COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

Here's a story from The Oregonian that deserves more attention:

Oregon Guardsmen were ordered to return prisoners to Iraqi police officials who had been torturing them.

On the morning of June 29, Oregon guardsmen set off from their base near the Interior Ministry on routine neighborhood patrols.

Lookouts climbed towers ringing the base, and scouts took their usual positions in hidden vantage points around the neighborhoods of east Baghdad, looking for threats and signs of trouble.

One of the scouts posted in a tall building squinted through his rifle scope at the courtyard adjoining the Interior Ministry. He saw a man in plainclothes standing over a handcuffed and blindfolded prisoner. The guardsman watched through his rifle scope as the man reared back and brought what appeared to be a stick or metal rod down on the prisoner, who was lying on the ground.

The scout took pictures through his scope and considered his options.

The Oregon guardsman did not speak for this story. But others who spoke with the soldier said he radioed battalion headquarters to report the beating. According to one soldier, he said he would begin shooting the Iraqi guards if someone didn't intervene.

That message was passed to Lt. Col. Hendrickson, the battalion's commander, who gathered soldiers from the unit's headquarters company and a translator. Soon after, Hendrickson led a procession of Humvees from the guards' Patrol Base Volunteer to the Iraqi compound.

The squad of armed and armored Oregon guardsmen pushed into the detention yard "basically unchallenged," according to the written account by Southall, a Newark, Calif., middle school teacher who serves with the Oregon Guard.

Southall said he was speaking as an individual and not as a military officer. Senior Army officers have instructed soldiers not to discuss the incident.

According to Southall and other soldiers, the guardsmen began by separating the prisoners from the Iraqi policemen.

Some of the detainees said they had been held for three days with little water and no food. "Many of these prisoners had bruises and cuts and belt or hose marks all over," Southall said. At least one had a gunshot wound to the knee.

"I witnessed prisoners who were barely able to walk," Southall said.

The Oregon soldiers moved the prisoners into the shade of a nearby wall, cut them loose and handed out water bottles. They administered first aid when necessary and gave intravenous fluids to at least one dehydrated prisoner.

At about that time, U.S. military police arrived on the scene and began disarming the Iraqi policemen and moving them farther away from the prisoners, according to Southall.

...And here's what happened next:

It wasn't long before the order came: Stand down. Return the prisoners to the Iraqi authorities and leave the detention yard.

That order infuriated the Oregon guardsmen, who viewed themselves as protectors of the abused prisoners. Nonetheless, the soldiers obeyed. None of the soldiers interviewed for this story said which U.S. general gave the order.

What is this, the Godfather Part II? Is this Hyman Roth?

"This is the business we have chosen! I didn't ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business!"

Geez, reporters, just follow the chain of command upwards until you find a command willing to take the responsibility.

We had something similar happen in Ramadi, in the summer of 2003.

I forget the details, but it had come to our attention that Iraqi police had been torturing prisoners, via beatings and whips. I think the particular incident arose out of a dispute between two Iraqis in a restaurant that happened to have been owned by a relative of the chief of police, or his assistant.

We dispatched some of our own medics to take photographs of the injuries. When our battalion commander saw what had happened, we simply fired the responsible official.

Of course, we can't simply fire Iraqi officials now that the Iraq government has sovreignty. And I'm not sure that building a kinder, gentler prison system is number one on Allawi's concerns these days.

Since these prisoners apparently weren't prisoners of war, but common criminals, they don't receive protected status under the Geneva conventions--the host nation is free to deal with them under their own laws, subject to basic conventions against torture.

But we should lean hard on Allawi to ensure his security forces actually comply with the law.

Splash, out

Jason