Redstate

found that torture and abuse was widespread because of policies promulgated at the highest levels at the Pentagon and the CIA, even if the President wasn't directly implicated, would you consider that an impeachable offense?  

Just asking.  I don't know if this is the case or not, but after the memo apporved by Alberto Gonzalez, later withdrawn, that practically defined torture out of existence, it is a possibility.  And Donald Rumsfeld has already admitted that he hid detainees in Iraq from the ICRC at the request of George Tenet.  We know that CIA employees or contractors beat a detainee at Abu Ghraib to death and to date no one at CIA has been charged in that crime.

"We know that CIA employees or contractors beat a detainee at Abu Ghraib to death and to date no one at CIA has been charged in that crime."

Is the one that bothers me, because the government did charge and try the military members involved with the capture of this detainee, and the trial pretty much implicated the CIA in it.

I don't think the CIA should be harming detainees, but it makes me mad, that the government tried to make military members take the fall for something done by the CIA, and then nobody from the CIA is charged.

But overall, one thing that does get missed is that the majority of military members who abuse detainees, do in fact get charged, and punished-I don't think it is ever possible to have a war, or create a military that doesn't have at least a few military members go overboard or act against stated policy-I don't think you can hold the government or admin responsible, if the actions were done without the governments consent or knowledge, and if the government does in fact charge and punish the perpetrator.

I do like the idea of a bipartisan commission to at least determine and set policy in regards to detainees, how they are to be treated, and who is classified what and how.

What I don't believe in, which so many on the left seem to be arguing for is that the detainees caught on the field of battle or captured in the prosecution of the war on terror be given access to the US courts and tried there.  I do think these men should be afforded some type of detention hearing though to determine their status, but giving them attorney's and trying them in US courts is rediculous, unless they have actually committed a crime in the US.

is that time after time as abuse is uncovered it is passed off as the work of a few out-of-control enlisted personnel who are made scapegoats.  No officers are held responsible, and the overall policy is not questioned.  The investigations into the abuse at Abu Ghraib were designed to keep responsibilty at the lowest possible level.  It was never made clear exactly what the policy for interrogating prisoners was (other than what happened to the prisoners in those pictures was not acceptable) or who exactly was in charge.  The only officer punished was one Reserve Officer who was demoted one rank.  Apparently, she didn't even have operational control over that block.

I feel that too often the tone on this website has been dismissive of our complicity in these abuses.  I echo your concerns that this attitude is just simply bad politics.

Thank you for a well-written and intellectually honest discussion of these issues.

Sadly, I think that at the heart of the matter the question of whether or not we are justified in the treatment we are giving these prisoners is somewhat moot.

The fact that these abuses have occurred at all give our enemies one more reason to hate us and our allies one more reason to leave our side.  When we are fighting for principle, we have to be twice as sure that we actually stand for that principle.

...We need to address this issue better.  Why?  First, because our mistreatment of prisoners/detainees is wrong.  Second and less importantly, because it's bad politics.  We're suffering damage by thousands of small political cuts, seemingly daily...

We are suffering damage by thousands of small cuts seemingly daily because the press has chosen to spend thousands of column inches on this matter, blowing it all out of proportion. It is the left and the western press that are inflicting the thousand small cuts, not the soldiers at Guantanamo and Abu Grahib. It is the continuing stream of this kind of ongoing self-criticism that are wielding the knife.

Prisoner abuse is wrong and it must be investigated and punished. But it happened and will happen again because these are real people working under real stress, not armchair critics and college professors and newspaper pundits safe and secure in living rooms, or faculty lounges, or newsrooms pontificating about how terrible it is. These are real men and women, someone's father or son or husband, someone's mother or daughter or wife. Unfortunately for the critics, our legal system does not provide a means to prevent a crime, merely to punish it when it has occurred.

Unlike what the left prefers to believe,  because prisoner abuse occurred does not call into question the very legitimacy of the United States. This prisoner abuse, the Abu Grahib incident, Koran desecration business has reached the level of hysteria. And one would have to be living in a cave on Mars not to figure out the reason. It has become the left's stock-in-trade to hate America and any opportunity splash mud on it is eagerly sought.

The left has elevated relatively minor transgressions to the level of war crimes. The press and organizations like ACLU and Amnesia International toss around highly charged words such as 'torture', 'genocide', 'atrocity', 'war crimes' with complete alacrity; purely for the shock value and press attention to be garnered. The press runs banner headlines of 'Abu Grahib torture'; the head of AI calls Guantanamo the 'gulag of the day.' All of this is simple anti-American hysteria.

How about a little sanity? The Bataan Death March was torture; The Rape of Nanking and Babi Yar were atrocities; Auschwitz and Dachau were war crimes; the Holocaust was genocide. The entire Abu Grahib "atrocity" was, in fact, simply malicious misconduct by one group of soldiers on one shift on one day. It did not happen ever again in the days following, nor had it happened in the days before. Elevating Abu Grahib to "torture" risks reducing Bergen-Belsen to the level of an out-of-hand fraternity prank. It was reported by a soldier and investigated by the Army long before the press "discovered" the incident and "broke" the story, 'cribbing' their revelations from the military's own reports. But to read the press reports one would be forgiven for believing that this was systemic, ongoing "torture" not only condoned, but promoted by the highest levels of the government.

Even this article is seemingly based on the premise that there is significant, systemic wrongdoing inside the institutions of this government charged with protecting us. That these incidents are rampant, widespread, condoned practices viewed by the leadership with a 'wink' and a 'nudge.' But in our heart-of-hearts we all know the truth; they are not any of those things, they are the transgressions of ordinary people working in extraordinary circumstances.

What has gotten out of hand is not abuse; what has gotten out of hand is exaggerated rhetoric and phony concern. We have people on the left and in the press flagellating America for abuse of Islam's 'Holy Book'; the same people who praised as 'cutting edge' the "Piss Christ" and the "Dung covered Madonna" and defended them as 'art' and 'free speech.' The oh-so-self-important people who daily ridicule the 'hicks' in 'fly over' America for their religious beliefs, are now lining up to shed copious volumes of crocodile tears over a book that most of them had never heard of two years ago and couldn't actually care less about today.

It is hypocritical nonsense and I for one am sick and tired of it.

-------------

even if the President wasn't directly implicated, would you consider that an impeachable offense?

No, because the president wasn't directly implicated.

is that too many folks think that we have to treat criminals and people who are at war with us better than we do our own.

Sorry, but my well of sympathy for the "poor opressed internees" has run way dry.  You can pump all you wish to, but there's nothing left in there.

I, in fact, will take the opposite position.  We should have already had at least half of them up for tribunals, and taken them out and shot them.

Yes, we may have reaped a few innocents in the net.  But that's the purpose of the tribunals.  Seperate the wheat from the chaff, and burn the chaff.

The problem is that we are seemingly willing to hold them forever.  That's wrong.  If they are truly "illegal combatants", in the Geneva Convention sense, they should be tried and shot.  Sooner, rather than later.

Now would be a very good time.  And then there'd be no more "Guantanamo Prison" for the liberals to whine about.

That's be a good thing.

It is well understood that ordinary people placed in the role of 'prison guard' can become quite weird and sadistic. This was the subject of what became a rather famous experiment at Stanford in the 1970's.

Anyone studying penology learns about this, and about various measures that need to be taken to counteract this effect.

First, it is important to recognize that these are not (necessarily) evil people who do these things. They are quite ordinary people. There appears to be a systemic defect (if you will) in human beings that leads to this, and so people who run prisons must design systems around this weakness, so as to neutralize it to the extent possible.

In a military setting, it is possible to use one of the best systems: rotate the people regularly. Make this no one's "job." Make it a 90-day duty assignment, and then get them out of there and bring in a fresh batch.

Second, this kind of work requires more supervision than similar-sounding occupations. There have to be more supervisors, and they have to be on-scene and visible more often than in other kinds of work.

Someone at the general officer level who is in charge of facilities such as Abu Ghraib should reasonably be expected to know these things, and to have taken steps to prevent the kind of events which occurred. I do not know if General Kapinsky instituted such measures; if she did not, she deserves whatever came her way. The same is true of the commandant at Gitmo.

No one should imagine that this same stuff isn't happening every day in our domestic prisons and jails. It is a known hazard of running any sort of detention facility. It just isn't as much fun for the press to write about, because it doesn't embarrass the United States in front of its enemies.

No one should imagine that this same stuff isn't happening every day in our domestic prisons and jails.

I doubt there have been 365 prisoners tortured to death in the history of American jails, let alone in the last year.

The left has elevated relatively minor transgressions to the level of war crimes.

See "Will Old Rulings Play a Role In Terror Cases?":

The former Japanese prison guard was tried by the Allies after World War II for war crimes. In 1947, a U.S. military commission, citing the Geneva Conventions and customary international law, convicted him of compelling prisoners of war to practice saluting and other military exercises for as long as 30 minutes when they were tired. His sentence: 12 years of hard labor.

Why is forcing Americans to solute for a half hour when tired a war crime, but beating Iraqis to death is not?  Or, what "relatively minor transgressions" are you talking about?

Even this article is seemingly based on the premise that there is significant, systemic wrongdoing inside the institutions of this government charged with protecting us. That these incidents are rampant, widespread, condoned practices viewed by the leadership with a 'wink' and a 'nudge.' But in our heart-of-hearts we all know the truth; they are not any of those things, they are the transgressions of ordinary people working in extraordinary circumstances.

Lt. General Sanchez authored a memo authorizing interrogation techniques that go against the Army's own guidelines.  Does he not qualify as "the leadership"?

..is that you have obviously read nothing about this.

England was off duty when she had her pictures taken with the boys. They had no leadership or discipline there and it was BG Karpinski who abandoned them out there.

Karpinski's interview shows she has no concept of leadership... she didn't even understand why Gen Teguba was getting angry with her.

Read some of it

Podhoretz at NRO had a good bit in The Corner today, about doing the math.  And the facts are that abuses that do occur are done by a small percentage of our troops, and while these actions are news worthy, it seems like the News Media doesn't cover the soldiers who serve honorably, and with good character.  The facts are in reality that the vast majority of our soldiers are doing their jobs, and doing them well, and the media doesn't really cover their stories (and there are a lot, just go hang out at some of the military blogs, there is story after story after story of honorable men/women who are doing their job and doing it well-maybe it would be nice if their stories made the front page of the Times as often as the stories of abuses).

I was listening to an interview on Laura Ingrahm the other day who wrote this book http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1585424072/qid=1117934665/sr=
1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-0075683-0996804?v=glance&s=books.

One of the things he said was that when the big abuse scandal at Abu Graib went down, the command at the prison told the chaplains to pretty much stay in their offices, and to let the soldiers come to them.  They basically told them to stay in the background, out of sight.

When Karpinski was relieved of command, and the next unit took over, the command told the chaplains to have a presence, to be there, be there when shifts changed, when prisoners were moved.  The chaplains weren't present to preach or try to convert anyone, they were just supposed to be present.

The author said the presence of the chaplains sort of put a moral fulcrum in place a sort of moral reminder to the soldiers, that wasn't there before.  

My paraphrase of his comments probably aren't that good, but his argument was a very good one.  I haven't read the book, but the interview certainly piqued my interest in reading it.

I don't know if his opinion on the issue was right or not, but I did find his hypothesis pretty interesting.

if Donald Rumsfeld, Steven Cambone, or George Tenet ordered, or had knowledge and excused after the fact, torture of detainees and did not tell the President to shield him from liability?

If Bush's lieutenants fail to inform the president, then the fault lies with those who failed to inform.

I don't think we do.  The reality of the situation is why I propose a presidential commission, so that all of the charges and hyperbole and overwrought overreactions can be bundled into one place and dealt with.  When some liberal or other critic starts going off about torture, then conservatives can gently steer that soul to the Detainee Report, where he can find for himself that the charges are overblown and overexaggerated, and that concrete steps have been and are taken to fix the problem.

... would simply add credence to the one-sided blathering from the hate-America crowd.

Assume for a moment that we establish such a commission and they return the same results as all the internal military investigations; yes a few people did some things they should not have done and they need to be punished. Do you for a moment think that such a result would be "accepted" by the left? A result from a commission established by the man they hate even more than they hate America? They would simply dismiss it as a whitewash, just as they have the military findings.

So why should we go through the trouble and expense and allow the left to keep this nonsense in the press that much longer?

And the point is?

There hasn't been anyone "tortured" at Guantanamo, let alone "tortured to death." No one was "tortured" in the heinous Abu Grahib "atrocity", an certainly no one was "tortured to death."

More nonsense.

If one or more people from the CIA abused detainees and caused their deaths then they should be investigated and, if appropriate, charged and tried. If convicted they should be punished.

The argument from the left is that if there were no detainees then this wouldn't happen so we should release the ones we have and not take any more.

The left will only be happy when we give all the terrorists permanent resident visas, a million dollars and a new Chevy. Afterall why should they be denied their Constitutional right to try to kill Americans.

Some of the pictures from Abu Ghraib show the soldiers posing with a dead detainee.  There is universal agreement that the detainee died while under interrogation by CIA or CIA contractors.  Now,  when someone dies under interrogation I guess you can argue about whether or not he was "tortured to death" but dying during interrogation is pretty good prima facie evidence of torture and the treatment of the body after the death shows a shocking lack of humanity and concern.

to this photo or the post goes away.

365 are not that many if you consider the size of the prison population and the 100+ years the system operates.

There are disgusting things happening in most prison systems all over the world. America is no exception here. For a recent documentary produced for Channel 4, google for 'Torture: America's Brutal Prisons'.

I haven't checked it myself, but this 85MB file might be copy.

http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444

http://www.answers.com/topic/manadel-al-jamadi

the arguments of the left.

I would think the mainstream of the left who are concerned about human rights (and not even the Democratic Party and Democrats in Congress because they have barely raised a peep of protest) want:

--A full and independent bipartisan investigation of American policy regarding the apprehension, detention, interrogation, and status of detainees in the Global War on Terror.

--An end to extraordinary renditions.

--An end to the practice of detaining suspects incumminicado (ghost detainees) outside of any judicial or military process or any oversight.

--Something from the president beyond "we don't torture people" as to what this adminstration considers "torture".

--Immediate action on the Supreme Court decisions, handed down well over a year ago, that granted certain rights to the detainees at Guantanamo and U.S. citizens held in this country, that the Administration has been dragging their heels on.

The fault lies in a White House that has such a permissive or CYA atmosphere that would allow such serious crimes to occur without the president's knowledge.

would simply add credence to the one-sided blathering from the hate-America crowd.

But that didn't happen with the 9/11 Commission report.  The nutjobs who objected to the 9/11 Commission were summarily and effectively put on the political fringe.  The unreasonables are going to squawk no matter what, but the rest of the left quieted.  Are we getting damaged by a thousand political cuts because of 9/11 and the intelligence?  No, because it's off the table and only the loons like Cynthia McKinney still bring it up.

We simply do not know the depth or scope of the problem because the Administration has refused to allow an independent investigation and all the internal investigations have been seemingly designed deflect all responsibility to the lowest level possible.  

The record shows that at the highest levels in the White House, the CIA, and the Pentagon there was a consistent effort to loosen the rules on extraordinary renditions, the rules of interrogation, the application of the Geneva Convention, conditions of detention, justification for apprehension and detention, and the definition of torture.  To contend that these decisions had nothing to do with the documented abuses is willful blindness.

is you have no concept of the politics and scapegoating that was going on in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandel.  

BG Karpinski was a female Reserve General who was hung out to dry by the good 'ol boy regular Army to take the blame.  Read carefully her interview and look into the case closely with a little bit of skepticism for the official line.  Military Intelligence(MI) took over that cellblock and although those wwre nominally BG Karpinski's MP's working that cellblock she had basically been told to butt out by MI and that while those MPs were in that block they belonged to MI and she no longer had any control over them.  She complained about the situation but her complaints had fell on deaf ears.  

My wife is an Active Duty Reserve Officer and has worked for BG Karpinski (when she was an O-6).  She says Karpinski was an excellent officer and always looked out for her people.  She does not agree with your assessment that BG Karpinski would have "abandoned" anyone out there.

interviews with Karpinski to make me think her inability to lead was a huge contributer to what happened at Abu Graib.

Sorry your defense of her doesn't wash with me.  She sounded whiney, clueless and ineffectual, even when defending herself.

Perhaps Ms. Karpinski was a General largely as a result of political correctness? It is possible that Karpinski was an excellent officer at the level of Colonel (as your wife asserts) but was simply over her head as a General.

If you are in command you are responsible. If you are resposnble then you have command. They go hand in hand. Karpinski asserts that she was the prison commander but had no control over the section of the prison where this occured --- then she was not in command was she? If what she says is true she should have been a fixture in Sanchez office demanding to know how she could have responsibility for the prison yet there was a no-go section for the CO. The files should be full of memos from her noting this situation. In which case no one could rationally hold her responsible.

Further, if as your wife asserts, Karpinski was a fine officer with great involvment and concern for her troops, then this is even more reason why she should made written complaint to Sanchez that people under her command were being used in a manner over which she had no control (duty in the the "Karpinski no-go" section of the prison) and that she wanted that corrected. It is rational for her to ask her commander how she can be responsible for the well being and actions of her troops when she has no idea of, or control over, what they are doing.

If such memos existed the investigating officers would have found them even if the chain of command wanted them concealed.  

Officers who allow themselves to accept responsibility for things over which they have no control are a) fools; and b) not long for the world.

There are two parts to this puzzle: a) Karpinski was not as good an officer as she claims she was; b) the Abu Grahib incident was exactly that, an incident, an aberations, not as the left proclaims some sort of Bush/Rumsfeld driven systemic program of abuse.

... using the Amnesia International method for getting attention to my argument :-)

I doubt that the left wants resident visas and new Chevys for the terrorists but people like Tom Friedman at the NYT and Chris Dodd in Congress want Gitmo closed and the detainess released. Friedman allows that 'we may have to face these guys again on the battlefield' but thats a small price to pay for soothing the deleicate sensibilities of Muslims worldwide.

On the one had Friedman isn't out there on the battlefield so he's perfectly happy to have the tooops face them. On the otherhand, the terrorists will not care that Friedman argues for their release when they try to blow up another building in New York --- maybe Friedman thinks he'll be out of town that day.

The left still sees this as some sort of juvenile crime wave that we can deal with by being nice.

furthermore, I don't care if they are ever released. They want to kill you and me and my children. And I want my government to do what is necessary to prevent that.

They are not soldiers and are not entitled to the Geneva Convention or any of its protections. The military would be well within the laws of war to try them and then shoot them.

What is it about terrorism that causes normally rational people to see them as some sort of Robin Hood's out to improve the world. These are cold blooded killers, more than willing to engage well trained troops in combat, willing to plant a bomb to kill your wife and children and willing to saw someone's head off on video tape, all without batting an eye.

They are not bank robbers, or embezzlers, or con men; they are willing, eager killers.

The detainess are not, under any interpretation, entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention.

I think the administration made several serious mistakes beginning with applying the provisions of Geneva to these animals and second by not conducting tribunals and executions on an expedited basis.

If you are talking about Native Afghan Taliban fighters picked up off the battlefield in Afghanistan, they are entitled to protection under the Geneva Convention, although the may not be entitled to POW status, but they certainly should have a competent tribunal decide their fate.  Foreign fighters fighting for the Taliban, but not Al Qaeda members are in a similar but more precarious situation.  They are belatedely getting this, although it is still unclear if the current tribunals are adequate under the Conventions or the the U.S. law.  At worst they would be "illegal combatants", a term used in the Conventions, not "enemy combatants", a term created by the Bush Administration to designate detainees, who it claimed, by executive order, are completely outside the scope of the Geneva Conventions.

Anyone who was legally in Iraq and picked up by U.S. forces during the occupation (that is prior to June 28 of last year) is most definitely covered by the Geneva Conventions.  Because we and Iraq were both signatory nations to the Geneva Conventions and we were officially an occupying power in Iraq we were bound to treat everyone in the Country under the rules established by the Geneva Conventions for occupying powers.  This does not mean that all detainees are entitled to POW status, but it does mean that we can't arbitrarily detain people, can't arrest people for the purpose of hostage taking (which we did in the case of several high-ranking officials when we arrested their families when we couldn't find them), can't practice collective punishment, must treat detainees humanely and must provide due process

Al Qaeda or members of   not picked up in battlefield situations present all kinds of problems

Al Qaeda and members of other terrorist organizations are of course not covered by the Geneva Conventions.  They are however still covered by the Convention Against Torture, Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.  And the Supreme court has recognized that they are entitled to some kind of review of their cases.

is that if we had some "wheat" down at Guantanamo, don't you think that the Administration would have milked it for all it is worth?  Look at the pathetic losers they have picked for the first trials.  The best we can come up with is some poor schlub who we have accused of being present at meetings with OBL.  This guy isn't accused of planning anything, apparently he was just present at meetings and drove for OBL.  In other words, he is accused of being OBL's chauffer.

And the point is?

I think it's an exageration to say that "abuse" similar to what's been in the news is commonplace ("happening every day") in our prisons.  If you have evidence to the contrary, present it.

There hasn't been anyone "tortured" at Guantanamo, let alone "tortured to death." No one was "tortured" in the heinous Abu Grahib "atrocity", an certainly no one was "tortured to death."

I notice you left out Afghanistan.  Perhaps you read the recent report in which a man was beaten to death even after his interrogators had generally agreed he was innocent.  The doctor who examined him afterward said he'd been struck in the leg so many times it was "pulverized" as if a bus had run over it.

In any case, as others have already remarked, people were beaten to death at Abu Ghraib.

Do you think these things did not happen, or that they do not meet the internatially agreed-upon definition of "torture"?

have never worked for a large bureacracy or you are seriously deluded.  It's nice to say a Brigadier General, especially a Reserve Brigadier General should have stood up to a Major General and made his life a living hell until he let her have her MPs back, but things just don't work like that in the real world.  She was told that that was the way things were and that was how they were going to be.  The decisions were made up the chain of command and she had no choice.  Putting her complaints in writing would have been fruitless and truly extraordinary.  She shut up and followed orders.

Completely correct across the board. It is the people who never have spent a day in combat boots who can always tell you how it "really is."

Anyone who thinks the commander of a separate unit, especially a National Guard or Reserve unit, has to lay down and play dead to the Regular Army is seriously ill-informed. She had recourse through both Military Police and Reserve Command channels to the 4-star level.

actually the term used was "pulpified", a term I never heard before, but I found horrifyingly descriptive.

Read the interview.

She didn't know whose troops were hers.

She looked out for her people and that was the problem.  As a leader she needed to have looked out for the troops, not her staff.

..or a General, without knowing what and who you were in charge of and who and what operations you were responsible for?

If that's the state of typical American management today, I can see why we have most of the problems we have.

She was, to all appearances that matter in this quarter, the Village Idiot.  I wouldn't hire her to empty the trashcans, because she wouldn't know if the garbage that fell out of them was her responsibility or not.  And apparently, she wouldn't ask.

Sheesh!

to tell me I don't know how it is because I have "never spent a day in combat boots."  I have worked as a civilian for the Army at the Pentagon level for five years in policy development as well as working at both the base level and major command level so I know how the system works.  Believe me, you have to have a hell of a lot of political skills to get anything done if you are trying to get environmental programs implemented in the Army.  I have also worked for the EPA and major corporations so I know my way around other bureaucracies too.    

My wife has been in the military her entire freaking life.  Her father is career Marine Corps with 24 years, two tours in Vietnam and a battlefield commission (E-1 thru E-9 & O-1 thru O-3).  She was enlisted out of high school in the Army (she left the Active Army as E-4), married an officer, went through ROTC, went back in as a reserve officer, was activated for Bosnia, entered the Active Guard and Reserve Program, and after she got divorced married this humble civilian.  She has already done one tour in Kuwait and is going back for a year at the end of next montht. She is not some stupid bimbo who got where she is "largely as a result of political correctness" as was implied above (not by you but by JSteele). She knows the difference between a good officer and an incompetent one.

So please, you've got 15 years active duty (I went back and checked your Memorial Day post).  Don't try and intimidate me.  I do know what I am talking about and as a LTC you know I am right about the politics of this.  Aside from the NG/Reserve issue, the chain of command issue is enough for BG Karpinski to say "yes sir" and realize it was a battle she was doomed to lose.

She had recourse, and honestly, if she was in a situation where she was told to follow orders that placed her in command of unit(s) that she could not supervise, then she is even dumber than she argues, because her lack of complaint seems to indicate she was trying to protect her stars more than do the right thing.

I have no problems keeping these people locked up for the duration of this war.  If the alternative is letting them go home, so they can build more bombs and kill more people.

if she didn't have access to her own command, and that didn't raise any flags for her, then she is either incompetent, or she was protecting her stars.  

I have seen too many interviews she has given, and she comes across as totally clueless, and frankly a clueless general in charge of a prison is not what is needed.

Granted my husband who was in the US Navy says that everyone gets promoted to their first level of incompetence, maybe she did fine as a Colonel, but apparantly as a general she wasn't very competent.  I don't think the Army NG loses much by ditching her.

Lets see now. I was an Army brat, son of a 26 year retired officer. From my father I learned to principles of responsibility and authority and the duties and responsibilities of command.

I have worked at senior level management positions at two major airlines before starting my own business.

But what do I know.

She is not some stupid bimbo who got where she is "largely as a result of political correctness" as was implied above (not by you but by JSteele).

This is becoming unpleasant. At no time did I ever state, infer or imply that your wife was 'stupid bimbo who got where she is "largely as a result of political correctness".'

At no time did I use or imply the terms "stupid" or "bimbo". I questioned whether it is possible that General Karpinski had a star through political correctness.

I'd have gotten it right if NYT hadn't taken their article away (or if I were a subscriber).

This says that "there were 68 deaths in custody in 2003, a decline from 85 in 2002."  Also, "The leading cause of death in prison custody was death due to natural causes, accounting for 44 per cent of all prison deaths."

Do we have comparable data for Abu Ghraib?

 

"... using the Amnesia International method for getting attention to my argument :-)"

That was truly funny! LOL

I disagree with you on some points, but you got game!

First, how do we even know if the guys we have locked-up in our little tropical paradise are really even "Terrorist", "Islamofacist", "Taliban", or even dreaded "Yankee Fans".  (Just to name a few groups with members that might merit torture.)

Should we just assume that, because the government locked them up, that they are everything that the government says they are.  Maybe they are, but the founding fathers didn't have a lot of faith in the central government, so the set up a system that calls them to account for everyone that they lock up.  And, more importantly, the guy who is locked up, gets to tell his side of the story.

Remember, it's real easy to make up your mind when you only hear one side of the story - just ask my wife!

That's not to say that the Constitution protects them; that's why we built that resort on a isle that is neither part of the US nor in a country with whom we enjoy diplomatic relations - to keep the Constitution out of the discussion. (And to keep any discussion from developing.)

But just because the document doesn't apply, doesn't mean that the reasoning behind the document doesn't.

Second, the problem with torture isn't just that it's inhumane; that's just the icing on the cake.  The real problem with it is that it is useless.  

That's right, the information you get is usually a thin tissue of lies.  Anybody who had a big brother knows that.  Most big brothers can beat you until you'll say anything -pigs fly, you like broccoli, or even that the Yankees don't totally suck and are a better team than the Dodgers.  

But in your heart, the Yankees now suck even more!

If Bush's lieutenants fail to inform the president, then the fault lies with those who failed to inform.

I think that's true.  But do we let the CIC of the hook.  Like the Brig. Gen., the guy (or girl)in command has to sholder the blame for what happens on his (or her) watch.

Maybe Harry S. should have said:  "The buck stops with lieutenants [who] fail to inform the president"?

Naw, that's not a catchy, I like it the old way:

         "The buck stops here!"