We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
With all the coverage and uproar about the images of American troops, there is probably not much attention spared for the pictures of British troops also accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners/captured. The difference is that the British ones were faked and the saga that started with their appearance in the Daily Mirror with headline ‘Vile’ has come to a climax with the sacking of the editor of the strongly ‘anti-war’ newspaper, Piers Morgan.
The Army has made a forceful rebuttal of the accusations and demonstrated why it was convinced that the Daily Mirror photographs were fakes. The arguments focused on four items – the weapons the soldiers were carrying while ‘abusing’ the Iraqi prisoner, the vehicle in which the alleged assault was supposed to happen, the soldiers’ appearance in the photos i.e. wrong hat, no watch and no tan and the t-shirt worn by the captured.
Our own source listed the ‘things wrong with the photos’ before the published Army rebuttal. It pretty much covers the same points plus a few incidental details I thought you might find interesting.
- The most importanty reasons – it’s too clean. Everything in Iraq was covered in dust and shit. Everything in these pictures is clean- the soldiers, the ‘prisoner’, the truck itself. The uniforms look freshly pressed, let alone washed (after being on patrol..?) Same for the ‘prisoners’. Squaddies have been patrolling the streets, climbed in the back of this truck, and there’s not a mark of dust or mud anywhere? Or was the truck specially cleaned so they would have clean enviroment to beat someone up in? Impossible.
- No one’s sweating. It’s 40+ degrees, the soldiers are beating a guy up, he’s being beaten up, and no one is sweating. Impossible.
- This guy is being beaten almost to death. There’s not a single mark on him. Impossible.
- The truck is a Bedford. We had very few DAF’s in Iraq and all were used by the stores department. Troops on patrol used Saxon APC’s or Landrovers. Try to drive a 8 ft wide truck down the back alleys of Basra catching looters. No way.
- Those photos are way too good. There are enough photo nuts at Samizdata they should know that. [ed. no need to abuse our contributors…] Squaddies in the back of a truck taking crystal clear pictures, with no bad shadaw or anything else? Compare to the US photos that are grainy and blurred in places.
- There’s not a single identifying mark on teh soldiers. No tattoos, no watches, no rings, nothing. And nothing to identify their Regiment or unit either. What’s the point of a ‘trophy photo’ if you can’t prove your in it? You might hide your face, but you would wear something you can point at to prove to your mates that it is you. They won’t believe you otherwise.
- There’s no movemnet. There’s no blurring, so unless they are using expensive, super high speedcameras (on patrol? In Basra?) there is no movement. And if the guy in the floor is being hit, or has been hit, I’m Dutch [ed. no he isn’t Dutch, we can vouch for that.]. I have been hit – you automatically curl up and away and try to protect your head, you just do no lie there stretched out.
- Since when do sqauddies take happy snaps in black and white?
- The rifles. No slings on them (no way do yoiu take your sling off in Basra- someone might grab your rifle) and where did they put them? They look like A1s, though hard to tell. The Mirror’s source claims they were A3s, which will come as news to the manufacturer, let alone to everyone else.
- The kit. They aren’t in proper patrol order, the pouches are not only undone they look mostly empty, and there is no sign of body armour, helmets, or the “platypus” water bags everyone carried. Nor is anyone wearing sweat rags, shamaghs, or anything else. Never saw a squaddy look like that on patrol.
- The hats. Guys did have soft hats like that, were not supposed to wear them on patrol, it was berets or helmets according to the threat. But even suppose they were wearing the hats – they are wearing the hats whilst beating a guy up?! Put on a soft hat, then start moving furniture around your house. See how long you leave the hat on. But very convenient, if you need to wear non-unit specific but obvious “desert” clothes for a nice picture for the Mirror…
- The T-shirt. There were guys wearing T-shirts like that, but not many – it would have been a bit sensitive. It could have been worn by a looter – but mostly bloody convenient, only if you want to show a picture of an ‘Iraqi being beaten up’.
Red Herrings:
- The way the boots are laced. It is wrong, but maybe that guy just laced his different, no one cared that much as we had bigger fish to fry.
- Iraqi looks pale. Many do under their clothes.
- Hessian hoods. Those hoods were used to blindfold prisoners on capture, and to prevent them escaping – though not normally for looters but for higher importance/risk deliberate captures.
The really big point here is what the hell happened to Innocent until Proven Guilty? The Mirror is arguing it is up to us to prove the pictures are false.
Quite. Fortunately, the Army did conclusively prove the pictures were faked, the Mirror admitted they were a hoax, fired the editor and apologised (not unreservedly though). However, the damage done to the morale and reputation of the soldiers and the regiment subjected to such horrendous accusations cannot be easily undone…
I just found out about the latest Al-Qaeda beheading. I haven’t seen the video. Probably I never will.
I thought of Daniel Pearl. I wondered how and when the murdered man’s family learned of the manner of their son’s death. I wondered if he himself knew what was about to happen, as Fabrizio Quattrocchi did.
And such is the unalterably tactical nature of the human mind that mixed in with all that I thought:
Thanks for the reminder, Hellspawn. No thanks for the killing; we’ve had enough of that, but thanks for the reminder. In all this agonized talk about what we are, we were beginning to forget what you are. What you stand for.
What your pictures show.
Andrew Sullivan thought the same way, evidently:
And they [Al-Qaeda] are as stupid as they are evil. Iraqis now have contrasting images. Do they want to be run by people who cut innocent people’s throats at will or by people who have removed a dictator and are investigating unethical abuse of prison inmates? Zarqawi has now done something for our morale as well as his. He has reminded us of the real enemy; and he has reminded the Iraqis. One simple question: will CNN now show these video stills?
Belatedly, but no less relevantly, I was directed to the following Letter to Editor published in the Daily Telegraph last Saturday. It is from a British Army officer who was (still is?) in Basra. Its content was heartily approved by the Samizdata’s own Our Man in Basra – his quotable comment was I could have written every word myself…
Sir, I am a serving Army officer. Publication of photographs that are faked – as appears to be the growing consensus – does not assist our soldiers on the ground but, while such abuse is intolerable to us, brutalised Iraqi opinion differs from ours. Most Iraqis are baffled as to why we do not employ such methods.
Suggestions I have encountered while working with Iraqi governance institutions in Basrah include: crushing looters’ hands, wiring pylon saboteurs to the national grid and hanging rioters by the neck and beating them to death.
In Iraqi eyes, it is not through torture that we have failed Iraq. One year on from liberation, improvements have not materialised. We still seek military solutions to problems caused by policy. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) inherited and perpetuated a Soviet-style centralised bureaucracy without the clear central direction or the threats to back it up that made the Ba’athist system work.
Poor salary decisions mean that operating budgets cannot be paid, so, while there are new police cars, they have no fuel and Iraqi jails lack money for food.
On March 13, after nine months of operations, the Rapid Regional Response Programme, the CPA’s principal project fund for improving Iraqi life had, in the South, identified almost $42 million (£23.5 million) of projects but, owing to excessively bureaucratic contracting, completed only a shameful $627,671 worth. Emergency Infrastructure Project funding achieved more, but millions of dollars worth of projects will not be completed when the June deadline expires.
Yet many Iraqis will endure all this for freedom and democracy. In terms of freedom, Iraqis are still arrested, held indefinitely without trial and, apparently, tortured. In terms of democracy, the CPA, fearing calls for national elections in which Islamic parties may succeed, has banned direct, democratic elections in favour of caucus-style selections derided as undemocratic by most Iraqis.
Meanwhile, those such as Moqtada al-Sadr, the rogue cleric regarded by most Iraqis as a foolish upstart whose lack of support would be revealed by polling, terrorise the country with armed militias. Next month, the CPA will hand over sovereignty and responsibility to an Iraqi nation singularly unequipped to cope.
Iraqis I have spoken to confirm that ousting Saddam was the right thing to do, but if overturning unpleasant regimes is to become a regular feature of foreign policy, we should ensure we have something better to replace them with.
In short, cherchez le politicien.
Here is the answer to my question in the final paragraph of my earlier post about the treatement of Iraqi detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison:
On 31 January 2004, the Commander, CFLCC, appointed MG Antonio M. Taguba, Deputy Commanding General Support, CFLCC, to conduct this investigation. MG Taguba was directed to conduct an informal investigation under AR 15-6 into the 800th MP Brigade’s detention and internment operations. Specifically, MG Taguba was tasked to:
a. (U)Inquire into all the facts and circumstances surrounding recent allegations of detainee abuse, specifically allegations of maltreatment at the Abu Ghraib Prison (Baghdad Central Confinement Facility (BCCF));
b. (U) Inquire into detainee escapes and accountability lapses as reported by CJTF-7, specifically allegations concerning these events at the Abu Ghraib Prison;
c. (U) Investigate the training, standards, employment, command policies, internal procedures, and command climate in the 800th MP Brigade, as appropriate;
d. (U) Make specific findings of fact concerning all aspects of the investigation, and make any recommendations for corrective action, as appropriate. (ANNEX 4)
These were the findings:
(U) The US Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID), led by COL Jerry Mocello, and a team of highly trained professional agents have done a superb job of investigating several complex and extremely disturbing incidents of detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib Prison. They conducted over 50 interviews of witnesses, potential criminal suspects, and detainees. They also uncovered numerous photos and videos portraying in graphic detail detainee abuse by Military Police personnel on numerous occasions from October to December 2003. Several potential suspects rendered full and complete confessions regarding their personal involvement and the involvement of fellow Soldiers in this abuse. Several potential suspects invoked their rights under Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the 5th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. (ANNEX 25)
→ Continue reading: A very long report
Every time I have a chance to read the news these days, which is not often as business gets in the way, I come across more pictures of American troops abusing, humiliating and otherwise subjecting Iraqi prisoners to appalling acts. As I have even less time to read what the blogosphere has to say about that, these are mainly thoughts based on the news and conversations with those who have been closer to action that I ever will be.
What the Abu Ghraib prison guards did is despicable, inhumane and immoral. No explanations and no amount of blame-shifting can change that. They should not even try – their posing in the photos shows how they enjoyed what they did. They disgraced the US army uniform and diminished the sacrifices of all those soldiers who were fighting, patroling and reconstructing Iraq, in the eyes of the world and the very people they were trying to help.
Abu Ghraib was a notorious prison in times of Saddam’s terror, where people were routinely tortured and disappeared. It probably still bears witness to the horrors that took place there. Perhaps some of the current inmates of the prisons were former guards or people who put others in it.
The prisoners were either ex-Bathists or Saddam’s soldiers i.e. PoWs and/or convicted or suspected criminals. In the first case, intelligence military or other was essential for protection of both the ordinary Iraqis and the troops. In the second case, generally, Iraqi prisoners were taken to the tribal leader or a local judge who would let them off. There was (is) no deterrent for those who wished to commit crimes in post-Saddam Iraq. The power vacuum was real for everyone. Iraqis did not know how to understand the new authority, they pretty much expected the new ‘masters’ to hang or shoot a few people to establish order and were surprised and frustrated when this did not happen.
A common ‘excuse’ by the perpetrators of the vile behaviour captured in the pictures is that they were obeying orders or that interrogators ‘turned the blind eye’ and let them make the rules for ‘softening up the prisoners to be interrogated’ as they went along. I find this very hard to believe, first of all, the ‘I was only obeying orders’ has not worked since WWII. Secondly, any interrogator worth his salt would certainly not want a bunch of sadistic prison guards demented with drugs to do with the Abu Ghraib prisoners the things we saw in the pictures. Humiliation can be counter-productive and even if it were to be used, it would need to be done by the interrogator himself to reap the ‘benefits’ of such treatment in the immediate questioning. ‘Shock of capture’ is far more effective as confusion, disorientation and uncertainly generate the kind of fear that is more likely to make people talk than subjecting them to all kinds of humiliation. That is more likely to bread resistance and negate the effects of the capture. This obviously varies according to circumstaces but the overall objective is always to control the experiences of the captured.
As for what made those reservists commit such atrocities, there is no mystery there. Anyone who has been bullied at school or any other institution knows just how easy it is for one or two sadistic sociopaths to pull an entire group in and then ‘socialise’ them and the rest of the environment to their abusive behaviour. This surely is far easier to do within a very strict hierarchy such as the military where the main instigator is in the position of power. This in no way exonerates those ‘pulled in’ from their individual responsibility just explains how something so unacceptable can become the social norm in an enclosed environment such as a prison. The real scandal here where was the hierarchy above the power-crazed prison guards?
I am watching the BBC current affairs Newsnight. What a truly rich feast of stuff to look at. The main item was about the U.S. government’s response to the stories of atrocities by U.S. forces. Now I won’t go into the specifics but one point bugged me. It was the way in which the BBC presenter endlessly went on about the ‘Arab Street’.
Now, I no doubt imagine that the sort of persons who go on about the ‘Arab Street’ are sincere in imagining that all those who live in what is the Middle East are part of some common community, or ‘street’. But what is all too rarely pointed out is that this term in fact bands together tens of millions of very different individuals under one banner. It is a form of unthinking collectivism. The truth, of course, is that there is no such thing as an ‘Arab Street’, any more than there is a ‘Western Street’, ‘Asian Street’, or ‘North American Street’.
I hate to point out the blindingly obvious to collectivists on the Guardianista left and the isolationist right, but there are no ‘streets’ of this sort. The world is a tad more complex than that.
A few weeks ago, I opined that the current troubles in Iraq could well be a decisive turning point. In favor of the good guys.
As to Fallujah, well, I am beginning to think we blew an opportunity, although Wretchard continues to keep a candle lit. We have managed to give the universal impression that we retreated from a hard fight in Fallujah. I doubt that is entirely true, but in this war, even the appearance of a retreat is a real defeat for us.
As to al Sadr, though, he is toast, because the other Shiite leaders have turned on him, as predicted.
Representatives of Iraq’s most influential Shiite leaders met here on Tuesday and demanded that Moktada al-Sadr, a rebel Shiite cleric, withdraw militia units from the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, stop turning the mosques there into weapons arsenals and return power to Iraqi police and civil defense units that operate under American control.
As Perry de Havilland mentioned earlier, British and American armed forces may have committed a grotesque crime if reports about maltreatment of Iraqis are to be believed. Having not seen all of the reports myself, I tend to defer to writers such as former British soldier Andy McNab, who made his feelings abundantly clear in the Sunday Telegraph over the weekend. And he speaks with the moral force of one who has undergone torture during the 1990-91 war.
This issue cannot be finessed, or ‘put into a context’, to use one of the more common euphemisms of the age. What happened, if fully proven, is a total disgrace. To say that it puts back the necessary cause of winning hearts and minds is a massive understatement. It is also no good some folk arguing that this behaviour still does not put us on a moral par with Saddam. Of course it does not, although some anti-war folk, including frequent commenters on this blog, would claim that it does. Saddam’s disgusting rule (shamefully supported by the West in the 1980s, I might add) was not comparable to what has happened. But surely as armed forces of liberal, supposedly advanced civilisations, we should hold those in uniform to higher standards than those of the recent deposed Ba’athist regime? Much higher standards, in fact.
I have disagreed in a cordial fashion with noted libertarian blogger Jim Henley on the case for toppling Saddam by force, but never have I been in more agreement with him than on this issue.
David Renwick is scornful of the 52 diplomats who signed a letter denouncing Tony Blair’s Iraq policies, and is equally scornful of those who described this letter as a revolt by The Establishment:
The fact that the letter was not signed by a couple of hundred other former ambassadors, including this one, was thought scarcely worthy of mention.
So who were these signatories?
Many of the signatories were former Arabists in the Foreign Office, affectionately known as the Camel Corps. Some members of the Corps have shown a tendency over the years to develop a quite passionate attachment to the Arab world that, unfortunately, has not always been reciprocated by the Arabs. They have tended to concentrate on the crimes of the Israelis, rather than those of the Palestinians. Most of us would prefer to be more even-handed.
Stephen Pollard is even more scornful. He links to a piece by Andrew Roberts in the Times which says that whenever the Foreign Offices protests like this it tends to be wrong:
TONY BLAIR should be delighted that no fewer than 52 former diplomats have written to him to say that his Middle Eastern policy is “doomed to failure”. Whenever a collective view has developed in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office it has been only a matter of time – and usually not long, either – before it has been proved spectacularly wrong.
So the 52 are either wrong because they aren’t the majority view at the Foreign Office, or because they are. But either way, they are definitely wrong.
Pollard also links to Melanie Phillips, who is even more scornful. To her the Camel Corps is also “The Establishment”.
The main personal consequence for the 52 diplomats of having put their heads above the parapet like this has been to draw attention to all the financial interests they have which predispose them towards saying what they have said.
Personally, I am not surprised that people have financial interests in alignment with their opinions. Most of us prefer to make money doing things we believe in. And if these guys believe in making friends with Arabs … For me, the question is, not: Who paid them to say this? It is: Are they right?
It is very disappointing that some officers in the British and US military seem to have lost control over their troops in the manner that the reports in the media are highlighting. No, I am not about to join the ludicrous cat’s chorus equating the Allied forces with Saddam’s institutional mass murderers, but no one who actually cares about the mess in Iraq eventually ending the right way up can be anything less than dismayed.
Certainly I understand how the stresses of urban combat can lead to itchy trigger fingers but for the custodians of prisoners to have allowed this to happen is completely impossible to justify. That the perpetrators felt the need to take pictures of their criminal actions suggests that we are dealing with your common-or-garden variety of psychopath rather than people ‘merely’ brutalised into callous indifference or shooting first/asking questions later due to being in a combat zone.
The only way this can be salvaged is for the clear difference between the torturers of Iraq’s ancien regime and the US/UK’s militaries to me made starkly clear: the people responsible must be subjected to swift and decisive military justice.
And while we are on the subject of ‘what the military should be doing’, can anyone please explain why the Italians who were kidnapped in Iraq the other day had been disarmed by US troops at a checkpoint? Whilst the fighting against the Islamo-fascists seems to be progressing, in other ways the last few days have hardly been days to bask in the glow of a job being well done by some of ‘our boys’, which is a great pity indeed.
I cannot help thinking that whilst the leadership in-theatre did well during the conventional conflict, perhaps a far reaching change in local military commanders might not go amiss as it is not enough to just manage the battles in a situation like this.
In recent weeks the governments of the West (including Britain and the United States) have been getting very friendly towards Muammar Muhammed al-Qaddafi, the dictator of Libya.
Whilst I must stress that there is no plan to sell weapons to the dictator (and I do not believe that the United States, at least, will ever do this), in every other way Western governments are now seen as being supportive of the dictator of Libya.
Since he came to power in 1969 the dictator has followed a policy of socialism and his interpretation of Islam at home (with all the terror one would expect) and aggression and the support of terrorism abroad (in Africa, Asia and Europe). In his speech at the EU centre only a day or so ago, the dictator reserved his right to finance terrorism in future and expressed moral support for the terrorism being practiced in the Middle East today.
Can we now expect an apology for the claims that the war in Iraq was motivated by a desire to spread support for ‘human rights’ and freedom in general? I doubt that there will be such an apology – after all there has still been no apology for the claims about ‘weapons of mass destruction’.
The above being said, we are at war in Iraq now and (whatever lies were told to get us into war) the war must be won. It is just that the recent events concerning the dictator of Libya have left my tolerance for all the hypocrisy and general nonsense at a low ebb.
The Al Qaeda attacks in Syria may be good news… whilst I am far from calling for significantly making common cause with the ghastly (& Ba’athist) regime in Damascus, there is much to be said for dealing with the bad guys one at a time and also for getting sundry vile ideologies to shoot it out with each other on their own time and dime.
And to that effect, if the Syrian state sees stamping on Al Qaeda and other Islamists as a ‘survival issue’, then that can only be a good thing. It needs to be remembered that whilst Syria is a primary threat to Israel, it is far from looming that large on the list of Things To Be Dealt With for the US, Britain or the Western World generally. Their time will come but that need not be right now.
So let us encourage as many people of whatever cloth as possible to stomp on the Islamists, and once that problem recedes to manageable proportions, well, no need to shed too many tears if Ba’athism’s last outpost comes in for a bit of serious stick from the US, Israel or whoever, as it is not like we need mistake them for being in any way admirable just because we might have once shared a common enemy.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
