An American detainee's story
Donald Vance, a young Navy veteran went to Iraq as a security contractor. He became a whistleblower against his employer after having witnessed illegal arms trading at the company. He worked with the FBI to expose the fraud and as a reward he was arrested himself by US troops and held in an Iraqi prison for 97 days.
He was held incommunicado, denied access to counsel and subjected to the inhumane treatment that has become all too common a story for those who are held as "enemy combatants" at the whim of our government. If not for the efforts of his finacee and family, perhaps he would still be rotting in that jail cell.
It's a harrowing story and I especially urge my right wing readers to read it all to gain an understanding of how we lost the moral high ground in the so-called war on terror.
He was held incommunicado, denied access to counsel and subjected to the inhumane treatment that has become all too common a story for those who are held as "enemy combatants" at the whim of our government. If not for the efforts of his finacee and family, perhaps he would still be rotting in that jail cell.
It's a harrowing story and I especially urge my right wing readers to read it all to gain an understanding of how we lost the moral high ground in the so-called war on terror.
posted by Libby Spencer at 11:46 AM
4 Comments:
I've heard about this before. To me, it re-affirms my belief that, by and large, the bad things that we let happen are due to incompetence rather than conspiracy. (Hanlon's Razor pertains.) People tend to think that the military, or even the government as a whole, is full of people who can do no wrong -- that's just not true. While the military might have better systems in place to fix problems once they're identified, they're still just as vulnerable to the initial screw-ups as any other very large organization. It worked the same way in '93-'00 as afterwards, btw.
Seriously, which explanation is more likely: prison administrators in Baghdad screwed up and didn't pull the strings they needed to, or Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rove personally ordered this guy held for a long time to "scare" him, and no one in the chain of command blew the whistle -- or maybe BCRR personally talked to the Sergeant guarding him?
I'm a big fan of conspiracy theories but I don't think that Bush-Cheney-Rove are sitting around micromanaging every little thing. Personally, I think the most likely scenario is that the corruption has spread somewhere up the chain of command -- those guns came from somewhere -- and that person is the one responsible for holding him and not pulling the strings needed. For jebus sake, all it would have taken would be a phone call to DC or a look at his computer.
You don't think it was a warning to other whistleblowers who want to ruin a very lucrative scam? I do. Money, especially "free" money, brings out the worst in people.
I gave no head wind to this story - all I read was "by mistake".
Looks like an engineered mistake now. Thanks for pointing it out.
You're welcome Romunov and happy holidays to you.
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