By GottaLaff
This week, in various private conversations I've had, I've compared the Roman Polanski controversy to that of the potential prosecution of those responsible for torturing Gitmo and Abu Ghraib prisoners. The arguments are similar: Don't look back, look forward, water under the bridge, it's been so long, that was yesterday, enough already, it will open a can of worms, blahblahblah.
Using that logic, if I commit a crime, and I wait long enough, it doesn't count any more? If I'm famous enough, or rich enough, or have the right people on my side, my criminal behavior will be ignored and/or forgiven? Really?
As my pal Lt. Col. Barry Wingard has told me for months, it's the military who has been on the right side of the following, and he knows a thing or two about a thing or two:
On Aug. 24, Holder ordered a federal prosecutor to review the Bush administration Justice Department's decisions not to prosecute CIA personnel who broke the agency's own rules in their zeal to wring information from suspected terrorists.
Holder didn't ask for indictments or a full investigation, only for a "preliminary review." But the response from defenders of the Bush administration was immediate and deafening. [...]
What are the excesses being looked at? In several cases, detainees died as an apparent result of their jailers' acts. One froze to death, chained to the floor of an unheated cell in the Afghan winter. Another died after his interrogator bludgeoned him with a flashlight. (That was the one case that did prompt prosecution; the interrogator was convicted.) [...]
Holder hasn't had a lot of support for his investigation. A few Democrats in Congress and, oddly, former Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales applauded the move, but not the White House, where some aides privately made it clear that they wished the attorney general's conscience hadn't bothered him so much.
But help for the beleaguered attorney general arrived last week from an unexpected quarter: a group of retired generals and admirals who want to restore more stringent respect for the rule of law in the culture of our national security agencies. [...]
Some of its members met with Holder last week to offer their support for his efforts to close the detention facility at Guantanamo as well as for his position on the CIA inquiry, and they said he was grateful. [...]
It was Abu Ghraib that brought the military men together, they said -- their anguish over how far Army soldiers had strayed from the traditional rules for treatment of prisoners of war, even in an ugly battle zone like Iraq.
Their arguments are straightforward: The rule of law should apply even in a war against lawless terrorists, and the CIA should be held to the same standard of accountability as the soldiers who were tried for what they did at Abu Ghraib.
"I'm amazed at my former colleagues in the intelligence community who think [Holder's decision] is a terrible thing," said retired Army Lt. Gen. Harry E. Soyster, former chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency. "If accountability is going to discourage CIA officers from doing their jobs, then we have the wrong culture."
"In the military, we're told to follow the rules," Taguba said. "We expect that our civilian leaders will do the same."
Taguba doesn't hide his bitterness that soldiers and officers were tried for what they did at Abu Ghraib, but the CIA personnel who encouraged them to break the rules weren't.
There's an element here of the age-old culture clash between the uniformed military, with its detailed field manuals and bright-line rules, and the clandestine service of the CIA, with its long tradition of pushing the envelope.
But for these retired officers, the notion that any branch of the U.S. government can invoke the Roman Polanski rule -- that if your work is important enough, you shouldn't be treated like an ordinary criminal -- is dangerous. [...]
A force that doesn't enforce its own rules will quickly turn into undisciplined rabble. And Krulak notes that American parents send their children to the military to make them better people; if they come home both brutalizers and brutalized, the military has broken that promise.
And they say one other thing: Higher-ups should be held accountable too. David M. Brahms, a retired Marine one-star general who now practices law in Carlsbad, can recite from memory a line from the 1950 officers manual commissioned by Gen. George C. Marshall: "When an officer winks at any degradation by his men, it is no different than if he had committed the act." [...]
"I thought we were supposed to be the home of the brave, not the home of the fearful," said retired Gen. David M. Maddox, a former commander of Army forces in Europe, dismissing the hysteria about holding detainees on the mainland.
Lest you think the retired officers have a political motive, they aren't all Democrats; Krulak, for one, is an outspoken Republican. Indeed, they say one of their concerns now is making sure President Obama keeps his word on closing the Guantanamo facility and resolving the detainee cases as soon as possible.
Obama and Holder are lucky to have such friends, none of them gun-shy, to speak on their behalf -- and to hold their feet to the fire.
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Lt. Col. Barry Wingard is a military attorney who represents Fayiz Al-Kandari in the Military Commission process and in no way represents the opinions of his home state. When not on active duty, Colonel Wingard is a public defender in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found here; That link includes one specific to only Fayiz al-Kandari's story here. Here are audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.
If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.
If you'd like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.
Then read Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side. You'll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I'm all over the CIA deception issues, too.
More of Fayiz's story here, at Answers.com.
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