Yesterday, a military jury let a torturer off with nary a slap. Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. was convicted of "negligent homicide"--for having overseen the beating-to-death of an Iraqi general. Welshofer's sentence: 60 days house arrest, and a whopping $6,000 fine. As the LAT points out:
The jury apparently agreed with defense arguments that Welshofer had believed he was following orders to use creative interrogation techniques when he put Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush face-first in a sleeping bag, wrapped him in electrical wire and sat on his chest in November 2003. The 57-year-old general died after 20 minutes in the bag....
Welshofer had contended that he was following vague instructions from U.S. commanders in Iraq to "take the gloves off" and break detainees to obtain more information about the insurgency that was killing increasing numbers of U.S. troops.
Vague instructions don't mean you can oversee the beating on a prisoner. There's no ambiguity about that in military law. But in another sense, the jury was right: Those nod-nod-wink-wink orders meant something--and higher-ups should bear responsbility for issuing them. (I don't only mean that in a moral sense; I mean that as a matter of doctrine, higher-ups are always responsible for their orders.) In other words, both the soldier and officers should be held responsible for their actions and orders. The number of higher-ups that have faced courts martial because of torture-related orders? Zero. Number of investigations that have looked up the chain-of-command? Right.
P.S. Marc Cooper also has a good and outraged take.
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