That’s the point of Rich’s column and it’s the experience of so many servicemen e-mailing me today. Here’s one particularly revealing:
Today you reprinted in the Corner some reactions to the Abu Gharib story
from readers actually deployed in Iraq. I’ve just returned home from my
Iraq rotation: when I was there, I worked for a unit that (among other
things) interrogated high-value detainees — the “deck of cards” and
others. Not only did we have no abuse problem, we had just the opposite:
our MP’s were too nice to the detainees. It was sort of a reverse
Stockholm Syndrome. We had to screen some raw documentary footage for the
MPs, showing them explicitly the sort of atrocities committed by the
former regime. After that they understood that no matter how friendly and
harmless they might seem now, these guys are seriously bad dudes who
did some seriously evil things. Of course we still had to treat them
humanely and wouldn’t have dreamt of doing otherwise, but we also didn’t
want the detainees forgetting that they were in prison, not a slightly
down-market summer camp or retirement home.
Why was Abu Gharib different? Lots of reasons, probably — but from my
own experience, which included working with detainees and MPs and
interrogators, I can say that the abusive behavior by the guards there
was not only atypical but exactly the opposite of what I saw.