Say Anything Blog

Every large organization has a few bad apples. 60 Minutes has found some of the Army's bad apples and plans to broadcast photos of them mistreating some Iraqi prisoners.

From CBS News:

The pictures 60 Minutes II obtained show an Iraqi prisoner who, according to the U.S. Army, was told to stand on a box with his head covered and wires attached to his hands. That prisoner was told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted. In another photograph, prisoners' bodies were stacked in a pyramid - one body had a slur written in English on his skin.

Despite the charges against American soldiers, Kimmitt says Americans shouldn't lose faith in the military -- since the investigation is focused on a small number of soldiers, and doesn't reflect the conduct of the vast majority of U.S. forces.

"Frankly, I think all of us are disappointed by the actions of the few," says Kimmitt. "Every day we love our soldiers but frankly, somedays we're not always proud of our soldiers...It's a small, small minority of people we're talking about here, less than a dozen out of the 150,000 who are serving honorably and proudly over here....The Army is a values-based organization. We live by our values. Some of our soldiers every day die by our values and these acts that you see in these pictures may reflect the actions of individuals but by God it doesn't reflect my army."

I don't have a problem with 60 Minutes showing these photos. When something like this happens it should get press exposure if only to keep cover-ups from happening. What I'm worried about, however, is the spin CBS is going to give the story.

What Brig. Gen. Kimmit says is true, this is an isolated incident. The vast majority of soldiers currently serving in Iraq are honest, good-intentioned and hard-working people. They'd never do anything like what the soldiers in this story have done. 60 Minutes needs to stress this in their reporting. Whether or not the will is a different matter.

The Army should court-martial the soldiers involved and review their training policies to ensure that the soldiers caring for prisoners know how to do their job. Aside from that, I think we can write this incident off to some poor judgment by immature soldiers and move on.