Sharp Rubber Duck

It's hard for Abu Ghraib whistle-blower to go home again

August 11, 2006

By Richard Pyle AP

The soldier who triggered the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal by sending incriminating photos to military investigators says he feared deadly retaliation from other GIs and was shocked when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mentioned his name at a Senate hearing.

Within days, Joe Darby was spirited out of Iraq at his own request. But his family was besieged by the media, and even close relatives called him a traitor. Ultimately he was forced to move away from his hometown in western Maryland.

“I had the choice between what I knew was morally right and my loyalty to other soldiers. I couldn't have it both ways,” the 27-year-old military policeman said in the just-released September issue of Gentleman's Quarterly. But Darby told The Associated Press on Wednesday that if presented with the same circumstances today, he would do the same thing. “It was a hard decision to make when I made it, but it had to be done,” he said.

Darby also said he later learned that Rumsfeld was not the first to name him, and he did not see “anything intentional or malicious” on the Pentagon chief's part.

Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib were brutalized and sexually humiliated by military police and intelligence agents in the fall of 2003. Photos of the abuse – the same ones that Darby provided to investigators – stirred global condemnation of U.S. military practices in Iraq.

At least 11 U.S. soldiers have been convicted in the scandal. Spc. Charles Graner of Uniontown, Pa., and Pfc. Lynndie England of Fort Ashby, W.Va., who were seen in such photos as smiling above a naked pyramid of detainees, are serving 10 years and three years in prison respectively.

Darby has not previously given details to the media about his role at Abu Ghraib, said Dan Scheffey, a spokesman for GQ.

In the as-told-to article by Wil S. Hylton, Darby said he never expected the Abu Ghraib story to “explode the way it did.”

The abuse of prisoners, he said, was going on before his Army Reserve MP unit was assigned there in October 2003.

“The day we arrived . . . we saw like 15 prisoners sitting in their cells in women's underwear,” he said. MPs explained they were being punished for firing mortars at the compound, which housed hundreds of known criminals and suspected insurgents. “After we took over it just basically escalated.”

Former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the reservist who commanded the military police at Abu Ghraib, was there only when dignitaries visited, Darby said. “Other than that, she had no idea what was going on,” he said.

Karpinski was demoted to colonel last May. The Army cleared four other generals of wrongdoing, and 17 other officers drew lesser penalties after a broader inquiry into abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Darby said he discovered the abuse photos inadvertently in January 2004 while flipping through other pictures on a CD that Graner had given him. “To this day, I'm not sure why he gave me that CD,” he said. “He probably just forgot which pictures were on it, or he might have assumed I wouldn't care.”

At first amused by some of the photos, Darby finally decided “it just didn't sit right with me.” He sent the CD to the Army's Criminal Investigation Division. Although he did so anonymously, CID agents quickly pinpointed him as the source.

Darby said he was still being questioned by investigators when Graner and two others were brought in. The agents had to smuggle him out in rugs and blankets to conceal his identity.

Darby was stunned when Graner and the others returned for a month's duty at the prison. He slept with a loaded pistol. “They'd be walking around with their weapons all day long, knowing somebody had turned them in and trying to find out who. That was one of the most nervous periods of my life,” Darby said.

In late April 2004, the Abu Ghraib scandal broke when CBS broadcast some of the pictures.

His worst moment, Darby said, came on May 7, 2004, during lunch with 10 fellow MPs in a mess hall filled with 400 troops.

“It was like something out of a movie,” he recalled. Rumsfeld appeared on television and dropped Darby's name. “The guys at the table just stopped eating and looked at me. I got up and got the hell out of there.”

Only later did he learn he had been named in a New Yorker magazine article a few days earlier, he told AP.

In response to queries from AP, Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said he recalled no effort to protect Darby's identity. It was known “very early and quickly became common knowledge,” Whitman said. People were “talking about his courage in coming forward.”

Darby is scheduled to leave the Army and the Reserves, after eight years of duty, on Aug. 31. He no longer lives in his hometown of Cumberland, Md., where “a lot of people up there view me as a traitor. Even some of my family members think I'm a traitor.”

He said he has returned home only twice, for a wedding and his mother's funeral.

“I'm not welcome there. People there don't look at the fact that I knew right from wrong,” he said. “They look at the fact that I put an Iraqi before an American.”

 

Duckies commentary...

Islamist Jihad, violates it own origin, violates it own scripture, violates its major prophets, violates the word of GOD.

For Who? The answer is power hungry, self-centered, egotists seeking power. What a crock-o-shit. There will never be 70 virgins.

God, must be having a huge belly laugh over all this stupidity.

The REAL Question,

What is HONOR, protecting unacceptable behavior or having the BALLS to speak out against what you KNOW IS WRONG?

The behavior of some guards at Abu Ghraib is the vary basis of Muslim hatred. This is a case of "Do as I Say, not as I do".

We all know this is Bullshit. Either we behave or we provide basis for their hatred. Now, don't get me wrong, we should never tip-toe and Kno-tow to any country or people. Respect does not preclude killing. For the right reasons against the right target, killing needs to be executed.

Darby did the Right Thing and should be thanked, not vilified.

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