[lit-ideas] spins (this annoys me)
- From: JulieReneB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 1 May 2004 00:39:17 EDT
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=11&u=/ap/us_iraq_prisone
r_abuse
"Accused Soldiers Didn't Know Geneva Rules "
Okay, this annoys me, but what doesn't anymore. The title of the article and
the leading paragraph imply that the soldiers were unfairly rough to the
Iraqi prisoners because they did not know the cautions and protections of the
Geneva Convention. If you read other reports, the soldiers (I am not defending
their actions though they apparently are taught to Obey Orders) were instructed
by military-higher-ups to treat prisoners in various ways and when they
protested (one of whom was a correctional officer in a prison in the US before
military experience and he protested that this was inappropriate treatment)
they
were chastised and told to obey commands. The officers then asked what the
rules said, expecting the rules to support their position that this was
inappropriate treatment. I hate headlines.
<<HAGERSTOWN, Md. " " A soldier facing a court-martial for his role in the
alleged abuse of Iraqi war prisoners says commanders ignored his requests to
set out rules for treating POWs and scolded him for questioning the inmates'
harsh treatment.
Army Reserves Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick wrote that an Abu Ghraib
prison near Baghdad lacked the humane standards of the Virginia state prison
where
he worked in civilian life, according to a journal he started after military
investigators first questioned him in January.
The Iraqi prisoners were sometimes confined naked for three consecutive days
without toilets in damp, unventilated cells with floors 3 feet by 3 feet,
Frederick wrote in materials obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
"When I brought this up with the acting BN (battalion) commander, he stated,
'I don't care if he has to sleep standing up.' That's when he told my company
commander that he was the BN commander and for me to do as he says," Frederick
wrote.
The writings were supplied by Frederick's uncle, William Lawson, who said
Frederick wanted to document what was happening to him. Lawson and Martha
Frederick, the sergeant's wife, said Frederick was being made a scapegoat for
commanders who gave him no guidance on managing hundreds of POWs with just a
handful
of ill-trained, poorly equipped troops.
In civilian life, Frederick has been a correctional officer for six years at
the Buckingham Correctional Center in Dillwyn, Va., his wife and a state
agency spokesman said.
He wrote that he questioned the inmates' treatment and asked for standard
operating procedures when his unit relieved the 72nd Military Police Company at
the prison last fall. His requests were ignored until Jan. 19, five days after
his first visit from investigators, when he found the Geneva Convention rules
for handling prisoners of war on the Internet, Frederick wrote. >>
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