The print version reads better as the online article has overlays of pics blocking the text.
Let me make a point here. Those inside a Country, that has been invaded, know rather quickly what is really happening in their own Country or region of same, long before the Country of the invaders. And Abu Ghraib is only one horrific example of Atrosities committed that we know about.
You can listen to a Podcast of Graham Rayman’s report, in mp3, by downloading at this link.
Sgt. Gerald Della Salla (pictured), of Manhattan, and Sgt. Maj. Suzanne Rubenstein, of Commack, Long Island, were among the force of New Yorkers sent to "restore America’s honor" who found the job harder than anticipated. Della Salla, concerned about Pentagon prosecutions of soldiers speaking out about the war, asked that all insignia from their uniforms be obscured.
The article starts off with this:
If you ask some of the members of his military unit, Sgt. James McNaughton, the only New York City police officer killed in Iraq, should never have been put on the assignment that ultimately resulted in his death.
It goes on to say, abit further down:
Except for McNaughton's death, however, almost nothing about the hellish 11 months the unit spent at Abu Ghraib has been reported.
And than describes what happened to Sgt. James McNaughton, of which many, especially in New York, probably have heard about.
As he stood in the tower, a sniper's bullet, fired from about 300 meters, found the small space between his helmet and his body armor, ripping through his neck.
Now getting into the meat of the report about what these Reservists went through after McNaughtons death.
Meanwhile, back in Baghdad, some members of his unit were furious. McNaughton, they felt, should never have been sent on the mission, which had nothing to do with the reason the 306th was sent to Iraq.
"We were just supposed to be there to do detainee operations, and plus, we were short-handed," says Sgt. First Class Louis Guiliani, 48, of Kew Gardens, a 31-year military veteran who has served two tours in Iraq. "So it didn't make any sense to me that they would ask Jimmy to go do that job."
Sgt. Gerald Della Salla, of Manhattan, and Sgt. Maj. Suzanne Rubenstein (pictured), of Commack, Long Island, were among the force of New Yorkers sent to “restore America’s honor” who found the job harder than anticipated. Della Salla, concerned about Pentagon prosecutions of soldiers speaking out about the war, asked that all insignia from their uniforms be obscured.
Now keep in mind what exactly went on in Abu Ghraib Prison and Think Professional Military and the Loss Of Moral Authority of this Country because of the actions of a few. Also think, those few, put the rest of the Military Troops, In-Theater, into even more Danger from the anger and hate generated by those actions.
Some of the soldiers on the list were simply not physically or mentally fit for a tour of one of the most stressful locations in Iraq.
But the 306th still had a major troop shortage. The Uniondale group turned to the computers of the Atlanta-based Army Reserve Command. Those computers in turn spat out the names of hundreds of soldiers elsewhere in the U.S. who, on paper at least, were deployable.
And so, in houses across the country, telephones began to ring. One call went to a 44-year-old, marginally fit civil engineer named Michael Landis with four children in El Paso, Texas.
"And then I called a buddy and told him, if Donny Rumsfeld needs Mike Landis, father of four at the age of 44, to fight the war in Iraq, we've already lost this thing."
The brass and civilian military leadership, not knowing what to do with their mess, decides to lay it All on these reservists.
Hussey not only had to keep an eye on thousands of prisoners, his bosses made it clear that he had better not allow another scandal on his watch. "I lost a lot of sleep over it," he says. "I don't think the soldiers realized the wrath that would come down on them if they made a mistake."
As the days passed, soldiers prepared for a year in the desert by moving from mind-numbingly long PowerPoint lectures to drills in the wet, freezing Jersey countryside.
"We were supposed to be training for desert warfare, and it's 20 degrees in New Jersey," says Sgt. Rene LeClerc, a Harlem native and former paratrooper. "When you realize that the heart of the mission will be as correction officers, and you are all out in the woods somewhere knee-deep in the mud in what looks like jungle warfare training, it's like, 'What the fuck?' "
Now does this sound like a Professionally Trained Military Force, ready to fight in a War Theater of Choice, while those that send them Speak Of Their Support For!
And many soldiers didn't get certified on some of the key weapons that would be used in the camps, like the shotgun that fired non-lethal rounds. Later, at Abu Ghraib, it became obvious this was a problem, because insufficient staffing forced soldiers trained as clerks, for example, to work in camps guarding detainees.
Sgt. First Class Louis Guiliani: “I think what happened at Abu Ghraib when we were there, and when previous soldiers were there, did more harm than good.”
The feeling of “what the hell are we doing here?”:
Abu Ghraib Scenes
Snapshots from the most dangerous prison in the world
The place stank of burning garbage, gunpowder, and heavy chemicals. "It felt like we were entering hell," says Staff Sgt. Christopher Manzolillo, 29, of Wantagh. "Abu Ghraib has a unique smell to it—like death, really. There's nothing else in the world that smells like that. You never forget it."
Because the camps were built on a landfill, the very ground seemed to resist their presence. The sand itself extruded garbage, steel shards, shattered glass, and bone. At one point, a hole dug in the ground quickly pooled with fetid water, used syringes, and medical waste from some prior horror.
Rockets and mortars fell into the base every few days. The vast majority missed their targets, but the possibility of random death created a constant, unrelenting tension in the minds of the soldiers.
"It could have been me or anyone else. We were in prison just like them."
Keeping all focussed on the lie of Iraq having anything to do with 9/11 the brass went to using patriotic{?} names etc..
Officially, Abu Ghraib's main camp had been dubbed Redemption, one of the many strange allusions to 9/11 that the military attached to the prison. A smaller camp was called Liberty. Later, they would build a new camp called Remembrance, and create a shrine to the victims of the terror attacks.
And the security felt.
"At any time, if they wanted to, the detainees could have taken down the fences and killed everyone before you got help there,"
A description of some escapes and failed attempts follows along with the bases “SAD” policy, no Sex, Alcohol, or Drugs allowed, to this.
The stress of the job led an uncounted number of soldiers to use sleep aids and mood stabilizers prescribed by the base hospital. After one soldier fell asleep in a watchtower and blamed his medication, the command staff pleaded with the medical bureau to keep them apprised of what the soldiers were being prescribed.
Leading to a few sentences about downloaded porn and doctored porn pics of base officers, wives and girfriends of bases personal.
So much for “SAD”.
Than the shit starts, or continues, only this time esculating.
Over the initial months of their deployment, the soldiers in Abu Ghraib knew that the insurgency existed outside the walls only because of the shells that were lobbed randomly into the prison. But on the evening of April 2, 2005, that changed. Shortly after 7 p.m., Gerald Della Salla was walking across the compound toward his room when mortars and rockets began arcing their way into the facility. His boots blew up clouds of orange dust as he ran for cover.
Small arms fire soon started up from the south, and then, from the northwest. Marines in the tower opened fire with heavy machine guns.
Della Salla found himself helping a major fetch medical supplies as rounds continued to impact around them. Both men were knocked over by the concussion wave from a shell, and each wound up in the hospital.
VIDEO: Abu Ghraib was attacked over a three-hour period by at least 60 and as many as 100 insurgents as part of an elaborate attack to breach the walls and free detainees.
Only later, as the unit pieced together what had happened, did they realize that the rain of artillery had been part of a large, coordinated attack on the prison by insurgency forces.
VIDEO: Here the fuel truck explodes during the April 2, 2005, attack on Abu Ghraib prison. The truck exploded, either by the bomber or from Marine fire, 200 feet from the wall, failing to breach it. Still, the explosion was enormous.
With small arms fire coming from several sides of the prison, it was difficult for the men and women inside to determine the direction of the attack. Some of them fired their weapons, and in the confusion, nearly shot other soldiers. At one point, Hussey himself believed that the wall had been breached and prisoners and insurgents were loose inside the base.
VIDEO: The assault was regarded as one of the more sophisticated attacks on a U.S. base of the war. Ultimately, the attack failed, but dozens of U.S. troops and detainees were wounded.
VIDEO: On the day after the April 2, 2005, attacks, soldiers noticed that a tractor had been abandoned on an approach road to Abu Ghraib. A trailer carrying two 50-gallon drums was attached to the tractor, and wired to explosives. Somehow the device exploded, and the large plume of smoke is the video is the result. Some soldiers say that a dead body was lying next to the tractor, and when an Iraqi civilian came up and disturbed it, the device exploded. In other words, the body was wired to the device. Others are unclear on how it exploded.
A total of 43 soldiers and 16 detainees were wounded—some seriously, records show. Search teams, according to Berry, recovered the bodies of three insurgents, and learned that many others had sought care at local hospitals. A total of 78 mortars and rockets and countless bullets had been fired at the base.
"They removed their own casualties," a sergeant says of the insurgents. "To me, that demonstrates a highly disciplined force."
Trained for detainee duty in Abu Ghraib they were sent to being security on convoys carrying a veriaty of supplies.
That June, the ranks of the 306th swelled with the addition of Josh Bingham and his National Guard unit from Kentucky coal country. Bingham's unit and others were sent to Abu Ghraib to provide more guards for the swelling prison population, which was growing toward 5,000. By then, the 306th had grown from 174 soldiers to more than 700.
For more than a year before they left for Iraq, Bingham and his comrades had trained out of their depot in Jackson, Kentucky, to contain chemical spills and the effects of biological weapons. Then, abruptly, the Pentagon sent them to Fort Dix for military police training. Three months later, they left for Iraq.
"Basically, we had a crash course in detainee operations and then they sent us over," Bingham says.
From the convoys to the prison, to do what they trained to do in a crash course, now to watch those suspected of laying the IED’s and attacks on the convoys they had guarded.
Three weeks into the assignment, Bingham walked over to the Combat Stress tent and told someone there that he was finished watching prisoners. He was so angry that he thought he might shoot a prisoner just to take revenge. He was promptly transferred to the repair unit.
In his inspector general complaint, Della Salla pointed out that he was not a military policeman, and he hadn't received detainee operations training back at Dix. He wasn't even qualified on the shotgun. "I have no qualifications for this, no necessary training," he wrote in the e-mail to the IG. "To work like that is dangerous—for everyone."
As we invaded anothers country and now occupy same, we no not where to stop in the building anger of that countries citizens.
Most of the members of the 306th had arrived in Iraq convinced that every detainee was a terrorist. But as the months passed, the simple work of running the prison taught them that things weren't quite so clear-cut. It became obvious, they say, that men rounded up in counterinsurgent operations were being held under limited evidence.
Rubenstein ran the office where detainees were first brought in flex cuffs after their arrest. She eventually came to believe that a lot of Iraqis were unfairly swept up in those raids.
Finally, the order came down to simply shove the civilian vehicles aside. An armored car came forward and pushed the cars into a drainage ditch along the road. The convoy moved on. "The Iraqis didn't ask for it, but getting the cars out of the ditch was their problem," he said. "We didn't make any friends that day."
Every one bad decision and action wipes out any of the good ones that had been accomplished, back to square one and actually even below that.
"I think what happened at Abu Ghraib when we were there, and when previous soldiers were there, did more harm than good," Guiliani says. "Yeah, you got them off the streets, but you had a lot of innocent people in there, and then you turned them into enemies of the United States."
After 11 months at the prison, the 306th finally departed the place on November 23, 2005, the day before Thanksgiving.
Jeffrey Barker, wasn't comfortable being around so many people
Guiliani, grew cautious every time he saw a person with Middle Eastern features
Rene LeClerc, tries to shake off the effect of all of those convoys
LeClerc has yet to return to work.
As for the Combat Infantry Badge, LeClerc did receive it. The award seemed fitting: After all, he had done some 200 convoys.
Then, eight days later, the Army took the award away from him. The reason, he says, was that he was never officially assigned to an infantry unit, even though he was in combat. "Well, at least I had it for a little while," he says with a shrug.
Michael Landis
came home to El Paso and immediately left for California to bury his mother. She died in a nursing home on the same night she learned he was leaving Iraq.
In August 2006, he finally reached the end of his military contract, and he sat down and tapped out a letter of resignation from the Army after a career spanning 21 years.
"Our military leadership has been loathe to speak against our present policies, and all too often it is the 'Yes Men' who are promoted and rewarded," he wrote. "I'm afraid that this war in Iraq has become this generation's Vietnam."
For months after his return, Landis talked almost obsessively about the war. Last September, his wife, Kathy, tired of it, and asked him to see a VA counselor. Landis made the call, but the earliest appointment he could get was in February. That appointment was postponed. Landis finally got his hour with a counselor on May 22, nine months after that initial call.
Gerald Della Salla
lived at home for three days until tension with his parents forced him to move out. He started to pursue his acting career again, until one day when he went to audition for a soap commercial.
"I was around all these buzzing, chirping actors, and I kept saying to myself, these people have no idea that a month ago, I was on a fucking Iraqi highway," he says. "It was a sign to me how far the culture is removed from the war."
For Josh Bingham,
the kid from Kentucky, however, the war still hasn't quite ended. Bingham reached Dix in January 2006, and promptly suffered a nervous breakdown. He says he was watching television one night and he began to weep. He heard voices and thought people were talking about him. He blames the breakdown in part on the guilt of that roadside bombing the previous May.
Diagnosed with severe depression, Bingham spent the next five months in military and civilian hospitals, including Walter Reed. Last summer, about a month after he was discharged and returned home, he found that he couldn't handle the prison job. His wife left him.
Bingham moved in with his parents. He spends much of his time in the house unless he is with his closest friends. He takes powerful mood-stabilizing drugs. He sleeps well one night and poorly the next. Once a week or so, he sees his daughter, now three. "I don't feel like doing anything," he says. "I don't like to leave the house, and I won't go anywhere unless it's with someone I know."
The Pentagon finally
returned Abu Ghraib to Iraqi hands in the spring of 2006. In the 18 months since the 306th MP Battalion returned from Iraq, the Pentagon has only expanded its detention program. In March 2005, the U.S. military was holding 8,900 detainees in Iraq. Today, that figure has climbed to more than 20,000—the bulk at the ever expanding Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.
And more than 10 percent of the troops slated to go to Iraq in President Bush's "troop surge" were military police, going overseas to guard prisoners.
As this tragedy continues, and we have already passed any line of minimizing the blowback long ago, we create not only more hatreds toward us within that entire region but also many other parts of this world.
The more that comes out, and already suspected, the more of Any Type of leadership, as to this country, is diminished greatly. We have no moral authority to condemn others for that which we ourselves are doing, Openly. The Atrosities that are committed bring there own Atrosities in return and we cannot be hypocritical and condemn others for that which we carry out in our Countries and Citizens Name, we all bare the guilt.
The shining house on the hill burnt down completely some 5yrs. ago, who will build new and hopefully learn from the gross mistakes!
Those we call Neo-Cons studied and learned lessons, the lessons from the oppressors, dictators, ideologies of communism and fascism, thinking that they and they alone could do what others have tried, Total Control, for their own wealth and power. We know some very well, others only slightly, how many are still out there hidden amoungst us!
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