A few days later, we receive word that our unit is having a formation in the main hall. This, too, is extremely odd. We all assemble in the hall that doubles as our unit gym. The first sergeant calls us to attention and then turns the formation over to the commander. The captain dispenses with the military formality and begins to rant at us immediately.
"I just came back from Brigade Headquarters with all the other company commanders, where General Karpinski chewed our asses about all these goddamn rumors going around! You all need to stamp this talk out! Immediately. Apparently there's word going around that some MPs were doing some things they weren't supposed to be doing and somebody took pictures of it all. You don't need to be writing about this to your families, you don't need to be telling them on the phone, and you don't need to be talking about it to each other. You better stop spreading these goddamn rumors!"
The commander pauses for a moment and then switches tactics, becoming suddenly congenial and chummy, "Look, we're all a family here. We don't air our dirty laundry in public. If we have a problem within the military, then we'll handle it internally. We don't need to let the media and the civilians into our business. If you have photos that you're not supposed to have, get rid of them. Don't talk about this to anyone, don't write about it to anyone back home. We're a family and we're going to handle this like a family. I don't want to hear any more of this kind of talk in my unit. You all just focus on going home in March, hoo-ah!"
Hoo-ah, we responded. The commander rambles on for a bit and then dismisses us. As I leave, I wonder what could have possibly gotten the entire base so worked up. There's no doubt now that everything we've heard about is true, and it must be even worse than we thought, for the commander himself to get on our backs about it. All a family? I laugh. We're only a family when the captain wants us to do his bidding or conceal some wrongdoing. The Army has tried that rhetoric before, talking about family and Army pride and everything else to try to get you to buy into what they do. When the Army talks about "handling something internally," it's only because they've done something so obviously wrong, they can't allow the rest of the country to see it. This doesn't surprise me. After all, if Americans back home saw Iraqi prisoners shot dead for throwing stones, saw the wretched conditions inside Abu, or saw the way the MPs dealt with the prisoners, what would they think of our glorious and righteous invasion? The truth about Abu Ghraib has to be concealed, has to be "kept in the family," because if the average citizen saw what we're doing to the people here, they would know in their guts that it's un-American.
The above is from Aidan Delgado's The Sutras Of Abu Ghraib: Notes From A Conscientious Objector In Iraq, pp. 184-185. Delgado's book will be paired with Aimee Allison and David Solnit's Army Of None for a book discussion next week.
On the excerpt above, it should be noted the meeting took place in January 2004 and it should alarm you because the Taguba Report stated that the US Army Criminal Investigation Command began their investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib in May 2003.
A criminal investigation has been taking place since May 2003 and a commander is instructing a unit to destroy evidence in January 2004 -- evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation.
