Thank you. We should all be sending letters/calls of support to the SecDef.

Quoted: Face it, the Iraqi prisioner scandal happened on HIS watch, HE is accountable. A handful of prisioners were humiliated and beaten. THE DEMOCRATS ARE RIGHT. And we must follow their example. On April 19, 1993 Attorney General Janet Reno "personally" directed actions in Waco Texas that led to the deaths by fire of 76 men, women and children who had not been convicted of any crime, all US citizens. AND THE DEMOCRATS DID THE RIGHT THING! Had Janet Reno not immediately resigned Bill Clinton would have fired her. Oh wait.... I forgot, not only DIDN'T she resign, Bill Clinton refused to fire her. In fact NOTHING HAPPENED. 76 Dead and NOTHING! She took full responsibility with ZERO repercussions. Children were burned alive because the government was embarrassed. And I'm suppossed to cheer on the Rumsfield Witch Hunt because PRISIONERS OF WAR were embarrassed and some got hit?!? Dear Democrats, FUCK OFF! Sincerely, SteyrAUG cc. Nancy Pelosi cc. John McCain

In other words, lower yourself to the level of the democrats.

Thank you.

Phew, I was worried for a second.

Quoted: In other words, lower yourself to the level of the democrats. Thank you.

They don't call it dope for nothing.

He pisses off liberals like crazy, I love this guy!

Fuck the Democrats.  In wars, in battles, you NEVER give the enemy what they want.  And politics is just another form of war, especially these days.

If you think this will win any good will from them, you've got another thing coming. They'll smell blood in the water and become even more strident in their outrageous and self-defeating rhetoric.

Don't EVER give Democrats what they want.  They don't care, they'll dick you over without giving anything quid pro quo.  George Bush learned that the hard way when he raised taxes in the 90's.  He thought the Democrats would honor their side of the deal.  Guess what?  They didn't.

W voted for Kennedy's education bill, and now Kennedy turns around and complains about how unfair the bill is to bad students in poor schools.

Nothing W ever does will ever win any love from Democrats, so fuck them.

I don't see how Rumsfield had anything to do with it...and I don't see how anyone could argue that he did.

Quoted: I don't see how Rumsfield had anything to do with it...and I don't see how anyone could argue that he did.

Democrats demand Rumsfeld resign As more Democrats led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco called for Rumsfeld's resignation, . . . other Democrats echoed Pelosi's call for the secretary's resignation, including Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and the Congressional Black Caucus.

I've got a  nice pic of a Civil Defense poster with Rummy on it, holding a spade that says:

"I'LL BEAT YOUR ASS with this shovel...if you fuck with my country."  Civil Defense: The Rummy Way.

I love it.

Quoted: I've got a  nice pic of a Civil Defense poster with Rummy on it, holding a spade that says: "I'LL BEAT YOUR ASS with this shovel...if you fuck with my country."  Civil Defense: The Rummy Way. I love it.

                                                                                                                                                                                      Can you post it?

Quoted: Quoted: I've got a  nice pic of a Civil Defense poster with Rummy on it, holding a spade that says: "I'LL BEAT YOUR ASS with this shovel...if you fuck with my country."  Civil Defense: The Rummy Way. I love it.                                                                                                                                                                                       Can you post it?

Let me get this straight.....

The Dems are calling for the dissmissal of the Sec of Defense because "war crimes" happened on his watch....

The Dems are running a candidate for Prez. who has admitted to commiting "war crimes" himself...

Conclusion....This country needs a f**king enima...

Quoted: Phew, I was worried for a second.

No shit!  I was getting angry by the letter and was about to tell Steyr to piss off.

SGtar15

Quoted: Dear Democrats, FUCK OFF! Sincerely, SteyrAUG cc. Nancy Pelosi cc. John McCain

I hope you actually sent that to them.

I already called my support for Rumsfield into all of my senators, representative and also the president. Did that when Rummy was testifying.

You had me worried......good thread.

Ooo oo oo!  I think he should resign so I can take over and have a kick ass job!

Bilster

Once again SteyrAUG posts some shit I would have if I wasn't so drunk and angry all the time.

Steyr Aug,
Did they even mention Waco down there on April 19 news?  Not up here, only Oklahoma City every year on the anniversary of BOTH events.

Here here!  I agree totally.  Now as far as I am concerned his culpability will only be in how he reacts to the incident in question and it appears we (he) will take care of the business in the appropriate manner.  Democrats and weak Republicans calling for his resignation are truly showing what total asses they really are, simply pandering towards their supposed or even real constituents.

Quoted: Quoted: I've got a  nice pic of a Civil Defense poster with Rummy on it, holding a spade that says: "I'LL BEAT YOUR ASS with this shovel...if you fuck with my country."  Civil Defense: The Rummy Way. I love it.                                                                                                                                                                                       Can you post it?

Here you go.

Quoted: In other words, lower yourself to the level of the democrats. Thank you.

Actually it just illustrates SOME are held to a different standard .......IF you want to play the game.  If not...carry on and do your job.  The media does not vote nor do they hire.

This thing about the captain is reponsible for the the whole ship is bullshit, communist, liberal brain washing, pure & simple. We're having a war and a presidential campaign, and people should remember what is said in a normal presidential campaign is most pure BS, but this fact is lost on the Dems because they are confusing reality and the presidental campaign.
=========================================================================================
www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/international/middleeast/09PRIS.html?hp

May 9, 2004
THE MILITARY

In Abuse, a Portrayal of Ill-Prepared, Overwhelmed G.I.'s
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, May 8 --- The orders that sent most of the 320th Military Police
Battalion to Iraq came on Feb. 5, 2003, as part of the tide of two-week-a-year
soldiers being called up from the National Guard and the Army Reserve in
preparation for war.

In theory, the battalion's specialty was guarding enemy prisoners of war, a task
that was expected to be a major logistical problem. In fact, an Army report said
few of the 1,000 reservists of the 320th had been trained to do that, and fewer
still knew how to run a prison. They were deployed so quickly from the mid-Atlantic region that there was no time to get new lessons.

"You're a person who works at McDonald's one day; the next day you're standing
in front of hundreds of prisoners, and half are saying they're sick and half are
saying they're hungry," remembered Sgt. First Class Paul Shaffer, 35, a
metalworker from Pennsylvania. "We were hit with so much so fast, I don't think
we were prepared."

The battalion --- including insurance agents, checkout clerks, sales people and
others --- ultimately would follow a grim trajectory into the episodes of prisoner
abuse that have shocked the nation. The soldiers found themselves in charge of
Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq at a time when the increasing rage of the anti-American
insurgency, along with the desperation of American commanders to glean
intelligence, magnified the pressures on the unit. This account of the troubled
battalion is based on interviews with soldiers, their relatives, military
commanders and Army reports.

Within days of the American invasion of Iraq, the 320th was in Kuwait, and the
unit moved swiftly into southern Iraq, first to a prisoner of war camp overseen
by British troops and then to a sprawling barbed-wire American camp in the
desert. Known as Camp Bucca, the American camp was home to a legion of Iraqi
prisoners.

"We were supposed to be the experts on this, but all we knew is what we learned
in our summer camp," said Scott McKenzie, 38, of Clearwater, Pa., a sergeant
first class who has since been discharged from the service. "We never learned
how to deal with a riot, what to do when we were being assaulted."

On May 12, Mr. McKenzie, who worked in civilian life as a guard in a boot-camp
style detention center, was escorting some Iraqi prisoners at Camp Bucca when
just such a riot broke out, in what became the first incident of prisoner abuse
involving the unit. At least one detainee was held down while Mr. McKenzie and
two other soldiers badly beat and kicked him, according to testimony presented
in a court-martial. This was done at the urging of a superior, Master Sgt. Lisa
Girman, according to the testimony.

"We called it just another night in the desert," Mr. McKenzie recalled last week.
He insisted that he had used no more than "the minimum force necessary to regain
control of the prisoners" and that the event was "no big deal."

Mr. McKenzie, Ms. Girman and another soldier were found guilty of mistreating
Iraqi detainees, and they accepted a less-than-honorable discharge in a plea
bargain. A fourth soldier in the unit also was granted a less-than-honorable
discharge separately. But the incident prompted no effort by the soldiers'
commanders to make sure the abuse was not repeated, according to an Army
investigation by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba into the maltreatment of prisoners.
The inaction was a lapse in leadership that reflected the eventual near total-breakdown
of discipline in the unit.

Many members of the 320th had expected their mission to wind down once Iraqi
prisoners were freed, after the declaration on May 1, 2003, that major combat
operations had ended. Instead, to their considerable disappointment, the
soldiers learned that they would be sent on to longer missions.

Some elements of the battalion were still coming in, including the 372nd
Military Police Company, based in Cresaptown, Md., which arrived in May 2003. At
first the 180-member company was assigned to work with marines in the southern
town of Hilla. With a specialty in law enforcement, the company was ordered to
help train a reconstituted Iraqi police force in Hilla.

Under Lt. Col. Jerry L. Phillabaum, most of the battalion was directed to a
different destination.

With the P.O.W. facilities at Camp Bucca, the Baghdad airport and other sites
still crowded, and the processing of prisoners taking time, the Army was looking
for more permanent detention quarters.

Just as the occupation authorities turned to Saddam Hussein's old palaces to
house the new Coalition Provisional Authority and other American headquarters
around the country, they chose as the new American prison Mr. Hussein's old one
at Abu Ghraib, even though it had a history of executions and torture that made
the prison one of the most feared symbols of the old government.

Mr. Hussein had emptied Abu Ghraib of its occupants in October 2002, in a
gesture aimed at winning popular support and possibly at stirring trouble for
any American occupation. As late as June 2003, its gates were still adorned with
his portrait.

Once the Army decided to reopen the 280-acre site, it did so swiftly, renovating
cells, painting the walls and sweeping up broken glass and other debris left
from months of looting. In July, much of the 320th Battalion was sent to Abu
Ghraib. The reservists were turned into wardens of what was to become the world's
largest prison run by the United States Army.

The New Wardens
A Rebellion Begins, and a Prison Reopens

At the outset of the American occupation, Abu Ghraib held only about 2,000 Iraqi
prisoners, most housed in tents erected under the scorching summer sun outside
the prison itself.

The inmate population grew quickly, as prisoners arrested after the war emerged
as a far bigger challenge than those taken in the war.

"We were real short-handed," said Sergeant Shaffer, the metal worker from
Pennsylvania, who described cases in which no more than six guards on a single
shift would be in charge of 700 Iraqi prisoners. "On my compound, we were doing
16-hour days. It was a very high-stress environment."

There were also clear clashes of culture, as soldiers who had little knowledge
of the Middle East found themselves frustrated by the poor conditions, the
prospect of a yearlong deployment and a lack of compliance among the Iraqi
prisoners.

"They don't want to listen," Sergeant Shaffer said. "We'd say we want you to
line up at 9 o'clock; they'd say, `If you want us to line up at 9 o'clock, we
want something in return.' It doesn't work that way."

Among the prison's new inmates, many were criminals, some of the same ones freed
by Mr. Hussein. When they joined in the looting, lawlessness and other crimes,
the Americans rearrested them.

But a more worrisome category of prisoners emerged from the widening insurgency
in Iraq, as played out in the shootings, bombings and other attacks against
American soldiers. More and more of those prisoners were filling the makeshift
jails.

In addition to Abu Ghraib, they included Camp Bucca in the south; Camp Cropper,
a high-value prisoner center near the Baghdad airport; and Camp Ashraf, a former
camp for the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen Khalq, which was being used to
detain its members. The facilities were overseen by the 800th Military Police
Brigade, with headquarters in Uniondale, N.Y., the 320th Battalion and the much
smaller 372nd Military Police Company from Maryland.

Various Army divisions and other military units also maintained detention
facilities around the country where they could hold prisoners for as long as 14
days before transferring them to other sites.

At Abu Ghraib, the prison was divided into three main subcamps. One, Camp Ganci,
consisted of eight blocks of tents, each sealed off with razor wire and
containing about 400 inmates in rows and rows of Army-issue canvas tents. Each
tent held 25 inmates or more.

Camp Vigilant, another tent camp, was divided into four units with about 100
inmates each and was set aside for prisoners believed to have the most
intelligence value.

Finally, there was the "hard site," the old prison itself, divided into seven
blocks. Eventually, six were run by the Coalition Provisional Authority, for the
detention of Iraqi prisoners to be tried in Iraqi courts. The seventh cellblock
under American control, was divided into two parts, 1-A, set aside for "high
risk" prisoners, and 1-B, on the second floor, for female prisoners.

Together, the two parts had 103 cells, running down each wall, with a long
corridor down the middle. Each cell --- about 6 by 10 feet --- had a bunk bed and a
hole in the floor for a toilet. The cells were designed to hold 206 people.

From the initial 2,000 prisoners, the population skyrocketed toward 7,000
prisoners by September as thousands more "security detainees" were rounded up by
soldiers on suspicion of involvement in attacks on American troops.

In Baghdad, a three-person team headed by Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, the top
American intelligence officer in Iraq, was in charge of reviewing the status of
the security detainees as a prelude to their release. But far more Iraqis were
being arrested than freed; the average stay in the prison was approaching four
to six months. The 320th Battalion was stretched thin; working in temperatures
that regularly exceeded 120 degrees only added to the strain.

Meanwhile, security conditions around the prison were worsening, with small-arms
fire, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar fire coming into the compound almost
every night. Colonel Phillabaum, the battalion commander, said that he and other
officers dubbed the neighborhood around the prison "Little Mogadishu," after the
Somali capital that in 1993 become a death trap for American soldiers. "The
people just hated us," he said.

A Troubled Unit
Overcrowding and Prison Riots

By late in the summer of 2003, concerns about overcrowding, disciplinary
problems and disturbances at American-run prisons in Iraq had reached the
highest level of the military's headquarters in Baghdad. At Abu Ghraib in June,
a riot broke out and eight detainees were shot, leaving one dead. Similar
incidents occurred elsewhere.

But even more concern was focused on the mounting insurgency, and how little
American intelligence had been gathered about it, even though thousands of
Iraqis had been taken into custody. Mr. Hussein's two sons, Uday and Qusay, were
dead, killed by American soldiers in July, but the former Iraqi leader was still
on the run. Major bombings in August of the United Nations headquarters and at
other sites added to the level of anxiety.

While military police were in charge of American prisons in Iraq, military
intelligence units were in charge of interrogations. But changes were in the
works.

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, a business consultant and longtime reservist who had
arrived in Iraq in late June to take over the 800th Military Police Brigade. "The
numbers were increasing at rapid rates," she recalled in one of several
television interviews this week.

"They were tagged as security detainees and they could not simply be released,"
she said. "They had to be interrogated, held, reviewed, and then ultimately
released. I know that the interrogation, the interrogators, were under
tremendous pressure."

In mid-August, a team of civilian interrogators led by Steven Stefanowicz, a
former Navy petty officer and an employee of a Virginia company called CACI,
began work at Abu Ghraib under a classified one-year military contract. The
contract was part of a broader effort by the military to enlist Arabic linguists
and other civilians in the work of questioning Iraqi detainees. CACI sent 27
interrogators to Abu Ghraib, Pentagon officials have said. Their job was to
conduct interrogations in conjunction with military police and military
intelligence units, according to a company memorandum.

Later that month, at the behest of senior Pentagon officials, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey
D. Miller, the two-star Army general overseeing the American detention center at
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was sent to Iraq. He was to review the American-led effort
"to rapidly exploit internees for actionable intelligence," according to the
Army report by General Taguba.

Among General Miller's classified recommendations, submitted after a tour that
ended Sept. 9, were that the guards at Abu Ghraib and other facilities "be
actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the
internees," according to General Taguba's report.

At the end of September, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top American officer
in Iraq, sent his inspector general to Abu Ghraib. According to Colonel
Phillabaum, the visiting officer told him, "You guys are the forgotten."

Isolated and without amenities like gyms and barbershops that were available to
other troops in Iraq, morale in the 320th plummeted. Many reservists who had
been sent home when their tours were complete had not been replaced, adding to
the burden of the remaining guards even as the number of prisoners continued to
rise.

Army doctrine calls for a military police brigade to handle about 4,000
prisoners. But a single battalion --- about a third the size of a brigade --- was
handling 6,000 to 7,000 prisoners at Abu Ghraib. When battalion commanders
sought to release hundreds of detainees deemed to be no threat to allied forces,
they were blocked from doing so by officers in Baghdad, they have complained.

At the end of October, Colonel Phillabaum briefed General Sanchez on the
deteriorating, dysfunctional conditions at Abu Ghraib. "It was a real heart-to-heart,"
Colonel Phillabaum said in an interview. "I told it the way it was."

Rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire were "a constant threat," General
Karpinski said.

"Abu Ghraib was in the middle of a hostile fire zone," she said, adding that the
unit was "mortared every night, practically." Within days of the briefing to
General Sanchez, General Karpinski sent Colonel Phillabaum to Kuwait for two
weeks "to give him some relief from the pressure" at the camp, General Taguba's
inquiry found.

Colonel Phillabaum contends that General Karpinski was angry because his
briefing reflected poorly on her command, so she began a process to reassign him
to her headquarters. Colonel Phillabaum, however, returned to his post.

According to General Taguba, Colonel Phillabaum and his chain of command were
part of the problem, rarely supervising their troops and failing to set basic
soldiering standards for them or make them aware of the protections afforded to
prisoners under the Geneva Conventions.

"Despite his proven deficiencies, as both a commander and leader," General
Taguba concluded, General Karpinski allowed Colonel Phillabaum "to remain in
command of her most troubled battalion guarding, by far, the largest number of
detainees in the 800th M.P. Brigade."

In October 2003, the 372nd Military Police Company joined Colonel Phillabaum's
battalion at Abu Ghraib.

In Hilla, they had seen little combat; in Abu Ghraib the soldiers suddenly found
themselves under attack virtually every night from insurgents outside the prison.

In Hilla, the 372nd had been focusing on law enforcement. Staff Sgt. Ivan L.
Frederick, one of the soldiers from western Maryland, for one, had spent six
months working in operations, "manning radio's, mission board etc.," according
to a journal entry he made on Jan. 24. In Abu Ghraib, however, unit members were
assigned as prison guards, with responsibilities that included the so-called
Tier 1 cellblock of the prison.

A few weeks later, on Nov. 19, 2003, General Sanchez made a surprising decision:
he transferred formal command of Abu Ghraib to the 205th Military Intelligence
Brigade under Colonel Thomas M. Pappas, a 32-year military veteran whose unit,
based in Wiesbaden, Germany, had been assigned to the prison as the chief
interrogators since it opened. Working with Colonel Pappas was Lt. Col. Steve
Jordan, who headed the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at the prison.

General Karpinski, Colonel Phillabaum and the military police in the battalion
contend that the military intelligence officers had, even before Nov. 19,
essentially taken control of the prisoners in the Tier 1 cellblock and had
encouraged their mistreatment. General Taguba concluded that the 372nd "was
directed to change facility procedures to `set the conditions' " for
interrogations.

"It was like they were in charge now; it's a military intelligence unit now,"
said a member of the 32Oth Battalion, Sgt. John Lamela, of Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

The intelligence officers' practice of wearing uniforms without insignia made it
difficult for soldiers to identify the officers or even to determine which of
them were military and which belonged to other agencies, including the C.I.A.,
whose officers periodically visited Abu Ghraib prison to participate in
interrogations.

"They were in charge; it was almost like whatever his battalion wanted, his
battalion got," Sergeant Lamela said of one senior intelligence officer at the
prison. "He moved people out of their units so his personnel could live in their
units. His personnel could walk around without proper uniforms; we as M.P.'s
were not to correct them; he would say, `Let it slide.' "

Sgt. First Class Joseph Mood of Benton, Pa., had a similar view of the
intelligence officers' influence. "They took over the whole base; it was their
show," he said. "That was their wording. `This is our show now.' They would try
to get us to keep prisoners up all night, make them stand outside, have them
stand up all the time --- sometimes they asked the guards to do something that was
totally against what you believed in doing."

An Open Secret
Reports of Abuse Trickle Out

During the summer and fall human rights groups in Iraq say they heard repeated
complaints of prisoners being roughed up or abused by their American jailers.
Those were not the only breakdowns of discipline in that period.

On three days, Nov. 5, 7 and 8, detainees escaped from the prison and Camp Ganci,
according to the results of military investigations that have been made public.
Then, in what appears to have been the worst of the incidents, a riot broke out
on Nov. 24 in Camp Ganci in which 12 detainees were shot, and 3 of them killed,
after members of the military police battalion opened fire. For reasons that
have not been explained, nonlethal and lethal rounds were mixed in their
chambers, according to the investigation.

Also at Abu Ghraib that month, an Iraqi detainee died as he was being questioned
by a C.I.A. officer and a linguist who was working as a contract employee with
the agency, in an investigation still under review by the agency's inspector
general. Through December and January, there were more shootings, riots and
escapes. The worst abuses at Abu Ghraib took place on or around Nov. 8,
according to the details of the military investigation made public so far, and
principally in Cellblock 1-A, the group of cells set aside for high risk
prisoners.

It was largely in that cellblock that some guards from the 372nd are accused of
committing abuses that General Taguba called "sadistic, blatant and wanton"
criminal acts. Prisoners were punched, slapped and kicked and forced to strip
naked and form human pyramids. Some were ordered to simulate sexual acts. In
some of the photographs of the abuse that have surfaced in recent days, the M.P.'s
are grinning.

Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr. is shown with his arms folded as he stands
behind a pile of naked Iraqi prisoners; an unidentified Iraqi prisoner is seen
hooded and standing on a small box, with wires attached to his body; and Pfc.
Lynndie England is seen glaring down at a naked Iraqi prisoner, whom she is
holding by a leash.

So far, seven enlisted soldiers from the western Maryland company face criminal
charges, all from the incidents in Tier 1. But several inquiries are still under
way, and the question of who was primarily responsible has still not been
answered.

The report by General Taguba, though limited to the conduct of the military
police, said that the general suspected much of the fault, either directly or
indirectly, should be attributed to military intelligence units under Colonel
Pappas and Colonel Jordan. Through a spokesman, Colonel Pappas declined to
comment, and Army officials would not even say which unit Colonel Jordan is
currently assigned to. General Tabuga also blamed Mr. Stefanowicz and another
contractor, John Israel, neither of whom could be reached for comment.

General Taguba's inquiry also criticized commanders, including Colonel
Phillabaum, for failing to supervise his troops and allowing a climate of abuse
to take hold.

Colonel Phillabaum said he felt he was being made a scapegoat for the Army. "I
have suffered shame and humiliation for doing the best job that anyone could
have done given the resources I had to work with," he said.

Colonel Phillabaum pinned the bulk of the blame on two of of the 372nd's
soldiers, Sergeant Frederick and Specialist Graner, who are both corrections
officers in civilian life. Neither of the two have spoken publicly about the
episode.

"These two people were really the ringleaders of this whole thing," Colonel
Phillabaum said. "Everybody else followed."

They were the natural leaders in the military police company, he said, since
they spoke of their work experiences.

"Taking these prisoners out of their cells and staging bizarre acts were the
thoughts of a couple of demented M.P.'s who in civilian life are prison
correction officers who well know such acts are prohibited," Colonel Phillabaum
said.

He said the abuses that were photographed only occurred between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.,
times that Sergeant Frederick and Specialist Graner knew no commissioned
officers would be checking in. He said the digital photos are all time-coded,
and they are all taken over a couple of weeks in this brief window.

"If they thought these acts were condoned, then why were they only done a few
nights between 0200 and 0400 instead of during any time between 0600 and 2400
when there were many others around---" Colonel Phillabaum asked.

Sergeant Frederick's uncle, William Lawson, said his nephew had told him the
soldiers were photographing the Iraqi prisoners at the direction of military
intelligence officers as an interrogation tool.

"Somebody photographed the Iraqis with the intent of using those photographs to
show new prisoners that came in, `This is what can happen to you,' to loosen
them up psychologically," Mr. Lawson said.

In a letter to his family last year, Sergeant Frederick wrote that military
intelligence officers encouraged mistreatment like confining naked inmates for
three consecutive days without toilets in damp, unventilated cells with floors 3
feet by 3 feet. Inmates were also handcuffed to cell doors and forced to wear
female underpants. "We have a very high rate with our style of getting them to
break," Sergeant Frederick wrote to a relative, Mimi Frederick, in an e-mail
message on Dec. 18, 2003, according to a copy of the communication. "They
usually end up breaking within hours."

General Karpinski has also said that she believed the military police were "coached"
in their abusive actions by military intelligence officers. Neal Puckett,
General Karpinski's lawyer, said the military police "took all their
instructions from military intelligence interrogators, who instructed them to
bring the prisoners to and away from these interrogation facilities, and
sometimes perhaps to soften them up."

He suggested that the interrogators had instructed the guards to "bring them
back naked this time, leave them naked tonight, don't give them any clothes. We
think that escalated over a period of time until it ended up in what we see in
the pictures."

A military official said Saturday that some of the photographs in the custody of
military investigators, but not yet publicly disclosed, depict military working
dogs snarling and intimidating Iraqi prisoners. "There are photos showing
military working dogs used in a threatening manner," said the official, who
spoke on condition of anonymity. The official said he was not aware of when or
at which prison in Iraq the photos were taken.

General Karpinski has complained that the initial investigation ordered by
General Sanchez was limited to the conduct of her military police brigade and
did not examine in any detail the role played by military intelligence and
private contractors.

Not until General Sanchez received a preliminary briefing on General Taguba's
findings on March 12, which identified the intelligence officers and contractors
as having possibly been primarily to blame, did he order a similar review of any
wrongdoing by military intelligence officers at the prison. For reasons that
remain unclear, that inquiry did not begin until April 23.

"I'd like to know who was the one that was giving instructions to the military
intelligence personnel to turn up the heat---" General Karpinski asked.

Nearly a year ago, when her troops assumed their prison duty at Abu Ghraib, the
Army made a promise. When it reopened Abu Ghraib last June, soldiers hung a sign
at the gate that proclaimed: "America is a friend of all the Iraqi people."

Thom Shanker in Washington, Kate Zernike and Michael Moss in New York, Dexter
Filkins and Ian Fisher in Baghdad and Patrick E. Tyler in Wiesbaden, Germany,
contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Quoted: and I don't see how anyone could argue that he did.

your fellow democrats are arguing that very thing right now

Good post  Steyr

Quoted: I don't see how Rumsfield had anything to do with it...and I don't see how anyone could argue that he did.

I have seen absolutely NO argument that he had anything to do with it.  THis "Rumsfield must resign" bullshit is just partisan politics.  They'll do anything and say anything to make the Bush, excuse me, "Bu$h" administration look like evil motherfuckers.  They just hate the Bush administration. Period.  THus, they will blame anything and everything on him, and say that they are responsible for everything including the bad weather.

[Metallica] Seeking no truth, winning is all!  Find it so grim, so true so real!![/Metallica]

Hoppy8420

Quoted: In other words, lower yourself to the level of the democrats. Thank you.

You mean lower ourselves to your level.  I know, you keep saying you are not a leftist, not a Democrat, nor a member of DU, but the contents of your posts indicate otherwise.

In other news, Bill Gates is stepping down from all positions of authority at Microsoft because one of the janitors was caught using microsoft photo editor to resize pictures for a kiddy porn collection.

I musta miss the outrage from the Spendocrats when the Blackwater employees were dis-membered, drug through the streets, burned and then hung on that bridge........


I'm pissed off about what those soldiers did......that's not what we, as a country stand for,  not to memntion that by their actions all they did was to ratchet up an already sky high threat level for our people over there....


But as usual, partisan whining and bitching....just once I would like to see one of them not follow the party line.....

I just sent emails in support of Rumsfeld to him and to the President. The fifth column has had people swarming the airwaves pretending to be neutral and concerned chanting that Rumsfeld has to go. I think dumping Rumsfeld would be harmful to the nation, both substantively and in terms of appearance. I think he should not only stay in office, he should personally drop a load of Napalm on al-Sadr's HQ. I didn't mention that last part in my notes.



Comments to DoD (Rumsfeld)

Comments to GWB

Quoted: Geeeez,enough already! This was bad and reprehensible, but condemn the other side too for the much more horrible things they do,to us!

And that was basically what Joe Leiberman said at the hearings, yet the democrates shun him.

Sgtar15

EdAvilaSr: I agree with you, this politics pure and simple, and has no place during a war. The news media and Dems are making a terrible mistake, thinking the mainstream American people are against them. The liberal news media is trying to relive the Vietnam War, but in the long run, those folks will be viewed as unpatriotic.

Quoted: You know that I am always saying we should be above  our enemies,both in our conduct in battle and afterwards. We are not only militarily superior, but morally as well. I am not condoning the behavior of the FEW MPs in question,but WTF? ................enough BS from thre democrats and the press! How long do they comdemn the animals in Iraq that ambush our people,burn them while still alive and drag them through the streets or hang them and later publish their photographs? No, it was not right to mistreat POWs,but STFU and let the military,DoD,etc take care of it! Geeeez,enough already! This was bad and reprehensible, but condemn the other side too for the much more horrible things they do,to us!

EXACTLY damnit.

Quoted: In other words, lower yourself to the level of the democrats.

For you, it would be a step up.

I don't see why they aren't calling for Bush to resign too. It fits in perfectly with their train of thought, and we all know it's what they want. It doesn't make sense, of course, but when has that ever stopped a Liberal?

Quoted: Dear Democrats, FUCK OFF!

You had me worried until this point!

I agree!

Good one, SteyrAUG.