Dirty Rat
So the news this morning included the verdict for Lieutenant Colonel Stephen L. Jordan, commander of the Abu Ghraib prison. Rumsfeld’s claim that the soldiers who photographed themselves grinning beside abused prisoners were just a few bad apples became a mantra for those who found the truth embarrassing; to the rest of the world, those photos were the final, damning proof that the U.S. tortured prisoners, and did so in ways that clearly had nothing to do with interrogation.
In keeping with Rumsfeld’s transparent claim, only the soldiers themselves were charged with, let alone convicted of, abusing prisoners. Military law holds officers responsible for the behavior of soldiers under them; an officer is presumed either to be aware of his soldiers’ behavior or derelict in his duty to be so, and is responsible for enforcing proper military behavior in the soldiers under him. Axiomatically, some officer was responsible for the abuse of prisoners. Perhaps many officers are legally responsible, if many were aware of and condoned the abuse, but it is legally impossible that no officer be.
Accordingly, an officer was found. Officers directly in charge of the interrogation were mysteriously nowhere to be found; this was convenient for those who would be embarrassed by the detail they could be compelled to provide in a trial. Jordan supervised the interrogation task force; in the absence of an officer more intimately tied to the interrogations, he was to be held responsible.
The charges were strictly pro forma. Before the trial even began, the court martial dismissed charges of making false official statements concerning the abuse. The court acquitted Jordan of mistreatment of prisoners. The court absurdly found him innocent even of dereliction of duty in preventing such abuses; officers are legally presumed responsible for the actions of their command. Jordan was found guilty on only one count, that of disobeying a direct order not to discuss the investigation of the case—which he did by claiming to the press of being made a scapegoat, and by email campaign seeking support in the investigation.
Perhaps he was a scapegoat; as noted, the officers directly in charge of individual interrogations have proven implausibly scarce. I doubt he was, but I can’t prove it. Certainly, he was guilty of discussing the case. But I find the military court’s notion of punishable offense sickening. Torture detainees? No problemo. Ignore criminal behavior in your underlings? Fine. Lie on record to investigators, prosecutors, the court itself? We’ll let it slide. The only sin, as far as the military court is concerned, is in letting things go public. If nobody talks, everything stays quiet, and the military needn’t look bad. Only making the military look bad can never be forgiven. Squeal to the press, and you are dead to la famiglia.
Edgar Allen Poe wrote a tale of horror in which asylum inmates had overthrown their keepers and now practiced horrible tortures on the doctors. The horror lay in the ironic difficulty a visitor found of distinguishing their methods from those of 18th century psychiatry. Here we have a military justice system run by and for the political interests of its senior officers, using methods immortalized by organized crime. Claims of security are no longer sufficient; the corruption of our supposed security institutions—military and civilian—is a greater threat than the enemies they fight. The whole system must be cracked open, the corruption exposed, the guilty jailed. And it must be done over and over and over again until we can’t find any more. Only then can we hope some inkling of the fear of god—or, better, the American public—has reached our leaders, who supposedly work for us.