I should have mentioned that everyone in the accompanying foto was shot and killed a few minutes or even moments after the foto was taken.

The Army photographer kept the color photos for himself and sold them to Life magazine when the My Lai story broke.

Best,
Tom

Nothing knocked me out. Of everything I read, I would say the single best thing was the report of the Peers Commission. Peers actually wrote a memoir that is OK, probably not as good as the report itself, but does have some material on his reaction to the trials.

Second best is a little volume called My Lai: A Documentary History.

Finish it off by finding the talk Hugh Thompson gave at Annapolis a few years ago. He was the helicopter pilot who intervened, and in doing so may have saved several hundred lives, because there are indications that the battalion was going to hit two more villages after My Lai. When he reported what he saw to his own aviation company commander, the word went out to 'stop the killing.'

It is pretty rough stuff. My wife asked me to stop reading My Lai materials after 5 at night.

Best,
Tom

4 Hours in My Lai by Bilton and Sim was very good I thought. It did a good job of describing the climate of the company as created by Medina. Medina made a great evil thing of that company, on purpose.

I remember reading it as a 12-y.o. in Pico Rivera in 1979 or 1980. At the time I thought Hersh, Ridenour and the others who blew the whistle on the massacre were traitors, scumbags, commies...whatever. I went through a phase then in which I read everything on Vietnam I could find. I wanted, as Michael Herr wrote, to "[run] around in a fury of skill to ice Victor Charlie." (Dispatches.)

32 years, a USMC enlistment, college and three sons later, I re-read some My Lai stuff and chased some links on the Internet. As of three weeks ago, when I did this late-night reading, I was shocked, horrified, disgusted, appalled, dismayed...you get the picture. I thought about the same photograph that Mr. Ricks has posted above, and the attendant comment that the women and girls in the photo were shot, murdered, seconds after the photo was taken. There are other, worse photos, the worst for me being one of a dead little boy who somehow looks a bit like my 6 year-old son.

Now I wonder why we are going down that same path with our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is our Army really so much better now than the one that produced William Calley, Ernest Medina and their soldiers? The previous blog post mentions a lack of competence and attachment to military and foreign policy matters by our legislators. C'mon. Some of these guys were grown-ups during Vietnam, most scrambling for deferments but some with actual service. And they can't do things any better than their predecessors in the 60's?

ES3 you and I usually see eye to eye. But on this matter I will have to disagree. These are two shades of nearly the very same grey. The problem of Abu Ghraib (and I did mention it's sister problems, what I was referencing was GITMO and all the black ops places and rendition we don't know about) is 1) that we still don't have an honest reckoning 2) only the lowest of the privates involved was held accountable 3) its clear that these action(s) were authorized by the highest offices in our land.

As grim and disgusting as the murder of innocent men, women and children was at My Lai is at least they were dead and killed quickly. In the case of Abu Ghraib (and its sister problems) we have a pandemic of bad behavior and immorality - and at least some killing and torturing of innocents - stretching across the globe authorized explicitly or implicitly by authority. Even if you measure the My Lai debacle as a Battalion out of control that pales to what I am referring to. Again My Lai could be reckoned as the work of an out of control company of infantry bent on revenge. It wasn't just and it wasn't justified but you could almost see why that unit turned into those creatures.

Abu Ghraib (and its ugly sisters) has no such implication. You see frat party hijinks, I see the decimation of our moral high ground, not just on the part of one small unit of NG rubes. Nope this cancer has metastized [sp?] throughout the host. And even today with a new administration who promised we would close GITMO the horror lives on.

We as American people are supposed to be better than this. Pryer calls upon Reagan's reference to the "shining city on a hill" which was in turn referenced from Winthrop [?]. There's is no luster right now as long as crimes like these go unaccounted for. KSM was waterboarded 187 times. He deserves to be tried and hung for his crimes but he doesn't deserve to be tortured. The German's at Nuremburg who did much worse to many more people got better treatment than KSM - although they almsot all dangled from a rope before it was over.

I am thinking of Failure Modes Effects Analysis which calls on three criteria to come up with a holsitic view of a failure; severity, occurence, and detection. My Lai was a much more grievous failure (reckoning the death of several hundred Vietnamese), but it happened once and was easily detected. Abu Ghraib and events like it occured all over the place (and maybe still do) with high severity (though not as high as My Lai), and detection is virtually impossible.

No one deserves to be tortured, and it is perhaps a fate worse than death.

ERIC is spot on with this comment. It is incomprehensible to me how people can casually compare the two incidents. My Lai was precisely the type of atrocity SS Einstazgruppen did in Russia on a systematic basis and is hardly comparable to the stupid stunt of Abu Ghraib. It is also likely that My Lai was the most notorious but not the sole incident of this kind. The guilty troops should have been sentenced to life at Leavenworth and the officer’s shot to preserve the honor of the armed forces.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020801680_pf.html

No. Hunter is right on this one, as I think is clear if you carefully read his post:
1. He is not talking just about Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraib was merely the weak point where a large and systemic problem overflowed its security barrier.
2. Anyone still clinging to the few rotten NG apples story is seriously fooling themselves.

Now on the one had it is easy to say that My Lai was obviously much worse than America's global detention cluster fuck. After as many as 500 people were deliberately murdered in a short period of time.

Leave aside the unsolvable question Hunter raises of whether torture is worse than death, as far as I can tell the minimum number of detainees who have 'died' while in US custody is about 100. That is the lower bound. I somehow doubt that number includes the 3 'suicides' at GITMO.

The lower bound for My Lai according to Wikipedia is 347. So we were already almost a third of the way there several years ago. Who knows what the tally is now. At what point do the two events begin to become comparable? Lawrence Wilkerson quoted 108 in 2008, so over seven years that's about 15 people per year. If they had just spread this atrocity out over time a bit more, would it have been okay?

The comparison is not a matter of moral equivalence. The similarities come in the widespread breakdown of the system. I'm no expert on the factors that engendered the environment that made My Lai possible, but seen from this angle it could even be argued that the situation of which Abu Ghraib is but the most visible example is actually worse because it was deliberate.

I eagerly await the report that may eventually come out when I am in my dotage to explain what valuble intel was extracted from KSM during the 183rd waterboarding session, that golden nugget he steadfastly refused to divulge in all the previous sessions.

As a former Army Interrogator, who considered himself a professional practitioner of an invaluable skill, I can think of only 3 reasons for waterboarding KSM 183 times in one month that make any sense. The first two are obvious, sadism and revenge. The last is possibly the most disturbing: training dummy.

I am not going to agree with you on this one Hunter. Even if you combine all the idiocy that some of our guys have done, to include murder and rape, I do not see it as being on the same level as methodically killing innocent civilians in a village by an entire Company of US Soldiers.
The NG troops took away a lot of our credibility via their pictures and actions, the water boarding also took away even more of our moral high ground but I cannot and will not put those kind of actions on the same plane as what happened at My Lai, it simply does not add up to me. Most people look at what those troops did at Abu Ghraib and scream torture, not to diminish what those actions cost us in PR but I have had worse hazings. Now, if you want to talk about the water boarding, the other systematic torture, then while I concede you are right on that and that those actions did indeed hurt us in Iraq and even on a global level I do not compare any of those actions to My Lai. I just read the print out of Hugh Thompson when he was at the USNA, if you really want to see a failure in leadership then read that and see how many senior officers reacted with Peers being the lone exception and if he had his way heads would have and should have rolled.
(http://www.usna.edu/ethics/Publications/ThompsonPg1-28_Final.pdf)
Anyway, Hunter, I am sorry, I cannot in my mind equate the systematic slaughter of innocent women and children with what you talk of, what they did will always trump a few dozen guys getting water boarded and some idiots out of control at a prison. While the ideals of our nation were hurt by the ordered torture of some I would say our ideals of who we are were hurt even more so by our own soldiers, common American kids really, intentionally almost destroying an entire village of unarmed civilians.

KAYKURI,
What you are speaking of is a lot of rumors and conspiracy hi jinks, "suicides" in quotations with the obvious implication that they were murdered? Come on By "Your" estimate we have killed a 100 detainees? You can't pump numbers out like that without any substantial facts to back them up and be taken seriously. The facts just do not add up and while I am sure that not knowing exactly what goes on in those places only helps stir things up in many peoples minds it is simply not the case that there are crazy torture chambers all over the place. I also would take a guess that you do not know just how far some of these folks will go in fighting us. Oh, yes, everyone knows there are other case of abuse by our guys, but guess who has dimed those same guys out every single time? Other US Troops. Save the conspiracy theories for the novels.

...by Pryer. And you'll see that the desire to "take the gloves off" was widespread with a few stalwarts holding the line of moral courage and the USAs "higher ground." Prisoner abuse, enhanced interrogation techniques and waterboarding is just the tip of the iceberg of what our forces employed over there.

The NG WV patsies are just the morons who got caught. And while I know all too well the foibles of the NG, I resent the broadbrush characterization that because they were NG they were the only ones who were doing this - esp. WHEN ALL THE EVIDENCE is to the contrary. Pryer details how people were abused, checked out for missions and returned suffering from new injuries, etc.

In the end, both events greatly harmed the reputation of the USA, and greatly undermined our strategic goals in the fight. We can argue all day long about which was worse - but the only thing that matters really is that one is present, and important...and for all we know could still be ongoing.

You should know me well enough that I don't fall into the tinfoil crowd. The problems of Abu Ghraib, GITMO, and elsewhere are real and lasting. We'll be living it down for a very long time to come, esp. with people with memories as long as those that exist in the Middle East.

I am well aware that other groups did those things Hunter, what I do not agree with is that the NG should be included in the groups that were ORDERED to do those things. The NG guys acted on their own, I addressed a little bit of that in a post below. They suffered from poor training, poor leadership and poor discipline and I do not take the swipe at them in the sense that all NGs are like that, rather that they are different case. While the other incidents that happened are terrible and what makes them worse is that some were ordered from on high the Abu Ghraib incident is pretty much it's own monster and those guys did not take their cues from anyone but their own internal leaders and they continued due to a lack of oversight by their other superiors outside of the direct CoC.
Regardless, I do not see how you can compare the slaughter of a village with those actions by intelligence services. I just cannot in my mind equate water boarding of prisoners to killing women and children.

"In the end, both events greatly harmed the reputation of the USA, and greatly undermined our strategic goals in the fight. We can argue all day long about which was worse - but the only thing that matters really is that one is present, and important...and for all we know could still be ongoing" I know you are not a tin foil hat guy, hope I did not imply that in my post, really, never meant to, I am pretty blunt, I would say a snarky remark if I was, so hope that you did not take the comments aimed at others as coming in your direction.
Look, I guess I am just not as upset about something like the water boarding and the implicationsit had as I am the My Lai incident, one happens to a person who is an enemy and who does far worse to our prisoners and they are left alive, the other is done to innocent women and children, unarmed and does not leave them alive.

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for... oh, whoops! Already had one foot in the grave!

That's really the only difference between My Lai and Abu Ghraib. The only reason those heathens didn't wind up killing some of the prisoners was that they were inside the wire of an American compound with too many people watching. If they'd been out in the jungle like Calley's platoon, they'd have done the same thing.

You can't treat a human being like that, snap photos of it like you're at MTV Spring Break and tell me you have an ounce of respect for that person's life. Everyone involved with that debacle should have been reclassed to an MOS of making little rocks out of big rocks and reassigned to Leavenworth for life.

Everyone at My Lai from Calley up to the Division Commander should've gotten an electric chair equipped with a dimmer switch.

Which is fine. There's a lot going on nowadays and perhaps this particular subject doesn't concern you personally as much as it does me. I forget whether you are still in active service, but if so it's quite possible that you have literally been living in a hole in the ground. But just because you ignore it doesn't make it go away. And don't think for a moment that all those hearts and minds we are trying to win over are not paying attention.

And I am certainly not making this stuff up. The figure of ~100 deaths is pretty much documented common knowledge at this point, from testimony and the CIA's own IG report etc. It's the number that the USG *admits* to, which is why it represents the lower bound.

And this argument, "I also would take a guess that you do not know just how far some of these folks will go in fighting us" is wearing particularly thin. Moral equivalence much? I'm plenty familiar with the gruesome barbarity of these bastards, which is precisely why I believe they should be put down using the most effective methods possible. Honestly, as a former HUMINT collector this whole strategically inept business offends me more on a professional level than on a moral level, though there is that too. And this is the kicker: the moral bit flows directly back into the strategic bit. If we STILL(!) don't get this at such a late stage, then pack it in and bring 'em home.

Guess what? I'm busy too, so I don't have time to recount the whole sordid tale for the umpteenth time. So here's a few starter links:
1. The 108 figure was reported as far back as 2005, so it's kinda dated, likely from the CIA's 2004 IG report: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/16/terror/main680658.shtml
2. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to SecState Colin Powell testified to no. 1 in 2008: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/18/ex-state-dept-official-hundreds-of-detainees-died-in-us-custody-at-least-25-murdered/
3. This from a journalist who has dedicated himself to this issue: http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/07/01/when-torture-kills-ten-murders-in-us-prisons-in-afghanistan/
4. The link to Glenn Greenwald's piece is broken in no. 3 above, so here's that one: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/06/30/accountability
5. Full 2006 report from Human Rights First, Command?'s Responsibility
Detainee Deaths in U.S. Custody in Iraq and Afghanistan:http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf/06221-etn-hrf-dic-rep-web.pdf
6. And here's one from just last year on the Guantanamo suicides (quotation marks omitted at your request): http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/03/0082865. Three detainees dead at GITMO under less than conclusive circumstances, which was spun as some sort of asymmetrical IO op. So we ship the boys home to their families, minus their "throat organs" just to clear up any lingering questions. Those are merely the undisputed facts.

Every bit of history and doctrine of interrogation says that torture is *not* the most effective method (good vs. evil notwithstanding). The Bush administration made every effort to ignore every professional interrogator, weaken the rule of law where it could, and circumvent the rule of law where it could not in an effort to "take the gloves off" as part of the "1% doctrine". That deliberate campaign, in my opinion, is the most salient difference between My Lai and our torture policies, and that is why I believe there is a valid comparison in severity between the two. It's fine if you don't agree, but to write off the magnitude of the torture scandal is to put your head in the sand.

p.s. You can complain, if you wish, that most of the griping comes from liberal sources, but these are just the easiest to find from a quick Google search. There's plenty more from current and retired officers, professional interrogators, and sane conservatives. It's not my fault the GOP has become the pro-torture party (Bauer/Palin 2012, "Dont Retreat, Tighten the Screws!")

Kaykuri, you implied that the 100+ who died were the result of torture, then implied that the guys at Gitmo who died were also of course killed by our guys. The chances of keeping that quiet in our military are about close to slim and none if there was a concerted effort to cover up these deaths. Now, you can argue that they are a string of incidents and that hence it is not a concerted effort but then we are of course back again to people keeping their mouths shut, not the reality of the world in intel, SOF or any group like that really, it ALWAYS comes out. In the end you have conspiracy theories, conjencture and that is about it.

Jim, I totally agree with you on the guys at My Lai, should have been shot or hung in my opinion but the Military is and was at that time not very harsh and IMHO if they had killed a few of those folks and imprisoned the rest at Hard Labor it might have sent a shock wave through the ranks. The Abu Ghraib thing, man, maybe it is just me but I do not see those guys increasing their actions to the point of murder, the things they did were mostly humiliation and involved some abuse in a physical and psychological form but I do not think they would have evolved into outright killing those folks even if away from the area, to many folks in their group already were diming them out about the things they were already doing. I am just not sure they would have gone that far, but maybe I am an optomist. An abuser or jackass does not necessarily equal a murderer.

You need to read up on this Eric, though it will not cheer you up.

I said that ~100 detainees died while in our custody. I put "died" in scare quotes because even the DoD admits that 25-27 of those were homicides. I'm not sure how many other more reasonable ways for a detainee under our custody can die, but I don't think it's old age.

And take a good look at the Harper's story re: the Guantanamo suicides. That is precisely an example of a former guard diming them out, as you predict. Poke holes in that story wherever you like. I make no claims to special knowledge, but I was a pretty good interrogator and the official line looks fishy at the very least. When the CoC, the DoJ and everybody else simply refuses to investigate--to just move on--then what have you got?

The Obama Admin. has shamefully signed on to the "we don't do this anymore, moving on..." plan. That's what leaves these things in conspiracy theory land. They have decided to sweep the rest under the rug, and I'll bet there is a lot more under there.

Look, I try to avoid engaging with conspiracy folks, as for the Harpers article, that has been argued on here in the past, Slate took it to task twice and I agrued it for a while with another person a lot like yourself, if it re-enforced his premise he believed it. It was on this blog as a matter of fact, odd. Your attempts to link a few cases of nefarious conduct to a vast conspiracy that you initially said was over a hundred folks and while I read other POVs because you cannot argue against it if you do not know where the other person is coming from it does not mean I take you seriously, I can't. I do not mean that as a snarky remark, I just cannot take conjecture, hyperbole, rumors and theory against what I know, have seen and done and treat it in a serious manner, it becomes a circular argument if you do, there is always the next conspiracy, the next theory, etc...etc...it eventually becomes pointless, that persons ideas are never going to change no matter how much you talk to them, point out flaws in their ideas or argument, it does not matter. Get back to me when you want to talk about the reality of what is going on, the actual problems we face in those places, how to address the problems that have happened and do it without somehow linking it to the GOP, all that does is expose your motivation.

FG42, I see your point and it contains much merit. However, the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS committed atrocities against civilians from June 22, 1941 to the end of the war. In fact Soviet troops pretty much matched them if in a more spasmodic and less ideological manner. I suppose that was the nature of the lunacy that passed for war on the Eastern Front. In fact the Japanese more than matched the Germans in systematic genocide in their rampage through China and Southeast Asia.

I do not see Abu Ghraib that way, I see them the same way that you see the troops at My Lai, poorly lead, terrible discipline and I am know that the NG at least had terrible training. As for the intentional torture of the people we captured via waterboarding, fair enough, a point well taken but the Abu Ghraib incident needs to be looked at for what it was and not excused as a sign that those troops were taking their cues from higher ups, that does not jive with the testimony of the people who exposed them. The folks at Abu Ghraib were left to their own devices and are almost a text book example of the Stanford Prison Experiment. You guys want to lump in the authorized torture by our gov't as a terrible example of leadership and something that hurt us as a nation, cannot argue but let's not act like the folks at Abu Ghraib were even in that circle.

ESIII, I don't think anyone would disagree with your assessment of the horrific nature of My Lai and the command culpability behind it. But I think the Michael V+9's comment higher up this thread hits the basic fact that we tend to get hung up on the symptoms of a particular atrocity, maybe fall victim to the instant spin without seeing the social and cultural disease that these incidents are. The My Lai incident wasn't in a vacuum, graphic horror splashed throughout the combat of the 60's. Hunter speaks of the disease to the bones that Abu Ghraib only represents.

Bottom line, this stuff has existed for quite awhile. I believe if we all tried, not even hard, abuse (neh, murder) of prisoners of US troops goes back beyond the 1940's but certainly we inflicted the same upon German and Japanese captives during battle. Americans are not saints and certainly not in battle.

You also state that "(e)very incident that has happened over there (Iraq)...has been exposed.... I really hope you aren't that naive to believe that.

Eric,

The whole torture thing, even Abu Ghraib itself, is simply not as clear cut and self-contained as you are arguing. There is evidence that these administration-approved "frat house" tactics, as you describe them, were transferred to Abu Ghraib from GITMO.

From the WaPo in 2005, "Abu Ghraib Tactics Were First Used at Guantanamo": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR2005071302380.html
"Interrogators at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, forced a stubborn detainee to wear women's underwear on his head, confronted him with snarling military working dogs and attached a leash to his chains, according to a newly released military investigation that shows the tactics were employed there months before military police used them on detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq."

"[GITMO commander] Miller traveled to Iraq in September 2003 to assist in Abu Ghraib's startup, and he later sent in "Tiger Teams" of Guantanamo Bay interrogators and analysts as advisers and trainers."

".... I really hope you aren't that naive to believe that."
This stuff has been going on long before that, if you are in an assault you do not take prisoners, sorry, that is the reality, you do not have time and yet some would say that is wrong, is it? You will just get yourself killed and others around you if you stop to play that game in the middle of fight.
As for Prisoners or others being murdered, there are well documented cases going long before WWII. My Lai is on the scale of something else though, it really is, it is as bad as what troops did to the American Indians, they just killed women and children out of hate and frustration, period. As for the troops exposing it today, that has been the case so far and while I am sure there are incidents still to come to light I am also sure that those who bring it to light will be another Troop or Troops. Yes, there might be a few who go to their graves with some horrible thing they did in I am sure what are sensitive eyes on here but they will be rare, people cannot keep thier mouth shut. see it all the time at my level, it just happens so while some may never come to light most will. They always do.

Eric, I totally get why any comparison bugs you, and I apologize for my occasional snarky tone on such a serious subject (gotta laugh to keep from cryin' sometimes). But the main reason you see such a wide moral gulf between the two is that you seem to believe that we only tortured bad guys. That is one of the more persistent myths surrounding this tragedy and it is simply not true.

Good Buddy, I say it again: We ain't saints. We paid the devil to make The Awakening happen; it was the (seemingly) only viable option to spin OIF into a "win". Free Fire Zones in RVN, Arc Light strikes, No Gun Ri, Dresden bombing... tell me these weren't horrific incidents for those on the receiving end.

No one here is pissing on your parade; but comparison of 'which incident was worse' is a fool's game. We all who have been down range known the score, therefore we know what needs to be exposed and fixed.

As I have read the many threads on TBD lately, at face value, it seems the posters are a bunch of whiney America haters. But it is quite the contrary. Put out for the world to see, is some very very naked truth, spoken by those who have been in the thick of it and lived to attempt to shed some light. I know you are one of those as well.

My Lai, Abu Ghraib, abc, xyc, it all needs to be told again and again--for the purpose of redemption. If not...its time to dismantle the statue in NYC harbor and ship it back to France.

GSF,
Brother, I never said we were Saints and I think it is a fools errand to fight a war as one, that being said, I look at the totality of what has happened and who exposed those things. Abu Ghraib for instance was under investigation long before it was in the Media, it was under investigation due to a soldier exposing it and almost all of the other incidents have been exposed as well via another troop. I also look at it like this, we have had hundreds of thousands of men pass through both theaters, we have acted with a great deal of restraint and discipline. The guys have acted great, will stuff happen? Of course, but look at the big picture, it is hardly time to talk of returning the Statue of Liberty. It was American troops who exposed the crimes that have happened, it has been American Troops who have done some amazing things to save lives in those countries too, it should give you comfort if anything. Yeah, the administration and their Strategy has not always been up to snuff but it does not mean it is a cancer that is somehow spreading through the Military, look at My Lay, soldiers willing to fire on others to prevent what happened. Don't think there are not self corrections in todays military too.

Kaykuri,
I tend to get a bit snarky and speak in a downward fashion too but that happens ;) Oh, and yes, I see a huge moral gulf, I also know that those who were water boarded lived, those at My Lai, not so much for the most part. As far as innocent folks being rounded up by Americans, that is actually a myth, if you make it to Gitmo you have been screened so many times it would make your head spin. If you want to say a bounty policy encouraged certain innocents to get rounded up early in the war, fine, that happened but they were let go and it is not the same as what you imply.

Eric,

I am seriously not trying to convince you that My Lai and Abu Ghraib/torture are morally equivalent. It is irrelevant whether they are or not. But you seem to think that our problems with our detention policies are not such big deal, whereas I think it the big picture there rises to the same level. You clearly feel strongly about My Lai, while others may argue that the massacre of civilians is also as old as war itself.

Meanwhile, I get a little incensed on the torture issue because it relates to me personally as I have touched upon. When I was an Army interrogator, probably 20% of my job was to train line units in prisoner handling. You mention that combat infantry units don't have much time for prisoners, and I would never disagree with that. But when they do take prisoners, those prisoners have value and my job was to try to encourage hypercharged infantrymen not to abuse them right after a nasty fight. Nor to let every swingin' Jack Bauer wannabe have a crack at them. They don't have to be coddled, but they should not be abused. That treatment may or may not be right or wrong, but the main reason we do that is because it is the best way to get good intelligence. That, to me, is the most important thing in this fight.

Moreover, I would argue that there are aspects of the torture scandal that *arguably* make it a deeper problem even than My Lai. E.g. this is what John Yoo, Bush's lawyer and author of the "torture memo", said during a DoJ OPR interview about his advice to the CINC:

"What about ordering a village of resistants to be massacred? ... Is that a power that the president could legally—"

"Yeah," Yoo replied, according to a partial transcript included in the report. "Although, let me say this: So, certainly, that would fall within the commander-in-chief's power over tactical decisions."

"To order a village of civilians to be [exterminated]?" the OPR investigator asked again.

"Sure," said Yoo.
http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/2010/02/19/report-bush-lawyer-said-president-could-order-civilians-to-be-massacred.html#

It's not just a systemic failure, there was a deliberate campaign to loosen the reins straight from the top. My Lai was a horrific crime. It was covered up, it got exposed, some people got busted. It's terrible, but I don't recall anyone reinterpreting the law to say it was okay. I hope relating this directly to My Lai explains why I think it's such a big deal.

BTW, in a public debate with a human rights scholar Yoo also said the following:

"Cassel: If the president deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?

Yoo: No treaty.

Cassel: Also no law by Congress — that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo…

Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that."
http://www.gawaher.com/index.php?showtopic=37801&mode=linearplus
[Among many links, I chose one from an "Islamic forum", because everyone is listening.]

It is all how you frame it, the post you just put out has a reasoned argument and while Yoo is a valid target and his comments are what most would call "disturbing", the target in most of the posts has been the average grunt and the military as a whole. Go look at the majority of the posts and not a one, including your own prior to this were targeted at such a narrow area, they pretty much implicated the US Military and to a lesser degree our intel services with of course the hats tipped to the Bush Administration, they also attempted to equate My Lai with Abu Ghraib and the water boarding that went on.
Look, innocents are not at Gitmo, that is a fallacy. Did the intel services and others get out of hand, yes, but not a scale that would justify some of the comments on here and compare to My Lai or the lack of CoC in that and other past incidents. It just does not hold water. What a lot of these posts have really been about are peoples personal frustrations and disdgust with what Bush did and why we got involved in Iraq in the first place, not much of it is really related to the topic of My Lai, it is a far reach in my eyes to even have the two compared. I get that a lot of people are looking for an out at Bush, OIF and how it was handled but the scale is way off in my view.

I don't know where you're getting this from: "the target in most of the posts has been the average grunt and the military as a whole." And I really don't know where you're getting this from: "What a lot of these posts have really been about are peoples personal frustrations and disgust with what Bush did and why we got involved in Iraq in the first place."

What we are talking about was was widespread, systemic US policy, originating from the very top. It created a permissive climate that was abused in a perfectly predictable fashion. It was in Afghanistan, Iraq, GITMO, and black sites around the globe. It involved everybody, POTUS and his cabinet, DoJ, the Intel Community, civilian contractors and, yes, the military. Why should John Yoo be a valid target but the military gets a pass for their participation? It's okay to bust on the NG, but not on the full timers? I don't get it. This thing is big, that's why it's talked about way.

"If you want to say a bounty policy encouraged certain innocents to get rounded up early in the war, fine, that happened but they were let go and it is not the same as what you imply."

What is it you think I am implying? I quoted the official number (108) of detainees that have died while in our custody. Of those, the Pentagon admits that up to 27 were homicides. I am struggling to find ways to state this any more clearly. You say that those who were waterboarded did not die, and last I heard we allegedly only waterboarded 3 people. So there's 3 people who were tortured but did not die. Therefore they are not included in the 108 figure. Thank heaven for small blessings, I guess.

You have stated twice now that there are no innocents in GITMO. Well, I think you're going to have to do better than just repeating this. You don't like the general, so let's get specific. Dilawar the taxi driver was innocent, at least according to him and his interrogators. He was not let go. Nor was he sent to GITMO, because he was beaten to death at Bagram. His three passengers, however, were transferred to GITMO and held for 15 months before being sent home with a note saying they were not a threat.

So what I see here is one innocent who was tortured to death. I believe he is counted in the official tally so one down and up to 26 to go. I also see here 3 other innocents tortured and then sent to GITMO, finally released.

That's one example. Are there more? Lots of people who have done lots of research seem to think so, but I'm linked out for tonight. If you've got something enlightening to share, please do so.

p.s. I dug up all the links you mentioned about the Harper's piece. I had read Shafer (very weak) and Lithwick on Slate. I hadn't read Joe Carter, so thanks for that. He's stronger, but pretty much takes the NCIS report at face value, while other have problems with it. Your previous convo with Norwegian Shooter on this blog pretty much went nowhere, but I guess I can see why you were hesitant to repeat that. Haven't had a chance to get through the full NCIS report myself so I remain unconvinced one way or the other, but if the official line was my source's story it would be suspect. And I am pretty sure that to date the families of the deceased have not received any of the throat organs. So that's cool. But whatever, let's stipulate for now that it was a martyrdom op and the next time I see you we can celebrate over drinks that these three deaths are not on our collective conscience.

Here is the problem with your numbers, there is no proof, only conjecture as to how they died. As for the Taxi Driver, that is another conjecture driven documentary that I got to see via Itunes, again, not proof that our guys did it, a lot of unanswered questions still but hardly a slam dunk for your argument. You attempt to say that not everyone at GITMO was guilty by using a man who never went there and instead was killed at Bagram, not a good way to make the arugment and link it to GITMO. When someone is captured they get screened by us, then the locals and then they go to another spot, usually Afghani, most of the time they are let go unfortunately. As for GITMO, they are screened over and over again, if there are some innocent folks down there I wonder why I do not see a daily cry for their freedom except to imply that they are held without charges (as if this was a criminal action and not war) or that no one should be there at all. Even the child that was there, killed a Delta Operator with a grenade, was training at an AQ camp and was no lamb in the woods.
I am well aware that early on there were a lot of problems with Afghani's using the bounty to settle personal scores and what not, that has changed and that was not us.

As for the target in a lot of these posts, many peoples tone and posting think it is a systemic rot of our mission and soul over there and talk about how the Gov't was ordering it, I have been down this road before. Many a poster on here loathe Bush and his policies, understandable about Iraq and the water boarding but some will use it as an excuse to vent, that goes with the territory on this board, I get it. When people imply that it is much worse than we know, who do you think they are talking about when they do that? Who do you think they are talking about that would be doing those things? It would be our guys, not some administration suit, it would be our guys acting out due to poor leadership from the top, ie; in that vein, even Abu Ghraib can be looked at as though it is the fault of the administration and some on here I think see it that way, I of course do not, I think those guys would have done that either way and due to local leadership lapses. Who else could they be talking about that is rotted? That would be perfroming those types of acts? I am sure many do not look at it that way when they write it and their intended target is the policy and administration that got this ball rolling but in the end the only people who could be performing those actions by taking the so called cues from those policies and leadership tones are the troops.

As for the Harper and Slate articles, that is the point, for everything you can take up there are always counter-arguments. I have been in the military to long to think a concerted conspiracy could be pulled off, I know the capabilities of our folks and our intel services, sorry, 100+ deaths would not be something that would last long in the sun light if it was indeed murder. It is not that I do not think we are capable of such darkness, I know we are, I just do not think we are capable of being good enough to get away with it on that scale and my time with our intel services in 4 tours only re-enforces that opinion.

Yeah, there are a few of them on here. I don't lump you in with them, I saw a lot of your early posts and started to roll my eyes but I can see that you are just very passionate about the topic of torture and our culpability in it. I think your premise is wrong and I do not agree with it nor do I think it has a lot of traction in a lot of areas but we can agree to disagree.
As for the topic at hand, I just cannot for the life of me and never will equate the My Lai incident with anything I know of since the time of the American Indian Wars. I think a lot of people are looking at this in the abstract, picture yourself given the choice of waterboarding someone or even being waterboarded to throwing a grenade in a ditch that you know is full of kids, then moving on from that, shooting women and children as they run from you and not stopping until ordered to do so and threatened by your own troops. One is done with the sincere belief that it might save lives, the other for no more reason than what seemed to joy from the testimony. Then look at the CYA trail that began almost instantly post My Lai, Peers was a big reason the CYA ceased. Compare that to what happened at Abu Ghraib and the other incidents we have had. People who think the two are the same have not been on the pointy end of the spear enough I think or forget what it is like.

The Germans are made to remember the Holocaust every day 70 years later. I don't think we've passed the statute of limitations on My Lai or Abu Ghraib by a longshot.

This is a great discussion. It might be possible to draw limitless parallels between My Lai and the current state of affairs, just as it might be possible to show limitless differences. However one common and disturbing thread I see is how the chain of command up to the White House has well learnt the fine art of CYA. The ad hoc, amateurish, knee jerk cover-up of My Lai has matured into a default protective position on the part of senior and junior leadership anytime anything bad happens. Cover-up, spin and denial has been perfected and institutionalized. The lesson from My Lai is not "Never Again"; it is "Don't Get Caught, Or At Least Cover Your Ass." That those murderers from the 101st are being or have been prosecuted is because that was an easy decision: clearly no higher-ups were involved or felt the need to cover up the murders. Those scum went off the reservation but I think there has been an official US policy that turns a blind eye to infractions of international and military law. Rigid adherence to the letter and the spirit of the law has been sacrificed on the altar of paranoia, moral cowardice, hatred and vengeance.

My Lai hasn't given us responsible command authority courts-martial a la Nuremberg; rather, it has given us Abu Ghraib, Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman et al. Not that any of those incidents were as materially or physically terrible as My Lai, but the ingrained and reflexive denial policy, to the fabrication/destruction/falsification of evidence, is well-established. It is the moral climate that despairs me just as much as the denial of rights to the innocent. When we have ceded moral high ground to the enemy, everything else about strategy, tactics, policy and execution becomes moot and quite pointless.

Ask yourself this Hunter,
Do you think abuse is still somehow widespread in the Armed Forces?

@@NO, I'm not sure what widespread constitutes. I think that on the whole our troops have gotten the message. There will be outliers. Witness the Stryker BDE soldiers accused of killing for sport in Afghanistan.

Do you think that Abu Ghraib was somehow the fault of anyone else but those troops that performed those actions and their immediate CoC?

@@YES. I think these soldiers were directed by CIA or other contractors and MI personnel to do some (if not all) the 'softening techniques'. IIRC the Taguba file indicates it thus. Regardless, per my example, I got a letter of reprimand for accidentally allowing soldiers to leave post in Hungary. Far less was received by most of the officers in the chain of command at Abu Ghraib, for a much more grevious offense. Laughable.

Do you think that waterboarding or enhanced interrogation techinqiues should never be used and what exactly constitutes enhanced techniques? Yelling? Sleep Deprivation? Psychological Games?

@@Pretty much NONE OF THE ABOVE. These are torture. defined as 1a : anguish of body or mind : agony b : something that causes agony or pain 2: the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, COERCE (my emphasis), or afford sadistic pleasure.

Do we treat these folks as POWs or non-designated, non-uniformed, non-state Guerillas?

@@POWs. It is an established standard, put into place by the Geneva and Hague Conventions to prvent this kind of questioning. The minute we went down this trail we were doomed to fail. These conventions do as much to protect our soldiers from themselves (don't commit atrocities) as they do to protect a soldier from their foes.

Do you know what is and what is not ok for current troops to ask and how to use approaches in interrorgation?

@@Certainly. I also know the distinctions between tactical questioning, interrogation, and torture. Read the Scharff story to understand how one can get actionable intelligence while doing nothing more than 'deceiving' the detainee. Read the Herrington [sp?] forward to Pryer's book to see how Saddam's generals were treated during Desert Storm to see what passes for proper treatment of other people, esp. in order to earn their faith and learn the things you need to.

Now, do not explode at this post, take your time and think about these things, I think if you are honest and look at this you will understand that things have changed radically and some I do not agree with but none the less, they are the rules.

@@ Why would I explode? I know I am right in this matter. Nothing needed to change if we didn't have waffling at the top (MNC-I, White House, etc.). We knew the rules, then we decided to break them. No one wants to play Monopoly with the guy who cheats or throws away the instructions when it suits them. Why should this be any different?

...maybe we can finish with them.

This guy died at the hands of an interrogator. Likely OGA. Read the story too. It's got the trifecta of abuse, death and coverup.

http://www.salon.com/news/abu_ghraib/2006/03/14/chapter_5/index.html

Yeah, that is old news and I am WELL aware of what happened in that case, the OGA tried to pin it on the SEALs and they went back at them with pics and how he was when they had the PUC. Hunter, tell me if I am wrong, do you think that one is a hundred?
The NGs later attempting to say that they were told to do what they did by higher ups but yet could not ID or name anyone who gave them these directions? Come on, they scream of saving their own asses.

The last para. in the article clearly states that LTC Jordan and Pappas had a discussion about how if Pappas goes down the boys from Langley will go down too. You think they didn't know who they were talking about? - yet no OGA names are listed.

Look at all those pics and tell me if they are really all the kinds of pics you'd expect from the joes. There's too many and there's too many of the same thing, and too many of entirely contrived nature to be just the simple candids of a joe collecting for his sick scrapbook. Graner and his buddies probably took some of those pics to document, some to CYA, some becauser they're sickos. It doesn't matter. Taguba and others mentioned the impact of OGAs.

Guess it didn't happen. Certainly no one but the PFCs, SPCs and SGTs were held accountable. And that sits well with an NCO like yourself ESIII? Karpinski lost her star - which she barely had - and then wrote a whiny "I didn't know what was going on" book.

All of them should have been in the DB at Leavenworth, swapping war stores in the quad and spit in the showers. (Sorry uncalled for, but this subject is getting me fired up).

It is just old news, I know the story very well and that topic has been taken up on this blog many, many times. I know that guy was killed as a result of the OGA, never said it did not ever happen just that I do not buy every story or that every death is intentional just because someone is in our hands.