Serious revelations obscured by Pvt England conviction

The conviction of Lyndie England, the low-ranking reservist seen smiling in Abu Ghraib photos and holding detainees on a leash, dominated the media in the past couple of days, obscuring important revelations about the Army's 82nd Airborne division operating in Iraq.

What seems to matter more in the American media is the "how could she [the girl nextdoor]?" story, and not the "how could the chain of command have allowed this to happen?" story.

After attempting to deal with the issue for over 17 months in-house, approaching even the Secretary of the Army, Captain Ian Fishback of the 82nd Airborne's 1st battalion, 504 company, and two of his soldiers, approached Human Rights Watch in an effort to bring about accountability for serious abuses they witnessed in Iraq. HRW released a full reporting of their allegations on Friday.

Their story hit major American newspapers over the weekend, and received seemingly little attention.

Capt Fishback and his colleagues report that detainees at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Mercury, near Fallujah, were used as a stress-release by enlisted men of all kinds. In one particular incident, one of the whistleblowing soldiers witnessed a cook break a detainee's leg with a metal baseball bat.

They claim that the soldiers learned that it was acceptable to "fuck" (i.e. beat up) and "smoke" (i.e. bring to collapse through forced physical exertion) from their time in Afghanistan. There they witnessed "other government agencies" (OGA) interrogators trampling the Geneva Conventions. One soldier reports that at one time, a CIA interrogator asked for a head-count of detainees in custody of the 82nd 1/504, and when given the answer "17," the interrogator asked that one detainee be pulled and handed over. The CIA interrogator left with the detainee saying, "now you have 16." The whistleblowing soldier does not know what happened to this 17th detainee.

Capt. Fishback and others struggled during their Afghanistan and Iraq deployments to clarify the rules for detention and interrogation, and to denounce the repeated abuse of detainees. They were told repeatedly, up the chain of command, that the situation was being "investigated," but never received any clarification or help in stopping the abuse problem in the field.

This story has received some attention on blogs, and in the halls of Congress, where Capt. Fishback met with staff aides of the Senate SArmed Services Committee. The US Army subsequently denied him leave to meet Senators John McCain (AZ) and John Warner (VA), members of the Committee.

However, it seems the "mainstream" media is satisfied to entirely drop the issue of accountability and command responsibility. Thankfully, certain men in uniform are not going to be silenced that easily.