Cross-posted from the Global Sociology Blog

Standard Operating Procedure is a book co-authored by Philip Gourevitch (also author of the great We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow, We Will Be killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda and writer for the New Yorker) and Errol Morris (director of the great documentary The Fog of War, among others) who also directed the documentary of the same title (incredible website that is well worth checking out with tons of great information that supplement the book very well and makes you impatient for the film to be shown in your area… not yet for me, unfortunately).

The book and documentary are about the Abu Ghraib scandal, of course. We might think that we had read, seen and heard (see also the excellent HBO documentary Ghosts of Abu Ghraib) everything we could probably stomach about this sorry mess but we were wrong. Besides, as a country, we deserve to have this thing shoved in our face on a regular basis because, as the book states, this stain is our own.

And let’s remember that the story of Guantanamo Bay has not been told yet. Who knows what horrors will come out of there? (Although this post by DDay over at Digby’s place, relating how the US offered its Gitmo facilities to the Chinese for torturing purposes and the fact that we’re stuck there because we have a whole bunch of people we can neither trial - because they’ve been tortured - nor release, because, huh, who cares about their excuses anymore… seems to me there will be no end to the evils to be dug up there). And there’s more coming out every day lately: see McClatchy (one of the only decent remaining reporting outfits), the BBC, and Jeralyn at Talk Left.  Read more 

Lynndie England, of Abu Ghraib fame, gives a lengthy interview in the German magazine Stern. England was sentenced to three years in prison for her part in the deeds there. She served 521 days and is now out on parole. How’s life for her?

“(She sighs) Oh, it’s just little things going wrong. I’m just trying to get by. Trying to find a job, trying to find a house. It’s been harder than I expected. I went to a couple of interviews, and I thought they went great. I wrote dozens of applications. Nothing came of it. I put in at Wal-Mart, at Staples. I’d do any job. But I never heard from them.”  Read more 

At the very end of Froomkin’s chat yesterday, there is this little gem:

Stony Brook, N.Y.: Everybody seems to accept the claim that the CIA tapes were destroyed. Given the long history of deceptions by this administration, shouldn’t we ask for proof, or at least sworn statements to that effect?

Dan Froomkin: A good point. And consider this. Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball write in Newsweek: “At one point portions of the tapes were electronically transmitted to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., so a small number of officials there could review them. A counterterrorism source, who also asked for anonymity when discussing this subject, said that there was no reason to believe that any recordings of such an electronic feed still exist.”

No, no, of course not. No reason whatever. (Except that, as we know from the Stasi and, say, Guatemala, totalitarian regimes hang onto all their data.)

And who knows the dataflows? Where the data goes, its nature and volume, its timing, and who has privileges to see it? The techs. Could we talk to them, please? Didn’t we get good results when we talked to Alexander Butterfield?  Read more 

“Army Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, the only U.S. military officer to face court-martial over the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, …  Read more 

[Of course, Abu Ghraib is the story WaPo’s editors should be assigning to Pincus. But n-o-o-o-o-o…]

McClatchy’s Joe Galloway:

We were reminded again this week that in this administration, no good deed goes unpunished, and that no scandal is so great that it can’t be hidden until it’s forgotten.

The sad spectacle that transpired inside the crumbling walls of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came roaring back to life with Seymour Hersh’s on-target article in The New Yorker magazine telling the story of an honest general who investigated and reported on events that shocked the world.

Funny thing, isn’t it? The story that “roared back to life” is dead again, killed by another missing white woman and forty year old dirty laundry. (Sure, laundry with forty years of fermentation to it stinks, but today’s stinks worse, and it’s got that fresh stink to it.)

Maj. Gen. Anthony Taguba, U.S. Army retired, was an accidental choice to conduct one of 17 Pentagon investigations of the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib. He was grabbed because he wore two stars, and they needed someone of that rank to probe a case that involved a one-star general.

The trouble was that Tony Taguba was honest and thorough and reported in detail, early and often, to his superiors on the evidence he was uncovering - film and photos of abuses far worse than those the public saw. There was sexual abuse of female prisoners by their American military guards and forced sex acts between a father and his young son.

Nice work from the “family values” crowd!

So, why no accountability?  Read more 

Rape. Father-son humiliation. Objects up the rectum. Torture. And the videos.

In other words, Republican sex.

Nice work, Christianists.  Read more 

Because if I didn’t, I’d never put up this post. Via the increasingly essential Angry Black Woman, here’s a transcript of a video that YouTube has since pulled but that Evan caught just in time to watch at Alternet, and he notes that the DoD is taking it “seriously.” I know it means there will be another Blogger Ethics Panel because I’m putting this up, but I don’t forget Sy Hersh’s words, or that for the most part, we have yet to see the majority of the video information that he says Senators and other government officials have had under wraps for some time now:

 Read more 

If the Germans have any say in it.

Just days after his resignation, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany’s top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  Read more 

NOTE: See comments for an update on this story.

There is not snark enough in the world to come up with a comment about this:

An Army dog handler convicted of abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has returned to the country with his military police unit, a military spokesman confirmed.  Read more 

They’re mean, they’re lean, and they won’t go away. The money quote:

The case will draw on a powerful new argument. The Military Commissions Act of 2006, which the President promoted and recently signed into law, provides retroactive immunity for civilians who violated the War Crimes Act, including officials of the Bush Administration. Such an attempt to provide immunity for their crimes, it will be argued, is in itself evidence of an effort to block prosecution of those crimes. Indeed, according to Scott Horton, chair of the International Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association, when Yugoslavia sought to immunize senior government officials, the United States declared the act itself to be evidence of such a conspiracy.  Read more 

Position #1

In truth, I don’t know the actual number or name of this position; I did email Congressman Shay’s office requesting his help in this matter, in the name of accuracy, but so far there has been no response.

Because I don’t remember that particular position from my perusal of the other Kama Sutra.

Which is remarkable, because as Erick Erickson once pointed out, the impulse behind that ancient Kama Sutra is less sexual than bureaucratic - a felt need to include every possible variation imaginable.

And yet, somehow or other, the ancient Hindus couldn’t imagine these possibilities.

Or this one.  Read more 

AP:

“[SHAYS] [National Guard troops at Abu Ghraib] were involved in a sex ring and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked,” added Shays. “But it wasn’t torture.”

[Abu Ghraib]

If this is sex, then Republicans have really weird ideas about sex. (Ya think?)  Read more