After the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, didn’t the Americans say it would be closed down? Whatever happened to that idea?

And what precisely happens after all the scenarios have been gone through? Do the trainers say, yup that is right, whatever you thought is ok. Or do they talk about each situation and why the initial responses were or were not appropriate?

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The U.S. military confirmed on Thursday that its soldiers killed a Reuters journalist in Iraq but said their action was “appropriate.”

Describing Sunday’s incident, when television soundman Waleed Khaled was killed by multiple shots, Major General Rick Lynch said: “That car approached at a high rate of speed and then conducted activity that in itself was suspicious. There were individuals hanging outside with what looked to be a weapon.

“It stopped and immediately put itself in reverse. Again suspicious activity. Our soldiers on the scene used established rules of engagement and all the training received … decided that it was appropriate to engage that particular car.

Reminded me of this (from Juan Cole’s blog):

One of the ways we train our Marines is by going over scenarios with them. In one, I propose that they are traveling down the highway in a convoy. As they approach an overpass, they see a MAM (military age male) standing on the middle of the overpass with something about the size of a baseball (grenade-sized) in his hands. When he sees the convoy, he freezes. What should you do? Most of the Marines will say, “He’s demonstrated hostile intent, you need to waste him. He could be holding a hand grenade and be intending to drop it into one of the trucks as you pass under.” (This is an actual tactic used by the insurgents).

I change the scenario and say that when he sees you, he drops to the ground on the overpass. Some Marine will invariably answer, to the acclaim of his fellow Marines, “That’s a hostile act. He’s taking cover because he’s about to detonate an IED on you. You need to take him out.” (Also something they’ve actually seen.)

Finally, I change the scenario to say that, when he sees you, he turns around in the direction from which he came and starts running off the overpass (you can see where this is going). The answer is usually that that too is a hostile act or hostile intent because he is clearly trying to get off that overpass before the IED goes off.

Apparently, the only safe action for the MAM to take is to have Scotty beam him up. As far as some Marines are concerned, the presence of an Arab male in proximity to an American convoy may be all you need to find hostile act/hostile intent. This is, of course, highly reminiscent of that quip in Michael Herr’s Dispatches, “The ones who run are VC. The ones who don’t run are well-disciplined VC.”

I don’t see the above quotes as “selective” at all, except in the sense that all quoting is selective when it does not reproduce the entire article. Plus, Jon linked to the original. I don’t see how Jon could have selected other quotes that would have told a differnt story, because the military will not tell its side of the story, it will not even allow the detained men to know why they are being detained. Such is the price of secrecy, I suppose, but you can hardly blaim people for being suspicious. There is a long history of military occupiers imprisoning people without charges. Much of the time, these decisions are based on political rather than security reasons. We must be wary.

Catfish

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