Pfc. Lynndie England pled guilty...

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PFC England's NCO Support Channel and Chain of Command met in one man, PVT (formerly SSG) "Chip" Frederick. Seeing that he's already been court-martialed and sentenced for his involvement in this affair, you are correct. However, there is no evidence that anyone in either the Chain of Command or NCO Support Channel above him knew of the abuses. Having run a Battalion level facility with up to 150 detainees at a time and only 2 interrogators and 7 guards on shift, in conditions even more primitive than at Abu Ghraib, I know what they were experiencing. I also know that we didn't play "naked pyramid" with the detainees in spite of the fact that visits from anyone who wasn't actively dropping off or picking up detainees was rare.

Commanders are not responsible for the actions of their soldiers, but they are ACCOUNTABLE.
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Exactly the point I made. That's why they were relieved, but not criminally charged. After all, it's not that they did something wrong...just that they didn't do something right.

There are no bad soldiers, only bad leaders
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That's BS, and anyone with sense knows it. There are bad soldiers. In fact, there are more of them than bad leaders. Some soldiers are unwilling or untrainable, and when we catch them we put them out of the service. Some soldiers are criminals, and when we catch them we put them in jail. Some soldiers we don't catch, and when they screw up they drag their leaders down with them. This doesn't excuse leadership (good, bad or indifferent) of accountability, but it does excuse them of responsibility.
 
I know what they were experiencing. I also know that we didn't play "naked pyramid" with the detainees in spite of the fact that visits from anyone who wasn't actively dropping off or picking up detainees was rare.
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Where ? JTF-GTMO4 and 5 (D1-4, V, and E) U?

That's BS, and anyone with sense knows it
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It's that attitude that produces bad soldiers.

Also if you would slow down and read my post's you'll see we were in agreement the whole time.

My responses were only to show you that.

I guess in the end we'll never know, as long as every leader in that situation can say they did all they could do and they did'nt know.

Then I guess that would make that soldier, one of those bad one's that just can't be helped.

Let's hope no more like her turn up.

EDIT : Ah IZHUMINTER, human intelligence. So your MI. I wish I would have read that before I wasted my time even quantifying your remarks.

for 1. MI never leads, or engages in Leadership
2. You probably are or were one of those PVT's that throws that SA around.
3. We just might have bumped into each other. You MI types are fond of using us 31BZ6 types.
 
Let me make one thing clear about wartime . Having gone from E-2 to E-6 in 2 1/2 years just by staying alive . For anyone other than Military Academy grads this is the time to get on the "fast track". The rank stops coming as soon as the combat stops . Remember the Gulf War ? When the action was over there were a ton of pilots at O-2 and O-3 . Now if you came in right after this you were rather frozen out of any chance of getting on an even par with these guys . You have 0 combat sorties and everyone else on the promotion board has 300 or so . Even Custer went through a RIF demotion . He went from General to Captain . He died a LTC . Many of those officers were too busy jockying for rank to take home from their tours back to their reserve unit . They don't get busted down . Only those remaining on active duty . I had an E-5/Capt for a drill instructor in 1963 . Point is that many of those that should have been paying attention to those things below them were too busy trying to attain things above them .
 
BLUF: the abusers should not have done what they did

Where ? JTF-GTMO4 and 5 (D1-4, V, and E) U?
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What are you babbling about? What does the above have to do with Abu Ghraib, or the battalion-sized facility I worked in? Cuba has no comparison to Iraq.

That's BS, and anyone with sense knows it
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It's that attitude that produces bad soldiers.
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*sigh*

No, it isn't. While an uncaring or unconcerned chain of command could exacerbate problems that exist, or a truly bad command could create bad soldiers, to pretend that there is "no such thing as a bad soldier" is naive at best. To automatically blame a soldier's chain of command for a soldier's failures absolves the soldier of responsibility for their actions, whether it be drug use, domestic abuse or indebtedness. I have seen soldiers with criminal records who never should have gotten past a recruiting station end up causing hell for their company commanders due to this idiotic slogan and a battalion commander with a "zero tolerance" mindset. Try re-reading the slogan but insert "black" or "woman" for "soldier" and "white" or "man" for "leader" and you should see how ridiculous a generalization it is.

Also if you would slow down and read my post's you'll see we were in agreement the whole time.
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We most certainly were not. You said there was no more hard time at the USDB, but there is. It's a maximum security prison (the very definition of hard time), and the only one used the the US Armed Forces. Oh, you changed your statement to mean "hard labor"...but your first statement was still incorrect. You claim that PFC England's command both knew and did nothing about her illegal activites, while I have yet to see evidence of that and said as much. You claim that ignorance of England's illegal activities is "no excuse for them," while I clearly hold otherwise. The fact that they had no knowledge is the very reason they aren't also being court-martialed.

In short, about the only things that we do agree upon is that the whole thing was jacked up from the start, and the PFC England and her companions should have known better regardless of any other factors.

Whether they did it on their own...or under orders from the CIA...or because they were paid in pixie dust by beings from Neptune...the guards at Abu Ghraib should never, ever have treated their detainees the way they did. Period.

I think we can all agree on that.
 
EDIT : Ah IZHUMINTER, human intelligence. So your MI. I wish I would have read that before I wasted my time even quantifying your remarks.

for 1. MI never leads, or engages in Leadership
2. You probably are or were one of those PVT's that throws that SA around.
3. We just might have bumped into each other. You MI types are fond of using us 31BZ6 types.
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1. Anyone who thinks that MI never leads is a fool, just as anyone who thinks all officers are clueless or all grunts are stupid.

2. Wrong again. I went from E1 to E5(P) as a tanker. Again, making generalizations about people you don't know anything about is foolish. What's that saying about assumptions?

3. I highly doubt it. No one I know personally has ever used dogs, and I've never met an Army dog handler. They simply aren't useful to interrogators except in exceedingly rare cases. Far more of a hassle than they're worth. Besides...working dogs should be working, not trying to scare prisoners.
 
Their actions were a mark of cruetly not neccessarily cowardness.
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41: Huh? Not cowardness? How is treating helpless prisoners in a cell is such a barbaric way not an act of cowardness? These people where completely unable to defend themselves and have no way to fight back. This was absolute cowardness on these soldiers part.

I don't have a "power tower", EIB, CIB, scuba, HALO, EFMB, sapper or those other ultra-high speed badges and my experience in the military is limited. But from what I know of the Army (which isn't much), one of the hallmarks of a good officer is the ability to know whats going on farther down the totom pole and he does this by communicating with his NCOs who will have a much better vibe of whats happening than an LT who is fresh out of college.
But than of course I wasn't there so and don't know what other tasks the offciers where up to.
 
And I suppose you have a notarized copy of those assumption of command orders, 70-101? I know people who were named as bad apples in the Fay report, and the likelyhood of them being CIA agents is the same as Hillary Clinton's chances of leaving Bill for Rush Limbaugh.
 
70-101: lol

On the same note, its kinda interesting about the Pat Tillman cover up and how shameful that is to both his family and the Army. I dont care where anyone stands on the politcal fence or what you happen to think of the conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan. That man was an absolute hero and even Micheal Moore should be able to see that.
 
Everything has to be a conspiracy with some people, doesn't it? Well, I'm getting out of this due to opinions and theories being thrown around as gospel truth. If anyone needs more tin foil for their hats or canned goods for their bunkers, send me a PM and I'll be sure to mail you some.
 
First of all, welcome back to the land of hot showers, pizza, pork products and alchoholic beverages, IZ.

2. Thank you for your service, 41 Special. To address some of your questions, and to be specific, my son is a 91W-what they now call a Combat Medic. You'll excuse my teminology trip-ups, my war was 35 years ago. Back then, they had an organization called the Army Medical Corps. A medical corpsman, a.k.a. "Doc" or "Medic", was a slang term of endearment by those they treated. Apparently, its now official.

Your question as to why you would treat a wounded combatant? Are you serious?? It's called gathering intelligence, and the medics are not the only ones doing this. The infantry is doing their best to capture the small fish to see if they can get info to capture or kill the big fish. Thats been going on as long as there has been armies.

An example: son relates incident of an enemy combatant stepping out in front of the Bradley and apparently not well educated in the art of taking on armored vehicles, sprays the front of it with his AK. Platoon sgt. is manning the turret, and wounds the fella with a burst of 7.62. Could have used the 25MM, but its hard to get info from dead people. Son treats the guy and they turn him over to the rear area folks to treat his wounds and to see what he knows.

If the policy was to kill every living thing, I kind of doubt there would be any boots on the ground-a series of bright flashes from nuclear weapons would be much more cost effective......

Looks like IZ had addressed the Leavenworth question-I was going to add that if Leavenworth was no longer "the place" where military criminals were sent, it had to be within the last few years, because I visited the place not long ago.

As to the "intestinal fortitude" of those EM's and NCO's at the prison-I can tell you this much, it does not take a whole lot of guts to beat on and humiliate unarmed prisoners. My son and I had a rare phone conversation last week, and I mentioned my thoughts about what should happen to those at the prison-he flat told me, "we don't want their kind-they would be a danger to themselves and to the company." That, I would have to agree with. If they can't keep their cool in a prison situation, they do not have what it takes to function on a battlefield and have no business wearing the uniform.

IZ makes the perfect case for the officers related to this incident-they are not responsible, but certainly accountable for the actions of the soldiers they command. There has to be a level of trust between soldiers and the people in command, but you also have to verify, and this was not done.

Bad soldiers? Yep-we got a few, as well as bad NCO's and Officers. Sometimes it takes a while to discover them and weed em out.

BTW, how's your dog? Got pictures?? One of my older brothers was a scout dog leader from 70 to 74. Never left Ft Benning. His dog had been mishandled by its previous owner, and it took him a while to gain trust. He was glad to get his discharge, but at the same time regretted it because he knew they would kill his dog, and they had stopped the policy of letting handlers take the animal with them to civilian life. Sad......
 
BTW thanks for asking.

Here's some of me and Bagio a 4 year old Red Shepard

And one of my Grandfather from WW2

Also, I'll have to apologize to the forum and IZ. Sometimes my temper with the whole situation tends to come out first.
 

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41 Special

No problem. I've had to learn the hard way over and over to keep my temper...and I still get the occassional ass-chewing for it. Maybe by the time I grow up and get a real job...
 
Speaking of military K-9's, maybe ya'll can help me figure out of I was being BS'd the other day. I was talking with a guy who was a Dog handler with the 25th out in Hawaii. He was telling me they had a specialized harness to strap the dog into when they conducted fast-roping or rappeling operations from helicopters and they would go down the ropes with the dog straped onto them. Now that sounds a little far-fetched to me. When I've done rappeling or fast-roping out of a helicopter, my pucker factor was pretty high and about the last thing I would want is a dog strapped to me while I'm getting to the door.
But if this is true, how do the Airborne units jump with their dogs? Do they strap them to the troopers or do they have their own 'chutes (pretty unlikely I'd think).

Oh and while I'm at it, here is an interesting snippit of 2 Warrent officers right before they crashed. God, us pilots are good at making the 6 O'Clock News..... I love the "Yeehaw!"
"For training, the Army uses a dramatic cockpit video from the crash of an Apache attack helicopter at Fort Campbell, Ky. It shows the co-pilot yelling, "Yeehaw!" during one maneuver banned as unsafe by the Army.

The tape also shows the pilot and co-pilot debating whether they can fly safely between tall trees while traveling nearly 90 miles per hour at 16 feet above ground.

"Think I can make it in between there?" the pilot asks.

"Nope," the co-pilot answers.

"Oh, ye of little faith. Look how big that is," the pilot says.

Seconds later, the Apache's rotors struck a huge limb, shattering one blade as the pilot struggled to land safely. "C'mon, get it under control, Mark!" the co-pilot shouts. Both crew survived. The 1997 accident caused $1 million in damage. "
 
how do the Airborne units jump with their dogs?
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If memory serves me our division dog handlers [in training only] jumped with the dogs in a specially designed chest harness. And then lowered the animal on a long length of nylon rope a minute or two before hitting the ground. Again, if memory serves me, my division [the 101st] only had one combat jump in Vietnam and it was a disaster. But basically 99% of the time dogs were brought in by helicopter because we were airmoble.
 
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