Soldier: Unit's Role Was to Break Down Prisoners

I did a search and found nothing that was the same as this topic, exactly. We've been debatiang the "scandal" over the Iraqi detainees for days. Here's what on the soldiers has to say about it all.
War is hell. War is evil and ugly. I have a suspicion that what have been revealed happens all too often in any war. Geneva Convention or not.

**note, you will have to sign in to the Washinton Post to read the full article**

" There were no rules, by her account, and there was little training. But the mission was clear. Spec. Sabrina D. Harman, a military police officer who has been charged with abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, said she was assigned to break down prisoners for interrogation.

I'm hoping some of the military folks here will see this and respond, to clarify for us civilians.


"They would bring in one to several prisoners at a time already hooded and cuffed," Harman said by e-mail this week from Baghdad. "The job of the MP was to keep them awake, make it hell so they would talk."

Harman, one of seven military police reservists charged in the abuse of detainees at the prison, is the second of those soldiers to speak publicly about her time at Abu Ghraib, and her comments echo findings of the Army's investigation into prisoner abuse there. That probe documented the maltreatment of detainees and found the prison was chaotically run, that there were no apparent rules governing interrogations and that Harman's military police unit was ill trained for the job it was asked to perform. "

... "The person who brought them in would set the standards on whether or not to 'be nice,' " she said. "If the prisoner was cooperating, then the prisoner was able to keep his jumpsuit, mattress, and was allowed cigarettes on request or even hot food. But if the prisoner didn't give what they wanted, it was all taken away until [military intelligence] decided. Sleep, food, clothes, mattresses, cigarettes were all privileges and were granted with information received."

She said the prison had no standard operating procedures and on Tier 1A, where suspected insurgents were held, Army and other intelligence officers "made the rules as they went."
www.washingtonpost.com...


American General told MPs to "soften up" prisoners
"An American general recommended that Army prison guards in Iraq become more involved in "softening up" prisoners for interrogations shortly before abuses occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison last fall, according to an internal report at the heart of the controversy.

It is a role that military police are not trained to perform and are prohibited from doing, the Army says; that led members of Congress to press Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Friday, largely unsuccessfully, for details on what role MPs played at the troubled prison."
AP story



[Edited on 8-5-2004 by DontTreadOnMe]