by James Glaser
September 27, 2005

We train our military to kill on demand, and then we wonder why these same people would abuse prisoners under their care. Many of the troops we have guarding prisoners have little or no training when it comes to the treatment of prisoners, who are held under international conventions.

Here is America, one of the biggest problems with our civilian prisons is rape, so why are we surprised that our military prisons have problems with sexual torture?

Today Army PFC Lynndie England was convicted of six counts stemming from the torture of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. England was the woman holding the prisoner by a leash, and was also the woman with the big smile, as she posed with naked prisoners. Most of the photos of the sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners have been withheld from the American public, because they were so graphic and sick.

Time Magazine has a report this week about more prisoner abuse taking place in Iraq. This time it is an officer, Army Captain Ian Fishback, reporting the abuse. Captain Fishback had to go all the way to Congress to report his charges, because all the way up the chain of command, they blew him off.

Officers in the Military don't really care if prisoners are abused. Officers are trained to kill on command too, so what is a little sexual abuse of prisoners to them? If the troops are not killing the prisoners, then what is the fuss? Fishback wrote to Congress, that violations of the Geneva Convention were "systematic, and the Army is misleading America."

Last Friday Captain Fishback authorized the Senate Armed Services Committee to make public his allegations, along with those of two sergeants, "of widespread prisoner abuse they had witnessed when they served in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 as members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division."

Now this new set of charges is something totally different than the Abu Ghraib crimes that Lynndie England and eight others were convicted or plead guilty to. The United States Army claims that they do not tolerate prisoner abuse. They report that the Army has investigated 400 claims of possible abuse, and 230 members of the Army have been punished since Sept. 11, 2001.

The Army claims that they don't tolerate prisoner abuse, but they have convicted 230 soldiers of abuse. That sounds to me like there is an awful lot of abuse going on. If we look at the Abu Ghraib case, only nine low ranking soldiers were convicted, no officer was even charged, so with 230 convictions, how many cases of abuse were there?

We wonder why the insurgency keeps growing in Iraq? Well every soldier who abused a prisoner probably helped recruit many to fight us, and I would bet soldiers have been killed, as a direct result of prisoner abuse.

Remember, all of those thousands and thousands of prisoners we hold in Iraq are not terrorists. Many are picked up in "sweeps" that take every male between certain ages. Like every male between 15 and 40. You get taken in a sweep like that, and get abused, either physically or sexually, and you are going to get back at your captives.

National Guard troops and regular Army infantry or airborne troops are not prison guards. The don't have the training, they can't speak the language, and they are filled with hate of the Iraqis, who have killed and maimed many from their units.

The troops we have guarding prisoners in Iraq want to abuse those prisoners. They think of them as the enemy, and they want to get some 'payback' for the loses they have had. The longer we are there, and the more Iraqis we abuse, the stronger the insurgency will get.