Abu Ghraib Report

Yet another report on Abu Ghraib is out but this one at least starts to point the finger in the right direction.

What began several months ago with the emergence of shocking photographs showing a handful of U.S. troops abusing detainees in Iraq has led this week to a broad indictment of U.S. military leadership and acknowledgement in two official reports that mistreatment of prisoners was more widespread than previously disclosed.

The reports have served to undercut earlier portrayals of the abuse as largely the result of criminal misconduct by a small group of individuals. As recently as last month, an assessment by the Army’s inspector general concluded the incidents could not be ascribed to systemic problems, describing them as “aberrations.”

But the findings yesterday of another Army investigation offered a more critical appraisal of what led to the mistreatment at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. It implicated 27 military intelligence soldiers in abuse, providing some support for assertions by some of the seven military guards previously charged that they were not acting alone. Counting other intelligence, medical and civilian contract personnel cited for failing to report the abuse, and three more military police officers alleged to have engaged in abuse, the report appeared to raise to nearly 50 the number of people who may face charges or disciplinary action for misconduct at Abu Ghraib.

The people at the top of the foodchain, of course, are probably never going to have to pay for what happened. We’ll be lucky if anyone over the rank of Colonel feels the heat.

Well is Dry

Blogging has been more irregular this past week.

Comment spam has been getting worse and worse, and fighting it has been siphoning off blogging time (I may not be able to wait for MT 3.1 to come out after all). New kitten to love and play with. Plus, I’m having a little of a crisis in confidence – it feels like anything I want to talk about, other bloggers have already addressed, and said it better than I could myself.

I guess you could say I’m in a bit of a rut. Hopefully I’ll pull out soon.

Depressing

Even a new kitten high can only last so long. It’s back to reality today. Not only is the Marine Corps cutting its training time for soldiers,

The exercise, called a CAX in Marine lingo, has been shortened from 23 to 11 days, Col. Blake Crowe, operations officer for the Marine Corps Training Command at Quantico, Va., said in an interview.

This was done, Crowe said, to “get more battalions through” in a shorter period of time. Until now, the Marine Corps trained 10 battalions in CAX every six months. Under the accelerated schedule, it will train eight battalions in two months.

but the trainees don’t even get to actually fire some of the weapons they’ve been trained on due to lack of funding.

Staff Sgt. Don Allen, a combat instructor, said his trainees watch demonstrations of the M203 grenade launcher, the Squad Automatic Weapon and the .50-caliber machine gun, but not everyone gets to actually fire the weapons.

“It’s financial,” said Allen, a combat engineer who fought in Iraq last year with the 8th Marines. “I wish I had the money for them to shoot actual rounds. When I went through this training in 1995, we all shot every weapon.”

Where the hell is all the money going?

New Addition to the Family

We’re please to announce that a new kitten has come to join the household – meet our new baby GIMLI:

As a volunteer, you see literally hundreds of kittens at the SPCA during kitten season. Some stick in your heart more than others, and for whatever reason Gimli caught at mine. After seeing him go without a home for 2+ months, Scott and I decided ours was the right home for him. We brought him home today.

Gimli is an active, high-energy kitty, currently about 5 months old. He was very much in need of space to run around and play in, and being locked up with so little play room was taking a toll on him. He also had a really nasty cold for several weeks which didn’t help his adoption chances. Despite it all, though, he purrs like a jackhammer the minute anyone picks him up. I had thought that when the time came for a new kitten we’d probably get a tortie, but nope! Our boy is almost entirely black except for a patch of white on his belly and the tips of his paws.

Gimli (yes, named after the Dwarf in Lord of the Rings) was the name he was assigned at the shelter. After calling him that for 2 months, I can’t think of him as anything other than Gimli, so we’re going to keep it. It might not have been the name we would have chosen but it’s good enough.

The resident kitties are still trying to decide what to make of the newcomer. More pix are posted in the Gallery.

More to follow as he settles in, I’m sure.