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2004-06-15 Home Front: WoT

England's Defense wants Cheney and 99 other witnesses

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Posted by Super Hose 2004-06-15 02:09|| || Front Page|| [11137 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 What this means is that the ignorant slut's lawyer is sure the prosecution has a slam-dunk case against the little bitch, so they're going to turn the case into a media circus.

Remember: England wasn't supposed to be in the cell block! She was disobeying orders by being there, and clearly took part in the abuse voluntarily.

Posted by Robert Crawford 2004-06-15 9:33:57 AM|| [http://www.kloognome.com] 2004-06-15 9:33:57 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 ...TWO chances on that: Fat and Slim.
Am I correct in noticing that not one of these little angels has retained a military (or former military) lawyer? I remember being told by the old heads that the smartest thing you could do when facing a CM was to hire somebody who had been a lawyer in the service, but NEVER hire a civilian who thought he could game the system...because when all was said and done, you'd be making big ones into little ones at Leavenworth and he'd be sitting in his office endorsing your check and trying to figure out what went wrong.
Private England is going to do hard time somewhere - the smartest thing she could do right now is get her head out of her ass and go state's evidence at once. Every day she fights it (and the other idiot too) is going to be one more brick in the wall when they sentence her.

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2004-06-15 10:13:30 AM|| 2004-06-15 10:13:30 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 That's about right. Military courts are a stacked deck in favor of the prosecution. You are considered guilty until proven innocent, and the court has lots of bureaucratic bullshit at it's command. Gaming the system (or the attempt to) will only annoy the court's officers. Bad idea.

Posted by mojo 2004-06-15 10:28:15 AM|| 2004-06-15 10:28:15 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 In that statement...England implicates herself and five other members of the 372nd in varying types of abuse at Abu Ghraib. She maintains they committed no crimes because they were following orders from superior officers and that what occurred there was widely known and, in some cases, "funny."

England acknowledged in her statement that the MPs were not given specific orders on how to "break'' detainees for interrogation by military intelligence officers or other government agents. But she said those officers praised the MPs and told them to "keep it up'' with their treatment of detainees.

Does anyone else on this site wonder whether she WAS following orders? To our military commentators out there--what the heck do you think happened? Was this an administration strategy taken to an extreme, were these individuals acting on their own impulses, or was it something else?

Posted by jules 187 2004-06-15 11:27:21 AM|| 2004-06-15 11:27:21 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 Chainney Refuses England Aid In Her Time Of Trial

I love good headlines.

Posted by Shipman 2004-06-15 11:35:18 AM|| 2004-06-15 11:35:18 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 Was this an administration strategy taken to an extreme, were these individuals acting on their own impulses, or was it something else?

Go read the Taguba report. Taguba took the evidence to a psychiatrist, and the psych's opinion was that it was exactly what you'd expect from an unsupervised group running on their own.

Toss in bits like England being where she wasn't supposed to be, her relationship with Graner, Graner's history of violence, the poor leadership in their unit, and the rather small scope of what the photos show (one shift, one wing, mostly one night), and it's pretty clear this was one group of idiots.

Politics and anti-Americanism have led people to spin it into a grand tapestry, despite most of their material either being rank fiction or purposeful twisting of the evidence.

Posted by Robert Crawford 2004-06-15 12:00:20 PM|| [http://www.kloognome.com] 2004-06-15 12:00:20 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 Jules -
I cant speak for our other vets here, but my feeling from the word go was that there was ZERO command oversight going on at the Hotel Abu Ghraib. For the most part, the troops there held together pretty well - but as with any situation where the leadership has essentially abandoned their responsibility, you will have the dregs sink to the bottom...and that is exactly what happened.
Robert's comments are also right on the money. Between Frederick and Graner, you had two borderline sociopaths basically running the operation in that part of the prison. Graner brought in his main squeeze, Private England, and the rest is, sadly, history.
Now - as far as the 'orders' crap: Give me enough time and motivation (and the liklihood of Leavenworth for a few years is ineed very serious motivation) and I will come up with proof that I got orders to wear a BDU ballet outfit to work every night to disorient the prisoners. What I think happened here is that between the behavior of Frederick's Heroes, the use of civilian contract personnel and CIA/DIA people, and the staff's utter abdication of responsibility, they will do everything possible to claim that they were in a bad situation where they didn't know WHICH orders they were supposed to follow, and they picked the wrong ones.

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2004-06-15 1:14:34 PM|| 2004-06-15 1:14:34 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 Mike, I agree. It looks like, and I have no evidence, that the unit may have been tasked to provide X number of bodies to be prison guards. Leaders said, "Ah hah, I can get rid of my Sgt Dirtbags", and sent them.

Posted by Steve 2004-06-15 1:30:46 PM|| 2004-06-15 1:30:46 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 Steve-
I'd completely forgotten about that possibility. Now I'm really curious aboout their previous records...

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2004-06-15 2:17:05 PM|| 2004-06-15 2:17:05 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 Mike and Steve, these guys were from that unit, not castoffs. In fact, though the cite has eluded me, I believe the unit specialized in EPW. I suspect we're going to discover that they were trained, they knew about the Geneva Convention, and they basicly did whatever the hell they wanted.

Courtmartial BG Janis Karpinski.

Posted by Chuck Simmins 2004-06-15 4:33:36 PM|| [http://blog.simmins.org] 2004-06-15 4:33:36 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 Karpinski is, of course, claiming she is being railroaded. IMHO it's a definite command failure.

Posted by Spot 2004-06-15 5:24:43 PM|| 2004-06-15 5:24:43 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 Hopefully there is or has been a 'forensic' IG inspection of the unit: documents, training records, background checks, etc.

Defense lawyers are just doing what defense lawyers do. That is trying to find a schtick, a line, something that a jury will buy. Trying to make it a political morality play is just one of those attempts. Maybe they'll ask for enlisted on the jury as well...

Posted by Pappy 2004-06-15 7:47:04 PM|| 2004-06-15 7:47:04 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 One thing that has puzzled me is that there are a lot of links in the chain of command between Graner and Karpinski; when are they going to get the treatment as well?

Posted by Mr. Davis 2004-06-15 8:11:03 PM|| 2004-06-15 8:11:03 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 I suspect that will come in time. if it hasn't already happened. Not all of it will be done through a court martial.

That may offend people's sensibilities, no doubt. But the critical part is what happened both at the top and bottom of the chain. The latter for their actions. The former because whatever happens under your command is your responsibility.
No ifs ands or buts. If BG Karpinski doesn't realize that, she doesn't deserve her commisison, never mind her stars.

Posted by Pappy 2004-06-15 11:53:53 PM|| 2004-06-15 11:53:53 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 Gen. Karpinski was relieved of her command.

In wartime that is a career-ending event. She has to know she will not advance further. Her best option is resign her commission.

Posted by badanov 2004-06-16 12:27:11 AM|| [http://www.rkka.org] 2004-06-16 12:27:11 AM|| Front Page Top

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