His point is that the boots on the ground should've known better than to follow an illegal order, and that those orders (despite being couched in such a way as to maximise plausible deniability) were fundamentally illegal.

He's agreeing with you in that the people higher up who set this up should get the hammer, but he's pointing out that you can't exonerate the grunts either. The grunts SHOULD go to the can; ignorance of the law is no excuse. The issue is that they SHOULD also be joined by various folks up the food chain too, but that doesn't seem to be happening; CYA all around, fuck the boots on the ground, if you know what I mean.

Finally, he's saying something about how the colonel is couching his statements; he's pointing out that his army did in fact behave this way. One can argue that he really means this wouldn't have happened in the culture extant in the armed forces when he was serving, but the institution is undoubtedly the same institution he served in.

There're some real problems in how education in the army is happening. Taking a look at the experience of the CAF in Somalia and how our torture scandal was handled may be instructive, though it also has to be said that the higher ups didn't exactly cover themselves in glory... but at least our civilian leadership did Do The Right Thing (including disbanding the regiment) when it came out. This was a big deal; it was the Airborne, who covered themselves in glory in WWII. Despite this, the general sentiment that came out was that the crime was so ignominious that the regiment (and its commanding officers) had to go. Some of them were removed completely, and some of them got window seats, depending on how involved they were in the actual mission. The justification for this was that whatever else one may say, what happened in Somalia was a massive failure in proper training and discipline, and the officers had to pay for it, as training and discipline is their job.

--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton                            jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca]                   [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Kingston Ontario Canada               [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------

Hence my comment about educational problems in the service.

There are good reasons to minimise thinking for oneself in a combat situation. Because of this, combat situations are often taken as a mitigating circumstance when adjudicating illegal actions of this type. That said, the overall tendency to train people to minimise thinking for themselves because of the need to act on orders during combat can have some very undesirable knock-on effects, as Abu Ghraib was not a combat situation.

That said, the ONLY reason why one can condemn the chain of command in the Abu Ghraib situation is because the officers (who are generally supposed to be educated in these things; that's why they're officers) didn't act until they realised they were about to be exposed to the world at large.

This is the only reason, but it's absolutely sufficient to condemn everyone all the way to the top. The statements coming out of the civilian leadership, the attempts to legalise torture by Gonzalez, the various orders and statements posted in the workplace all condemn the chain of command all the way up to the top general in the theatre as well as his civilian overseers are just gravy to add to the real crime.

To everyone that knows about how these things are supposed to work in Western democracies and militaries, the Abu Ghraib scandal (along with Gitmo, and now with NSA surveillance) has given the US a massive black eye in the eyes of its Western allies, as well as with the rest of the world. It will take years to undo the damage, and might take generations if the following leadership after 2008 doesn't take steps to bring it all out into the open and start putting the current administration's feet to the fire after they leave office.

The whole situation just sucks.

--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton                            jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca]                   [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Kingston Ontario Canada               [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------