U.S. missed need for prison personnel in war plans - USAToday

[TacticalPeek]

Posted 6/14/2004 10:38 PM


U.S. missed need for prison personnel in war plans

By Dave Moniz and Peter Eisler, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON ? The world's most powerful military, which had crushed Saddam Hussein's regular army in a matter of weeks, found itself in a unexpected predicament last year when U.S. forces began jailing thousands of suspected guerrilla fighters and criminals in Iraq's Abu Ghraib Prison.

The Army desperately needed information from prisoners about a growing insurgency that was killing more American troops than had died throughout the war itself. But commanders had far too few trained interrogators and guards to question and control the burgeoning population at Abu Ghraib.

In a scramble for personnel, commanders wound up staffing Abu Ghraib with reserve military police who had never taken the Army's four-week course for prison guards. And because the military intelligence unit sent to Abu Ghraib was short of interrogators, commanders patched together substitutes from other military units and from private contractors.

As investigators try to piece together what led to the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in the fall of 2003, the shortage of trained personnel appears to be one of the keys to what went wrong


more
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-06-14-military-police-shortage_x.htm

[nolabels]

1. Hey USA Today, Reality Check

http://www.luvsite.org/boom.html
Reality Check

Beyond our record per capita prison population, among major industrial nations, the US leads in growing human deprivation, including highest poverty rate and highest early mortality rate, according to the UNs' Human Development Report for 1998. This is outlined in the April, 1999 Dollars and Sense, One Summer Street, Somerville, MA 02143, concluding "Given its top ranking in Gross Domestic Product per person, the United States has the resources to do more than any of these countries to protect its residents from poverty. Yet it does the least. That is the national disgrace."

The U.S. has had more than a million people lose their health care each year for five years in a row. We are the only industrialized nation which does not have a health care system for its people, although we are the wealthiest.

Although Congress recently voted itself another pay raise, insisting that this is for the purpose of keeping up with inflation, those making minimum wages earn about a third less, in terms of constant dollars, than they did in 1968. This tells us, ostensibly, that those at the bottom of the system, who waste their money on extravagances like food, do not need as much money as those who invest their incomes in the market.

Approximately 50 million Americans--19 percent of the population--live below the national poverty line. Those in poverty include one in five children under age 18 and senior citizens, and three of every five single-parent households. In constant dollars, average weekly earnings for workers went from a high of $315 in 1973 down to $256 in 1996, a decline of 19 percent. Nearly one-fourth of the U.S. workforce now earns less than the 1968 minimum wage, which would now be worth $7.33 an hour if it kept up with inflation. From 1975 to 1998, the proportion of the national income received by the poorest fifth of Americans dropped from 4.4 to 3.6 percent. The proportion going to the wealthiest fifth increased from 43 to 49 percent-- indicating that much of the "boom" is actually a wealth transfer. Many working 40-hour weeks can no longer feed their children in this "economic boom." Among major industrialized nations we are first in percentage of children living in poverty. Holly Sklar has written "Poverty kills. Already, 27 children die from poverty every day in the United States. That according to the Children's Defense Fund."

We are the only major industrialized nation which has not ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Social justice leaders have stated that the U.S. cannot ratify it because our "welfare reform" violates key provisions of this human rights covenant. And so we condone a shameful homeless population in which we find people in need of psychiatric help living on our streets and starving. Although "welfare reform" for the poor is said by corporate media to be working well, Mimi Abramovitz has it that the women who've lost their benefits "Increasingly find themselves resorting to prostitution so their children can eat," during this "economic boom."
(snip)

[Eric J in MN]

3. Why Congressional salaries increase with inflation but not minimum wage?

nt

[mbperrin]

2. Honest mistake! ANYBODY would think attaching electrodes

to the genitals of people wearing hoods would be OK!

Gawd, whoda thunk it was wrong?

[nolabels]

5. U.S. Army's School of the Americas' Advanced Studies in Torture

They must of been all booked up at "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation
(Former School of the Americas) Fort Benning, Georgia"

http://www.csrp.org/rw/rw886.htm
December 15, 1996 * No. 886
U.S. Army's School of the Americas' Advanced Studies in Torture

"The mission of the School of Americas is to develop and conduct resident training for Latin American military personnel, encourage multinational military relationships and enhance the Latin American armed forces' knowledge of U.S. customs and traditions."

-- From the Web page of the U.S. Army's Fort Benning, site of the School of Americas

"The School of the Americas is where select military personnel from Central and South America receive finishing touches on military training. This training is used to control and exterminate the poor and indigenous people of the trainees' countries. The poor are declared the enemy because they need land, crops, employment, living wages, education, health care, housing and the possibility of a human life. This threatens the leaders of these countries who control the wealth and resources of the land by military force."

-- Bill Bichsel, a Jesuit priest who recently ended a four-month jail term for protesting at the SOA

In 1992, masked troops abducted nine students and a professor from La Cantuta University in Lima, Peru. The Fujimori regime denied that its Armed Forces were involved. But the case broke wide open when a high-ranking Peruvian general revealed that a death squad--operating under direct orders from top government and military leaders--was responsible for the disappearances. Later, the remains of the La Cantuta victims were found in secret graves. The shocking exposure forced the Peruvian rulers to put some military officers on trial, while shielding the top levels of the government and the military.

The U.S. government tried to distance itself from the La Cantuta massacre, criticizing the handling of the case by the Peruvian authorities. But this was shameless hypocrisy on the part of the U.S., the main backer of the repressive Fujimori regime and its vicious counterrevolutionary war against the people's war led by the Communist Party of Peru.

At least six military officers involved in the military death squad that committed the La Cantuta massacre were graduates of the U.S. Army's School of the Americas, based at Fort Benning, Georgia
(snip)

That all sounds real familiar :think:

[Eric J in MN]

4. I don't buy the premise of that article.

I don't buy the premise of that article.

It was after the visit from General Geoffrey Miller that the worst occurred.

It wasn't lack of training, it was his Gitmo-ization of the prison.

[KeepItReal]

6. Real Reason: DoD (Rummy) igored State Dept (Powell) advice

USA Today is full of it. They didn't even get to the real reason the Iraq occupation is screwed up... Gen. Jay Garner knows why.

Once again Rumsfeld's Dept of Defence *CIVILIANS* dissed the planning work done by State in order to do their childish "Mine, mine, mine!" in exercising over control Iraq.

"A yearlong State Department study predicted many of the problems that have plagued the American-led occupation of Iraq, according to internal State Department documents and interviews with administration and Congressional officials.

Beginning in April 2002, the State Department project assembled more than 200 Iraqi lawyers, engineers, business people and other experts into 17 working groups to study topics ranging from creating a new justice system to reorganizing the military to revamping the economy."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1019-07.htm

[saigon68]

7. "REAL" Trained troops would have left their CAMERAS at home

There would have been no "photo" evidence

IE: how much of this shit comes out of Gitmo??????????

Now how is Kobe's trial progressing </sarcasm>

[teryang]

8. What a fairy tale

Prison torture was a deliberately chosen policy at the highest level of government.

[nolabels]

11. Prison torture starts at home

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_4679.sh

What Price Freedom?

But most media coverage has focused on the size of the prison population rather than on patterns of growing cruelty sanctioned in U.S. penal institutions _ longer sentences, harsher prison conditions and more intentional infliction of suffering.

Rather than being an aberration, the spreading military scandal reflects a growing use of pain in America's prisons at home and abroad. Over the last decade or so, U.S. agencies and companies have been reversing time-honored corrections policies and exporting abusive prison practices and torture technology.

The military won't provide statistics about its burgeoning prison complex around the world, keeping what goes on there and even some of the locations secret. Distinctions between civilian and military systems seem to become more blurred every day.

Human-rights organizations started decrying American abuse of prisoners of war in late 2001, when photos exposed the harsh treatment of John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban," and disturbing allegations began to appear regarding the handling of unidentified captives at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
(snip)

[Solly Mack]

9. They are tripping over their lies

officials are relying on people not knowing the difference between the MOS' 31 B and 31 C...and what their duties are....


MP's are FULLY trained to handle detainees and POW's ("inmates")....anyone saying otherwise is lying or uninformed.

I'm sorry. I am so sick of hearing lower enlisted are not responsible for their own actions..because they are.

I'm sick of the disinformation that somehow these sick fucks weren't trained...they were.

Just because Lynddie England is a war criminal, doesn't mean George Bush isn't. They are both guilty based solely on their own actions.

Karpinski is guilty. Sanchez is guilty. Miller is guilty. Pappas is guilty. Fast is guilty. Rumsfeld is guilty. Up and down the chain of command-GUILTY.

[KittyWampus]

10. Pre-War Experts Advised Pentagon/Administration To Keep

midlevel army and police and security intact when invading Iraq. And prosecuting only the higher ups.

Junior's failure to do this... and disbanding all pre-existing forms of security is what lead to this mess.rsm

They were told before hand... so they can't claim this as a SNAFU.