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Saturday, May 15, 2004

A Bit Too Far... 
Soldiers have lots of fun at the Army's expense over the tendency of the command to overreact wildly to minor things.

And so it has come to pass that the commanders in Iraq have decided to address the abuses of Abu Ghraib by prohibiting the use of hoods on detainees.

It reminds me of the old George Carlin joke: "A man shot four people on the express bus today, and then asked for a transfer and shot six people on the crosstown bus. Authorities are discontinuing the transfer system.

We used sandbags to blindfold prisoners. They were effective, cheap, plentiful, simple, and much simpler to employ in the dark than a cravat blindfold. Most importantly, by isolating the detainee from his fellow detainees and from the community around them they prevented unspoken conspiracies to attempt an escape.

They prevented relatives or uncaptured insurgents from recognizing a detainee in a truck and trying to mount a dangerous impromptu effort to rescue their buddy. They prevented a detainee from being able to draw a mental map of our post, or the post they were going to.

They placed the detainee at such a disadvantage to the guard that an escape attempt or an attempt to overpower my guards was unthinkable. Which protected my detainees from getting shot, and my guards from having to live with having shot them.

We could use cravat bandages, I guess, but there simply weren't as many of them lying around, and you never knew when you might need a bunch of them to dress wounds. Plus, the sandbags wouldn't slip off, and couldn't be nudged off by the detainee.

The sandbag was hot and uncomfortable, I'm sure. But it was secure, simple, and effective, and superior to the blindfold in every way except comfort.

But to me, that was nothing next to bringing everybody to their destination safe.

Everybody.

Splash, out

Jason

Comments:
Thank you for what you do. If we're still there in six years, I'll be there. Doing the college thing first, but I'll be there.

~Russell Brewer
RustyATmoocow.com [sorry, Anti-Spam bots..]
 
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