Butterfly Cauldron
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Try to do the right thing and people call you a traitor
It's apparently military day at the Cauldron. Another example of the fine mess Bush's Monkies are making. The soldier who blew the whistle on the torture at Abu Ghraib is outted by a top official, while he's still in fighting in Iraq. He has to be spirited out of the country, to prevent other soldiers from turning on him. When he gets home, even some of his own family consider him a traitor and he's forced to flee, once again, leaving his hometown for, probably, good.
Because when our soldiers are moral, it's time to kill them?
NEW YORK (AP) — The soldier who triggered the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal by sending incriminating photos to military investigators says he feared deadly retaliation by other GIs and was shocked when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mentioned his name at a Senate hearing.
Within days, Joe Darby was spirited out of Iraq at his own request. But his family was besieged by news media, and close relatives called him a traitor. Ultimately he was forced to move away from his hometown in western Maryland.
“I had the choice between what I knew was morally right and my loyalty to other soldiers. I couldn’t have it both ways,” the 27-year-old military policeman said in the just-released September issue of Gentleman’s Quarterly.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Darby said that if presented with the same circumstances at Abu Ghraib today, he would do the same thing. “It was a hard decision to make when I made it, but it had to be done,” he said.
Darby also said he later learned that Rumsfeld was not the first to identify him, and he did not see “anything intentional or malicious” on the Pentagon chief’s part.
____
Darby said he discovered the abuse photos inadvertently in January 2004 while flipping through other pictures on a CD that Graner had given him. “To this day I’m not sure why he gave me that CD,” he said. “He probably just forgot which pictures were on it, or he might have assumed I wouldn’t care.”
At first amused by some of the photos, Darby finally decided “it just didn’t sit right with me,” and sent the CD to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. Although he did so anonymously, CID agents quickly pinpointed him as the source.
Darby said he was still being interviewed when Graner and two others were brought in, and the agents had to smuggle him out wrapped in rugs and blankets to conceal his identity.
Stunned when Graner and the others returned for a month’s duty at the prison, he slept with a loaded pistol. “They’d be walking around with their weapons all day long, knowing somebody had turned them in and trying to find out who. That was one of the most nervous periods of my life,” Darby said.
His worst moment, he said, came on May 7, 2004, during lunch with 10 fellow MPs in a mess hall filled with 400 troops.
“It was like something out of a movie,” he recalled. Rumsfeld appeared on television, dropped Darby’s name, “and the guys at the table just stopped eating and looked at me. I got up and got the hell out of there.”
Only later did he learn he had been named in a New Yorker magazine article a few days earlier, he told AP in the telephone interview.
In response to queries from AP, Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said he recalled no effort to protect Darby’s identity. It was known “very early and quickly became common knowledge,” and people were “talking about his courage in coming forward,” he said.
Darby is scheduled to leave the Army and the Reserves, after eight years of duty, on Aug. 31. He no longer lives in his hometown of Cumberland, Md., where “a lot of people up there view me as a traitor. Even some of my family members think I’m a traitor.”
He said he has returned home only twice, for a wedding and his mother’s funeral.
“I’m not welcome there. People there don’t look at the fact that I knew right from wrong,” he said. “They look at the fact that I put an Iraqi before an American.”
And people say liberals hate our soldiers. I'm sure a great many of those people chasing this man out of town were good Compassion(less) Conservatives. Because an Iraqi life is worth so very much more than an American life, and well, we're over there to kill them, right? *sigh*
Because when our soldiers are moral, it's time to kill them?
NEW YORK (AP) — The soldier who triggered the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal by sending incriminating photos to military investigators says he feared deadly retaliation by other GIs and was shocked when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mentioned his name at a Senate hearing.
Within days, Joe Darby was spirited out of Iraq at his own request. But his family was besieged by news media, and close relatives called him a traitor. Ultimately he was forced to move away from his hometown in western Maryland.
“I had the choice between what I knew was morally right and my loyalty to other soldiers. I couldn’t have it both ways,” the 27-year-old military policeman said in the just-released September issue of Gentleman’s Quarterly.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Darby said that if presented with the same circumstances at Abu Ghraib today, he would do the same thing. “It was a hard decision to make when I made it, but it had to be done,” he said.
Darby also said he later learned that Rumsfeld was not the first to identify him, and he did not see “anything intentional or malicious” on the Pentagon chief’s part.
____
Darby said he discovered the abuse photos inadvertently in January 2004 while flipping through other pictures on a CD that Graner had given him. “To this day I’m not sure why he gave me that CD,” he said. “He probably just forgot which pictures were on it, or he might have assumed I wouldn’t care.”
At first amused by some of the photos, Darby finally decided “it just didn’t sit right with me,” and sent the CD to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. Although he did so anonymously, CID agents quickly pinpointed him as the source.
Darby said he was still being interviewed when Graner and two others were brought in, and the agents had to smuggle him out wrapped in rugs and blankets to conceal his identity.
Stunned when Graner and the others returned for a month’s duty at the prison, he slept with a loaded pistol. “They’d be walking around with their weapons all day long, knowing somebody had turned them in and trying to find out who. That was one of the most nervous periods of my life,” Darby said.
His worst moment, he said, came on May 7, 2004, during lunch with 10 fellow MPs in a mess hall filled with 400 troops.
“It was like something out of a movie,” he recalled. Rumsfeld appeared on television, dropped Darby’s name, “and the guys at the table just stopped eating and looked at me. I got up and got the hell out of there.”
Only later did he learn he had been named in a New Yorker magazine article a few days earlier, he told AP in the telephone interview.
In response to queries from AP, Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said he recalled no effort to protect Darby’s identity. It was known “very early and quickly became common knowledge,” and people were “talking about his courage in coming forward,” he said.
Darby is scheduled to leave the Army and the Reserves, after eight years of duty, on Aug. 31. He no longer lives in his hometown of Cumberland, Md., where “a lot of people up there view me as a traitor. Even some of my family members think I’m a traitor.”
He said he has returned home only twice, for a wedding and his mother’s funeral.
“I’m not welcome there. People there don’t look at the fact that I knew right from wrong,” he said. “They look at the fact that I put an Iraqi before an American.”
And people say liberals hate our soldiers. I'm sure a great many of those people chasing this man out of town were good Compassion(less) Conservatives. Because an Iraqi life is worth so very much more than an American life, and well, we're over there to kill them, right? *sigh*
2 Comments:
My Gawd! Rumsfield actually named him and then claimed it wasn't out of malice! Like Rummy could ever do anything that wasn't out of malice!
Some days the dispair fights with the outrage for top place.
I know that feeling too well. I know people are supposed to get more conservative as they age, but the older I get the more radical I get. At this rate, by the time I make 40 I'll be a full-blown anarchist.
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