investigation" that former President Richard Nixon ordered for Watergate.

With Fay, too, I speak from personal experience. Shortly after photos of the torture at Abu Ghraib were published, I found myself being interviewed by Fay on May 1, 2004. It was a surreal performance, with Fay seeming to take his cue at times from Peter Seller's Inspector Clouseau.

Except it wasn't funny then, and it is not funny now. To me, Fay showed himself singularly uninterested in what really was going on at Abu Ghraib. I had to ask him repeatedly to listen to my account. Whereupon he said he would recommend action against me for not reporting what I knew sooner for, if I had done that, I could have prevented the scandal. Right.

In my view, it was clear that Fay's job was to quiet any discordant notes from noncommissioned officers like me and help Rumsfeld push the responsibility down to "bad apples" at the bottom of the chain of command.

- snip -

According to press reports, other witnesses will be called to testify at the Jordan court-martial. Strange. Although I was at Abu Ghraib for the entire time Lt. Col. Jordan was there, for some reason the prosecution does not seem interested in using my testimony at his trial.

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[Solly Mack]

1. as long as it's a "few bad apples" then the US government can continue to pretend

it doesn't have a torture policy

and everyone enabling the lie of a "few bad apples" is guilty of the cover-up....and probably not just the cover up.

[izzie]

2. Right on. It should have gone right up the line Gen. Warner, to Bush

A group of low ranks did not think this up and every one who has a brain and thinks knows it. We are sure to have a nice blow back world wide on this for years to come. I think once we put people to death and in jail in Germany and Japan for doing like things. The men that control the service are to blame and I read they did know what was going on and if not should have if they were doing their job.

[Spurt]

3. K&R

[Usrename]

4. There will never be any justice for any of this without impeachment.

Those in Congress who will not impeachment these monsters are war criminals.