Constitutional Law

A Green Wall of Silence?

By Gabe Rottman

Lt. Col. Steve Jordan, 51, the only officer criminally charged in the Abu Ghraib scandal gets off scot-free. The only charge that stuck was one count of willfully disobeying a direct order, stemming from his contacts with other soldiers about the scandal after being instructed by General Fay, the lead investigator into the abuses, not to discuss it.

As we know, much of the case against Jordan foundered on serious procedural missteps by the investigating officers, namely their failure to read the Lt. Col. his rights before questioning (both Fay and Taguba, inexplicably, made this mistake). Moreover, the trial, which was painted by the media as a step toward closure for both the military and public, also completely neglected the burning question in the case: how did interrogation techniques from Gitmo find their way over to the cradle of civilization?

Although there were brief mentions in Jordan’s trial of connections between Abu Ghraib and the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, no criminal court has explored how or why interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo Bay migrated to Iraq. Detainees in the Abu Ghraib photographs appeared in situations that mirrored tactics used by senior interrogators on one of the most important detainees held at Guantanamo Bay after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Today, accountability has extended only to 11 low-ranking enlisted soldiers. The top dog, of course, is a Corporal Graner, who has been described as the ringleader of the abuse. And yet, evidence continues to circulate suggesting a systemic link between the two theaters—the gloves came off in Cuba, and then they came off in exactly the same way in Baghdad.

And, then, there are the common personnel ties. Major General George Miller, seconded from Gitmo to Baghdad to get some hustle going in counter-intel and interrogation. Stephen Cambone, Rumsfeld’s first deputy in charge of intelligence and a recurrent name in the coverage of the scandal. The president and his men, and especially outgoing Attorney General Gonzales: all sought express authority for coercive interrogation amounting to torture.

If the Jordan “conviction” is the coda to the abominations of those terrible early months of the Iraq insurgency, that’s something of a contrast with the closest analogue, My Lai, in which at least some blame stuck to the responsible parties.

Full post as published by Find Habeas Corpus on August 29, 2007 (boomark / email).