This is so incredibly stupid
At Abuse Hearing, No Testimony That G.I.'s Acted on Orders
By KATE ZERNIKE
FORT BRAGG, N.C., Aug. 6 - In the three months since photographs of detainees in sexually humiliating positions triggered the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, the soldiers charged with mistreatment have defended themselves by saying they were simply following orders.
But as of the end of testimony here on Friday in a military court hearing for Pfc. Lynndie R. England - the last, the longest and the most closely watched of the proceedings to determine whether the seven soldiers should be court-martialed - there have been no witnesses and no evidence to back up that central assertion.
[P6: WTF, you really think a soldier that spent two months being trained to follow orders implicitly is going to testify? ]
Witnesses, more than 25 for Private England's hearing alone, have described a prison in chaos, where military police even ran a prostitution and liquor ring. Soldiers often did not know who was in charge or how they were supposed to treat detainees. Prisoners were left naked for long periods as punishment and were at least occasionally abused, in one case leading to a death from what investigators called trauma to the head.
Yet no one has said there were direct orders to carry out the treatment seen in photos, or even, as Private England has told investigators, that the military police soldiers were encouraged to "keep it up" as a way of encouraging better interrogations.
"To my knowledge, ma'am, they were never ordered to do anything," Specialist Joseph M. Darby, the soldier who first turned in the photos, replied to a question from a prosecutor here on Friday.[P6: Link added so you know what I think of that bit of testimony]
Witness after witness has said that the treatment in the pictures, including forcing prisoners to masturbate and piling naked detainees in a pyramid, would never be allowed under any stretch of the rules.
[P6: That's because according to the rules, there was no need to stretch.]
