The Washington Times reports that the Article 32 hearing officer assigned to the case of USMC 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano has recommended that he face no criminal charges for his shooting of two Iraqis south of Baghdad in April 2004. The charges could have potentially resulted in a death sentence for Lt. Pantano. Apparently, the Art. 32 officer could not find enough evidence to support the charges, particularly given severe credibility issues raised by the defense with respect to the prosecution's star witness:

The 16-page report from Lt. Col. Mark E. Winn labels as "extremely suspect" the prosecution's chief witness, Sgt. Daniel L. Coburn, whom Lt. Pantano had removed as a squad leader weeks before the April 15, 2004, shooting.

"The government was not able to produce credible evidence or testimony that the killings were premeditated," Col. Winn wrote in his report, a copy of which was obtained yesterday by The Washington Times.

"I think now [Sgt. Coburn] is in a position where he has told his story so many times, in so many versions that he cannot keep his facts straight anymore," Col. Winn wrote of the chief witness.

"There is only one eyewitness to events that precipitated the shooting, and that is 2nd Lt. Pantano," he wrote in the report, dated Thursday.

* * *
Defense attorney Charles Gittins argued during the Article 32 hearing that Lt. Pantano fired in self-defense after the two captured Iraqis moved toward him and ignored his warning, in Arabic, to stop. The two were unarmed.

Col. Winn recommended to Maj. Gen. Richard Huck, 2nd Marine Division commander, that all criminal charges be dropped, including murder and destruction of the Iraqis' vehicle. The colonel also proposed that Lt. Pantano face administrative punishment for firing too many rounds at the two men.

"Throughout this case, 2nd Lt. Pantano has been consistent with his account of what happened at the vehicle," Col. Winn wrote. "There has been no eyewitness produced that can refute 2nd Lt. Pantano's version of what transpired at the vehicle."

From here, as the Times' reporter notes, the case goes to Maj. Gen. Huck, who is the general court-martial convening authority (2-star general) for Lt. Pantano. Maj. Gen. Huck has the ultimate decision here — he can still send Pantano to a general court-martial, or he can accept this recommendation, and separately decide to administer non-judicial punishment to Lt. Pantano. I think the latter course of action is likely, given the fact that there were killings here, but you never know. Marine generals have cleared other infantrymen in somewhat similar circumstances, such as the Fallujah shooting, because of the nature of the combat the Marines are seeing in Iraq. Although I think NJP is likely here, I won't be surprised if Lt. Pantano is exonerated completely. Maj. Gen. Huck has to consider what message his actions will send to the Marines in the field now engaged in combat, as well as the particular facts of the Pantano case, and this one could go either way.

More to follow...

Convicted Abu Ghraib guard testifies in another MP's trial that the infamous 'man on a box' photo was taken of efforts to implement sleep deprivation technique

The Associated Press reports today on some very interesting testimony by former-Staff Sgt. (now Pvt.) Ivan "Chip" Frederick in the court-martial of fellow Abu Ghraib MP Spec. Sabrina Harman, which is being held at Fort Hood, Texas. Frederick was one of the first to plead guilty last summer, and is currently serving a long stint in military prison for his transgressions. Today, the prosecution called Pvt. Frederick as a witness against Spec. Harman, and he had a few provocative things to say:

Pvt. Ivan Frederick II, called as a prosecution witness, said he never saw the 27-year-old Harman participate in that or several other instances of mistreatment she is accused of at the Baghdad-area prison.

* * *
Frederick said he was the person who took a widely seen photograph of Harman and Pvt. Charles Graner Jr. with a pyramid of naked prisoners. He said he did not see Harman around when guards forced a group of prisoners to masturbate and simulate other sexual acts — a scene she is accused of photographing.

* * *
Defense attorney Frank Spinner said in opening statements Thursday the photos of the hooded prisoner, known as "Gilligan," illustrated "a joking type of thing." But prosecutor Capt. Chuck Neill said in his opening that Gilligan "was trembling, shaking, afraid he was going to be electrocuted."

Frederick testified the prisoner did not appear to suffer any long-lasting effects from the box incident.

Frederick said a criminal investigator had told him Gilligan was to be deprived of sleep to soften him up for questioning. The investigator said the prisoner may have had information about the whereabouts of four missing U.S. soldiers, the witness said.

Gilligan was released from U.S. custody; the prosecution has said the government tried but failed to locate him.

Frederick said Abu Ghraib was a chaotic, dangerous place operating under a murky chain of command that included military police officers, military intelligence and others.

"Nobody knew what was going on," Frederick said. "I took orders from three different places."

Analysis: Whenever you hear courtroom testimony, you have to evaluate its credibility. Some testimony carries certain indicia of reliability which tends to make it more credible; testimony without these indicia should be accorded less weight. I find Pvt. Frederick's testimony credible for a few reasons. First, he was called by the prosecution, not the defense. Second, he already pled guilty and received his sentence, and has little to gain from fibbing on behalf of his former comrade-in-arms. Third, Pvt. Frederick's testimony has been corroborated by other reports and information from Abu Ghraib. If I were a panel member listening to Pvt. Frederick, I might just believe his story.

I wrote about one of those corroborating details in my November 2004 review of Sy Hersh's book, "The Road to Abu Ghraib". Compare Pvt. Frederick's testimony to this excerpt from that article:

The duty force at Abu Ghraib, then, had ambiguous policy guidance from Washington, too few men, and too little training. What happened next should hardly have been a surprise. Take, for example, the guards' implementation of the interrogation practices authorized by the Pentagon. Interrogation tactics like “sleep deprivation” sound entirely too sterile when taken out of context—after all, who hasn't been deprived of sleep, whether by a newborn baby or a last-minute project at work? What's crucial to understand is how such methods are translated into practice in the field. As Hersh writes:

In May 2004, I interviewed a company captain in a military police unit in Baghdad who told me about an incident the previous fall in which he was approached by a junior military intelligence officer who requested that his M.P.s keep a group of detainees awake around the clock until they began talking. "I said, 'No, we will not do that,'" the captain said. "The M.I. commander comes to me and says, 'What is the problem? We're stressed, and all we are asking you to do is to keep them awake.' I ask, 'How? You've received training on that, but my soldiers don't know how to do it. And when you ask an eighteen-year-old kid to keep someone awake, and he doesn't know how to do it, he's going to get creative.'"

What, exactly, does "creative" mean? Consider the iconic image of Abu Ghraib: a hooded Iraqi man standing on an Army rations box with wires extending from his arms in a grotesque pose almost reminiscent of a crucifixion. It turns out that this was among the tactics employed by untrained prison guards and interrogators as a means both of instilling fear and of keeping a detainee awake, in faithful execution of the "sleep deprivation" tactic authorized by the secretary of defense. Even though the wires were actually inert, the detainee was likely told that he would be electrocuted if he moved off the box, which he would do if he fell asleep. And thus, so modestly-named a tactic as sleep deprivation was transformed into something far more sinister. The same tactic could be used in conjunction with the "stress position" technique approved by the Pentagon, according to one former intelligence officer I talked to. A hooded person forced to stand still on a box for hours will quickly lose his sense of equilibrium and orientation. Lower back pain will eventually develop from the strain of remaining upright for such a long time; pain in the legs and feet will follow as blood pools there. Held for several hours without movement, such a position can induce excruciating pain, particularly for detainees not in top physical condition. When the image first surfaced, these officers said they were not surprised by the tactic. It was merely a creative attempt by amateurs to achieve the results desired by their leaders—an unfortunate twist on the old maxim of Gen. George S. Patton: "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity."

Now we know the name of the man on the box: "Gilligan". We may never meet him, or hear his story, but we can connect that stark image to a narrative. The soldiers at Abu Ghraib wanted information about 4 missing U.S. soldiers. They stuck Gilligan on the MRE box, hooded him, made him hold wires, and told him he'd be electrocuted if he stepped off. I don't know whether the tactic worked; we may never know. But we at least know that this was no depraved fraternity prank — this was a calculated act by U.S. personnel to squeeze a detainee for what he knew, or what we thought he knew.

In interviews for "The Road to Abu Ghraib", and since, I have heard these practices described in a variety of ways by MPs, JAGs and MI personnel who have personal knowledge of U.S. interrogation practices in Iraq. One common denominator is that the practices used at Abu Ghraib were "amateurish" — they were what a bunch of reserve MPs would do if they got a hold of a SERE school manual and had little supervision from their chain of command. Another individual I spoke with described these practices as "evil cop sh-t" — the product of reserve MPs with civilian law enforcement experience (see, e.g., Charles Graner) borrowing informal (and probably illegal) practices from their jobs back home for use in the Iraqi theater of operations. The results were displayed in full color for us all to see on April 28, 2004.

So let's be clear about what's being said here. Pvt. Frederick's testimony today didn't just establish a possible defense for Spec. Harman. His words also established yet another link between the policies hatched in Washington and the abuses carried out in Iraq. Sleep deprivation was not something these MPs made up out of whole cloth; it was a tactic specifically forbidden in the relevant field manuals, but authorized by various DoD memoranda, and promulgated for use in the field as part of this "new kind of war". These MPs clearly took things too far, in some incredibly depraved and malicious ways. But there is no denying the link in the chain between the policies developed in Washington and the practices at Abu Ghraib.

Eliot Cohen, the author of Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime, has an excellent column on the op-ed page of today's Wall Street Journal (available online) explaining why it is so essential to educate the military officer corps. Prof. Cohen makes the subtle point that a more intellectually developed officer corps is a better one, and that today's military is steering away from this goal in a number of mostly unnoticed but absolutely critical ways. According to Prof. Cohen:

A perfect storm is besetting professional military education. A high operations tempo means that generals, understandably, strain every nerve to keep frontline units manned with the best people--even if that scants the educational system of teachers and top students. A stretched budget means that the revenue brought in by the sale of some valuable real estate leads defense officials to overlook the turmoil caused by relocating a war college. A lack of experience in delivering higher education makes officials--seeking to save money and cut down on family moves--eager to accept the claims of the purveyors of pedagogical patent medicines. Manpower economists, who think of management as putting round pegs in round holes, limit the exposure to higher education in the social sciences and humanities--although some of our most successful commanders in Iraq declare that their master's and Ph.D. degrees in history, or political science, or anthropology, provided some of the best preparation possible for the novel challenges of insurgent warfare. Senior military leaders, and a few civilians, acknowledge the existence of the problem but seem to lack the ability or the will to do something about it.

The best commanders do their best to counteract these pressures. They draw up reading lists for their subordinates and hold them to it; they rely on informal networks to bring that West Point social sciences instructor back out into a field assignment that will keep him competitive for command; they struggle to make staff colleges educationally alive despite turnover in the faculty that would be the despair of any civilian dean. But that is no substitute for an institutional awareness that an educated officer corps is indispensable, and that is the responsibility of both the military, through its own educational institutions, and the nation's great universities to ensure that we have it. The military is not led by fools, nor the universities by cowards, but a demarcation exists, and it is broadening.

Prof. Cohen also discusses the recent imbroglio over ROTC at Columbia University and opines that the Solomon Amendment may come crashing down on that university. I disagree with him on this legal point, but agree with his larger argument that the distancing of American higher education from the military is a dangerous thing.

This observation is not new. But I think that Prof. Cohen is right to suggest that it comes from both parties. Elite universities (with some notable exceptions) have demonstrated hostility to the military in recent years, notwithstanding 9/11 and the war on terrorism. However, the Pentagon and the four services have let their relationship with higher ed atrophy as well. For the most part, the services themselves are not clamoring to establish ROTC units at Columbia or Harvard or Yale, because it's just too expensive and they can meet their manpower needs with ROTC detachments at Fordham, MIT and U.Connecticut, to name a few. Ultimately, I agree with Prof. Cohen that this will have bad consequences for our military and society.

The AP reports that the Pentagon has taken a more modest course of action with respect to base closures in 2005 than had been previously expected (or feared). A full list of the bases listed for closure can be found here. My first impression is that this cuts a lot of the smaller bases and reserve centers around the country, but leaves intact a lot of the larger active-duty bases which had been previously thought vulnerable to BRAC 2005. More to follow...

Update I: The Pentagon's official release on BRAC can be found here. DoD estimates that it will save $50 billion over the next 20 years if it's able to fully implement the BRAC process, and more if it can combine this process with a series of plans to shutter bases overseas. A state-by-state summary of the BRAC 2005 recommendations (PDF) is also available now from the Pentagon, complete with estimated military/civilian personnel impacts.

Update II: The major papers have started to post stories on the BRAC bombshell, each with a local spin. According to the LA Times, California did pretty well in BRAC 2005, at least compared with most people's dire expectations. The New York Times reports on the big picture, and also on how the cuts affect the Northeast. The Washington Post leads with the BRAC recommendation to realign the famous Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and details other closures around the national capital region.

Update III: Slate just published a column of mine arguing that the BRAC 2005 selections may further divide American society from America's military, at a time when we can ill afford to do so:

There are several clear trends in the BRAC list: the elimination of many bases in the Northeast, the shutting of myriad civilian defense agencies' offices, and the elimination of reserve armories in towns across America. The Pentagon says the closings will save $48 billion over 20 years. But they will also have one dramatic negative effect. BRAC will separate America's military even further from America's citizenry by consolidating military bases and removing the presence of the military from hundreds of towns across the country.

Update IV: Wes Clark seems to agree with me about the civil-military implications of BRAC. "Small communities lose sight of the armed forces," he said. "I like for the Army and the armed forces to be representative of the people they protect, not an elite organization."

Amendment passed by subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee may have far-reaching effects — will set back the role of women in the military by a generation

This morning's Washington Post reports on an amendment passed yesterday afternoon by the House Armed Services Committee which would bar women from service in "forward support companies" — defined very broadly — that have any chance whatsoever of seeing ground combat. Rep. John McHugh introduced the amendment (PDF), saying it was simply designed to enforce existing law, and that it was not a "Neanderthal initiative to keep women out of the Army." However, senior Army officials felt differently, firing last-minute faxes off to HASC in an effort to stall or defeat the amendment, which passed with the support of Chairman Duncan Hunter. According to the Post:

Army leaders strongly criticized the legislation in letters to Congress yesterday, saying women are performing "magnificently" in a wide range of units, working where battlefields have no clear front lines.

"The proposed amendment will cause confusion in the ranks, and will send the wrong signal to the brave young men and women fighting the Global War on Terrorism," Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army's vice chief of staff, wrote in a letter delivered to the House yesterday. "This is not the time to create such confusion."

He said that the Army is in "strict and full compliance with Department of Defense policies regarding women in combat," but that it continues to "study" the role of women in light of an ongoing reorganization of Army units and the complex, changing nature of warfare. Cody wrote that Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, concurred with the letter, an identical version of which was sent to the House by Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey.

The legislation, an amendment to the 2006 defense authorization bill, was introduced with little advance notice yesterday after Hunter advised the Military Personnel subcommittee late Tuesday night to vote on it, congressional staff members said. It passed 9 to 7 along party lines.

* * *
Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) said the legislation amounted to "discrimination" barring women from "serving in the battlefield."

Analysis: I'll have more later on why I agree with the Democrats and think this legislation is about as ill-considered as one can imagine. In a nutshell, it places the political and sexual politics of a few conservative political activists over the demands of military readiness — and ignores all of the record evidence that women have done well in the tough combat they've seen in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Those who support this legislation will argue that they are, in fact, advancing military readiness by restricting combat billets to the men who can do the job. I couldn't disagree more. This is simply sex discrimination masquerading as readiness legislation. If you truly care about enforcing combat standards, then set a standard and enforce it. Once you sift through all the stereotypes and gender generalizations, there is nothing about sex per se which ought to make it a disqualifying condition for combat duty. It may be true that many women cannot meet the standard — but that is also true of many men. I led female MPs and served with female soldiers who were more than capable of doing their duty. Let's put the focus on combat readiness, not on gender.

I think this sends a terrible message to the women currently serving in the military — especially those who have seen combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, and done well there. How do you explain this to them? How do you think these talented combat veterans are going to respond to the new restriction which places a giant roadblock in the middle of their career paths? I'll bet they vote with their feet. When that happens, our military's readiness will suffer.

Update I: Ann Scott Tyson follows up on her report from Thursday with a long Washington Post magazine-style piece on the female soldiers she met in combat during her recent tour as an embedded reporter. The article is must-read stuff for anyone who's oblivious to the fact that women are serving in combat, and by most measures, doing well at it. Of course, I don't believe the groups that sponsored this amendment will be swayed by the facts; I think their objections to women in combat (and the military) are more normative in nature.

Nonetheless, I hope this article informs the debate on Capitol Hill, and that the Army takes the opportunity to explain precisely what it believes the impact of this amendment will be. The full House Armed Services Committee has a chance to reconsider this issue next Wednesday when it takes up the bill, and I hope that they do so.

Yesterday, the Washington Times ran an op-ed from Elaine Donnelly of the one-person Center for Military Readiness that slammed the Pentagon for its "stealth" efforts to push women into combat roles. [For my take on the matter, see this article.] I was going to write something about it, criticizing Ms. Donnelly's views as out-of-step with reality and operational necessity.

But then I read this letter from Army SFC Cheryl McElroy to the Washington Times, printed in this morning's paper, and decided that she said all that needed to be said.

Read the Donnelly column, and then read this letter:

Women In Combat

After reading Elaine Donnelly's tirades against female soldiers in combat ("Stealth plan for women in combat," Commentary, yesterday), I must say one would think she would have something more to offer than an inexperienced opinion.

Being a war veteran twice over, I never cease to be amazed when armchair critics get more editorial space than people who know what they're talking about. Throughout my 29 years of combined service, I have endured the same hardships, dangers and demands as my male counterparts. I have lived and worked in austere conditions, lifted and carried heavy equipment and never hesitated to assist in the effort to help the enemy die for their country.

SCUD launches, mortar attacks, bunker sweeps, minefields and bullets were shared by everyone, regardless of gender.

Mrs. Donnelly's one-woman mission against female soldiers is puerile and baseless. Women have been in war since time immemorial, and anyone who requires proof need only do a little research to find copious historical facts about female warriors, both individual and organized.

Contrary to Mrs. Donnelly's comments, all soldiers are prepared for land combat through training, from boot camp through permanent duty assignments. That's what the Army does.

Dismissing our service with inane pejorative terms such as "politically correct" and "feminist dreams" doesn't give much credit to the women who have given the ultimate sacrifice in this and every war fought by the United States.

Mrs. Donnelly's commentaries are rife with contradictions. On the one hand, she says, "Improved training on how to evade or survive ambushes makes sense." Then she does a 180-degree turn in the same breath and opines about "interchangeable men and women in or near land combat."

In her convoluted logic, a bullet fired in defense is not the same as a bullet fired offensively. What nonsense.

Whether you're ambushed, mortared at your base camp or on patrol, that, ladies and gentlemen, is combat.

Mrs. Donnelly's philosophy reflects ignorance of history, no cognizance of the bravery of women in the war on terrorism, and a conspicuous lack of respect for those of us who do what Ms. Donnelly has never done — walk a few miles in combat boots.

Sgt. 1st Class Cheryl McElroy, U.S. Army, Alexandria

Zing! I don't know how anyone could say it better than SFC McElroy. I especially like the second-to-last paragraph... there's probably a great Jeff Foxworthy routine in there (instead of "You know you're a redneck," it would be "You know you're in combat..."). I think SFC McElroy is 100% on-target though. On today's non-linear, non-contiguous battlefield where we face an asymmetric threat from Iraqi and foreign insurgents, there truly are no "safe" jobs. To carry Ms. Donnelly's logic forward, you must exclude women from all military positions, as well as all jobs with relief agencies, the news media, private contractors, the State Department, and so on. That would be an absurd result, but it's what you must do if you want to remove women from the sphere of combat entirely.

I've got a recommendation for Ms. Donnelly: focus your efforts, and that of your center, on things that really matter for military readiness — like the continuing recruiting challenges of the military, the continuing issues with getting combat equipment to our fighting men and women, and the need to reconcile our current operations demands with our transformation and R&D efforts. The bottom line is that if you're opposed to women in combat or women in the military, then all you're doing is hurting military readiness, because today's women warriors are a vital part of the team.

(Via JAG Central) Sunday's New York Times reported on the latest work by Fernando Botero, Latin America's best-known living artist, which depicts 50 scenes inspired by the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib. The works will be exhibited in Rome at the Palazzo Venezia museum on June 16; no display is planned for the United States yet. Mr. Botero told the AP his reason for for creating these pieces: "I, like everyone else, was shocked by the barbarity, especially because the United States is supposed to be this model of compassion."



On the other side of the world, freelance journalist Michael Yon transmits us a photo that epitomizes so much about the U.S. military and the Iraq war. The picture below shows U.S. Army Maj. Mark Bieger, one of the senior officers in 1-24 Infantry, 25th Infantry Division, carrying a wounded girl away from the scene of a suicide bombing in Mosul. The girl later died. According to Mr. Yon, a group of children ran out to great the men of 1-24 Infantry as they drove by in their Stryker vehicles, and a suicide bomber drove into the group of children to deliver his lethal payload.



Commentary: Mr. Botero's paintings of Abu Ghraib depict the very worst of America. Mr. Yon's photograph from Mosul shows the very best of America. In Iraq and the world today, I fear that too many people see too much of the worst of America, and not enough of the best that we have to offer, such as Maj. Bieger's valor and compassion. Part of this is bad public relations; our country needs to do a better job of telling its story to the world. But most of this problem is the story itself. You can't just tell the world you're the good guys, you must demonstrate it with deeds again and again. We have seen the better angels of America on display in Iraq, Indonesia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere since Sept. 11; but the darker angels have also shown their faces. Unfortunately in this day and age, there is little room for balance or objective comparison. Those who might be predisposed to hate or oppose America will focus only on the negative, despite the existence of the positive. We must continue to do what we can to remove the stain of dark moments such as Abu Ghraib, and to follow the example set by men like Maj. Bieger.

As Mr. Botero himself says, the world expects a great deal from America. We must meet that high standard.

Saturday's New York Times carried this report on a "no" vote by the Columbia University senate to a resolution which might have brought ROTC back to that campus. As it stands now, Columbia University students must go to Fordham or another New York college if they want to enroll in ROTC and pursue a commission as a military officer through that program. The Columbia senate acknowledged seemingly based its decision on the federal law which requires the military to exclude gays and lesbians from service.

I am very disappointed in the decision by Columbia to reject the ROTC resolution, for reasons I have articulated in this Slate column and this Legal Affairs feature. I believe that higher education institutions such as Columbia or the University of California owe a duty to society that is larger than mere pedagogy or politics. The UC mission has three components: teaching, research and public service. I think that's right. Columbia may believe it is doing a public service by taking what it perceives to be a principled stand against ROTC. In the long run, however, I believe Columbia does more harm than good here — to its students who might take advantage of ROTC; to its students and faculty who might learn from the presence of ROTC on campus; and to the nation and the military, who would benefit from having Columbia University gradutes serve as officers.