The Fromson File

The Perennial Question: Who’s Guilty? So what if the Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison were not incarcerated for traffic violations; that in fact they were thugs, terrorists, criminals or worse? Does that justify the treatment they received at the hands of American GIs? Well yes, says Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla).But how would he know? Have any charges been brought against the Iraqis? Do they have lawyers? Have they gone to trial? Oh, I can hear or read the comments of my Republican friends now, ready to chastise me for being a bleeding heart liberal. Which, of course, misses the point. As usual. We proclaim to the world that ours is a nation that prides itself in upholding the law. Fine. But as the little old lady used to say in the television commercials, “Show me the beef.” Since a lot of Bush acolytes have been parsing their words on every rightwing radio or television talk show within sight,let’s at least have the documented evidence of just why the incarcerated Iraqis are in Abu Ghraib to begin with. They may well be there for precisely the reasons enumerated by Inhofe. But if it's important enough for a Republican senator to know about, so should it also be readily available to the American people. This is not a matter of national security. If we are to set ourselves apart from the barbarian who decapitated Nick Berg; the mindless terrorists who turn teenagers into suicide bombers and those who have nothing but contempt for the principles we uphold, let's set an example of what we truly stand for and not what their warped minds lead them to believe. This is no time to put the spin on a national embarrassment. Instead of flying off to Iraq for a photo op to demonstrate his support for the troops, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld ought to be devoting full time to uncovering and resolving a scandal that threatens to get much worse before it gets better. President Harry Truman once put it best when he placed a small sign on his desk in the Oval Office that read: "The buck stops here." Rumsfeld is not the president, but he has the wholehearted blessings of the man who is. When the Secretary of Defense tries to explain away the events at Abu Ghraib by belaboring the difference between abuse and atrocity, it's probably time for him to take a plane ride back to Chicago from whence he came, not Baghdad. As for the soldiers-male or female, military police or intelligence officers-who were responsible for the crimes that the world has been shown ad nauseum in the past ten days-keep something else in mind. Sooner or later, if there were people at higher echelons who allegedly gave the orders to “soften up” the prisoners, they undoubtedly will be exposed. But given the bizarre nature of the treatment carried out by a small bunch of simple-minded prison guards, their explanations of why they did it are just plain insulting. They were just following orders, they claim; an excuse the Nazis used to proclaim their innocence at Nuremberg. I know all about war and how it can affect human behavior. But the guards at Abu Ghraib were not combat veterans. They suffered no stress under fire. If anything, the photos in circulation suggest that they were enjoying themselves, torturing or manhandling unarmed people under their control. The notion that someone up the line ordered them to take the photographs of their mistreatment of the prisoners is troubling enough. But we should not be shocked if it turns out the perpetrators of these horrific scenes acted on their own with no prompting. Two of the likeliest culprits responsible for the embarrassment in Iraq had prior experience in civilian life as prison guards. Why no stories about them so far? As for the rest, it may be that there are only two words to describe them. White trash. They bring no honor to the thousands of American men and women who have put their lives on the line in Iraq the past year, some tragically so.