Douglas Barbour wrote:
> I wouldn't disagree with you on this, Ken.
>
> Except for this 'or (this would be a stretch) Donald Rumsfeld.' It
> seems to me, from what I've read, that he is definitely a link in the
> chain of commands that led to Abu Ghraib & a whole chainlink fence of
> other prisons stretched around the globe.
>
> I think it very interesting, indeed, that the military judge didn't
> accept her plea, apparently on the basis of feeling she didn't feel
> guilty, but it that also leads (as unlikely as that seems) to some
> thought about the orders she was under & why, it would begin to lift
> the stone on some rather nasty bugs...
I cannot imagine the behavior in "the ranks" happening without some at
least implicit "go for it." Did Rummy or Cheney initiate it and pass
the word? Who knows? I'm reminded of Henry IV thinking out loud about
someone who could rid him of his living fear, the imprisoned Richard
II. "Well, I didn't ORDER it, someone just interpreted what I said to
myself." Here too--I can't imagine Rumsfeld or Cheney being stupid
enough to commit an order to paper.
It appears that Brigadier General Janis Karpinski has in fact been
reduced in rank to Colonel. If nothing else, this woman, who ran the
prisons, was asleep at the wheel: maybe worse. But Pvt. England is
being retried. I had not realized that Pvt. Charles Graner, who is
serving 10 years followed by a dishonorable dischart for maltreatment of
prisoners, etc., fathered Lynndie England's baby son. And Pvt. England
herself is surely facing if not 10 years than the ruin of any career she
might have entertained. Dishonorables tend to be the end of you even
when you're back in civilian life.
I wonder what Susan Sontag would make of the image in yesterday's NY
Times of England holding her and Graner's baby boy and gazing at him
with totally attention. For me it was a humanizing and profoundly
moving image--that this victim/volunteer in the military system is not
just a sneering digitized creep in Abu Ghraib, but is a human being
capable of love. What a sad waste of one among so many lives that have
been wasted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/06/national/06abuse.html
Ken
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538
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