Lies, deception, and cover-up! This would be the response by those responsible for the inhumane treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The photos were innocently discovered on a CD belonging to Sergeant Garner. The man who discovered the photos of torture was an MP named Joseph Darby. Darby was astounded and disgusted by what he saw in the photographs. He knew these were prisoners being not only mistreated but tortured and he turned over the CD to the CID and from there, despite efforts to destroy and allow amnesty for any other photos that soldiers had taken, the press got their hands on these unbelievable images. In the spring of 2004, the news broke with the New Yorker and 60 Minutes II publicly releasing the photos and videos that had been confiscated from Abu Ghraib. Investigation after investigation after investigation was performed and the great number of investigations led to the inability to clearly establish legally, who was at fault for the horrible scenes at Abu Ghraib. Darby was to remain anonymous but that quickly changed when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld thanked Darby publicly for coming forward and informing the proper authorities of the torture that was taking place at Abu Ghraib. This was the first exposure of the man who had turned in the disk containing photos of the abuse at Abu Ghraib.
The official line of the Bush administration was that these tactics were disgusting and were contrived by a few MPs who had gotten out of control and had created themselves the sadistic environment present at Abu Ghraib. Bush and Rumsfeld condemned the torture of the Iraqi detainees but never acknowledged their roles and their authority in promoting the enhanced interrogation techniques. According to Rumsfeld, authorization for these behaviors was never given to anyone at Abu Ghraib. The MPs themselves would take the fall for what went on within the prison walls. They had taken authority on their own and developed these techniques and irresponsibly tortured the detainees. This would be the official stance of the Bush administration. But with just a little research, we can see that the tactics implemented by the MPs within Abu Ghraib were well executed and well known torture and interrogation techniques. Stress positions combined with the threat of electrocution along with sensory deprivation are well known interrogation techniques that were developed in Brazil by skilled military personnel. So it was severe misinformation to say and expect the world to believe that these MPs who had never been trained to guard prisoners or interrogate prisoners discovered these techniques by accident. This is what the Animal House on the night shift theory would require. Rumsfeld never answered the question of the chain of command and who was the authority at Abu Ghraib. And he couldn't because the chain of command would have come directly to him and then to the White House. The photos were damning and defined Americans all around the world. Instead of viewing America as a world power desiring democracy and peace, America had confirmed the accusation of the terrorist, that we were soldiers of terror. There was no goodwill for America within any element of Islam. America had been disgraced by these soldiers but also by the authorities that had commanded these tactics to take place because the intelligence was needed to continue to fight the War on Terror.
It is quite disturbing to see what human beings are capable of when they believe they are commanded to do something by someone who is placed in a legitimate seat of authority. This is exactly what happened at Abu Ghraib. In October 2006, President Bush would sign into law the Military Commissions Act which would serve to further destroy the rights of prisoners previously protected under the Geneva Conventions. Dehumanizing these detainees will cause great distress not only to the prisoners but also to those who had carried out the torture and these will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
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