"Emmanuel Gustin" wrote in message
...
"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
...
You missed some stuff--must have accidently snipped it, eh?
My habit is to snip thoroughly, leaving only in small bits as
anchors to allow readers to roughly establish track what parts
of a post a reply corresponds. I hate posts of 7,753 quoted lines
with "me too!" added to it. If you can't live with that, bad luck.
That was not a "me, too!" item you snipped. It goes directly to the question
of how the US military handles such cases, a process that you seem upset
with (that whole three day lag in kicking off the CID investigation, etc.),
versus how your own nation handles it. The US announced the investigation
was underway immediately after it began; Belgium, IIRC, only investigated
after the press raised the issue. The US immediately relieved officers in
the chain of command; I have yet to see where the Belgians did that. But you
feel quite comfortable in critiquing our process, while it is still
ongoing...?
How much time did the prosecution ask for in the case of
those two Belgian paras holding the kid over the fire? One
*month*? (They of course did not even get *that*).
I don't know how much the prosecutor asked.
One month.
The defence told
the court that the soldiers swung the boy above the fire as a
kind of rough game to frighten him a bit. Apparently there was
no evidence to prove the contrary, and in the end the court
accepted that story. With a case like that, no wise prosecutor is
going to demand a heavy sentence --- because no judge is
going to award it.
But according to you, "Whether there are limits of 'subtelity' put on the
practice is irrelevant." H'mmm...it seems you find limits unacceptable for
the US, but just fine for your folks when it comes to threatening to roast a
kid alive?!
How much time did SGT Nassel end up receiving--one single
year, IIRC (and only then after his original lesser sentence
was appealed?)?
Actually, he was acquitted in his first trial. Yes, his total
sentence was one year; I have found no record of his conviction
in the second case. The charges varied from physical violence
to organising prostitution, so it is hard to tell what he was found
guilty of without the actual record. Too lenient? Perhaps.
The court had to judge the cases on basis of the available
evidence, not on newspaper reports in the sensationalist press;
I am not willing to second-guess it on basis of the latter.
But you are quite willing to condemn our entire chain of command, up through
the SecDef at least, on the basis of similar "sensationalist press"
accounts? Are you beginning to see what i said before, about you letting
your prejudices taint your analysis of the current situation?
Oh, that's right--holding a kid over an open fire for
an extended period of time is not "torture", according
to your courts, is it?
If you have any evidence that they did so for a "prolonged period
of time" and caused actual harm to the boy, please send it to the
Belgian judiciary.
Your words: "Whether there are limits of 'subtelity' put on the practice is
irrelevant." Don't be two-faced about this.
So Belgium should be sigularly censured for failing to do anything
to the culprits involved in the Somali incidents (plural). OK. After
we have finished the courts martial proceedings against our own
miscreants, you can weigh in as to which of our respective nations
took a more hardline approach to controlling aberrant behavior.
You keep missing the point, do you -- must be accidental, eh?
The point is NOT whether the actual "miscreants" are punished
harshly. Personally, I won't object at all if US military courts
give lenient sentences to the "miscreants" of Abu Ghraib. IMHO
the major portion of the guilt rests with the people who allowed
an environment in which such abuse of prisoners became widely
tolerated and ("if done with subtlety") may even have been part
of official policy.
Nope. And don't twist my words--I have said nothing to support the acts that
our own miscreants carried out at Abu Ghraib. I hope they all get severe
sentences. I also hope that the battalion and brigade level key personnel
who either knew of the acts, or should have known of them, deserve to be
punished, be it by Article 15 or by courts martial for dereliction of duty.
But trying to link this to the SecDef is a bit ridiculous. Until you can
present convincing evidence that he was directly, or even indirectly,
*responsible*, then your accusations are groundless and just symptomatic of
your anti-Bush/Rumsfeld hysteria (exacerbated by that "sensationailst press,
no doubt--or is that a factor only when Belgians are the accused party?).
The people who transgressed into brutal abuse
of prisoners committed a crime -- but so would, in similar
circumstances, a majority of any group of people. That is the sad
reality of human nature. The Pentagon has to accept that soldiers
are only human, and design its policies and regulations accordingly.
The policies and regulations promulgated by the Pentagon are not really
subject to attack, AFAIK. Remember, it was also one of those regulations
that led a concerned soldier to report the abuse to CENTCOM in the first
place.
Brooks
--
Emmanuel Gustin
Emmanuel dot Gustin @t skynet dot be
Flying Guns Books and Site: http://users.skynet.be/Emmanuel.Gustin/