May 05, 2004

Two great minds in one vehicle

On the ride up to Sumter yesterday, Recondo32 and I had about two and a half hours to solve all the problems of the world. We did a pretty good job, except for disagreeing over whether Hillary Clinton was the Anti-Christ or just a stone-cold, lesbian-leaning, bloodless bitch. I'll leave it up to you to pick which side I was on.

We discussed the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of American troops. Recondo became so impassioned that he left spittle-stains on the windshield. "Whoever was in charge of that bunch should be dragged off, court-marshalled and hanged," he exclaimed. "One of the big problems we had in Vietnam was not dealing with draftees. It was dealing with an incompetent officer corps that didn't know how or didn't give a shit about maintaing discipline and actually LEADING the troops. Nobody frags a good leader. A good leader keeps your ass alive when the shit hits the fan. Troops frag that incompetent sonofabitch who's trying to get you killed every day. And you can frag that leader with a grenade or you can frag the asshole by acting the fool in the field. Either way, it's a lack of leadership."

The name Max Cleland popped into my mind, but I didn't pursue the thought. I allowed Recondo to rant.

He simmered down for a minute. "I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that if we actually investigate this incident the way we should, you'll find two things as the root causes. One is a totally incompetent leader. The other is CIA involvement. I hated those fucking spooks in Vietnam and I hate them to this day. Most of the bastards are washed-up assholes who couldn't hack it in the military and THEY do shit like torturing prisoners and tossing gooks out of helicopters. American soldiers don't."

He gave me food for thought. I agreed with his opinion that an incompetent leader was involved, but that CIA crap sounded too much like a wild conspiracy theory to me. I started to tell him that he was full of bullshit, but I kept my mouth shut. I am happy that I did now, because at least the first part of his theory appears to be spot-on.

Clearly there has been a terrible breakdown in order and discipline at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere in Iraq, and perhaps Afghanistan and Guantanamo, Cuba. The officer in charge of the facility at the time the apparent abuses took place was Reserve Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who has now gone on national television to defend herself. Speaking on ABC's "Good Morning America," Gen. Karpinski says that she "did not know anything about it. And had I known anything about it I certainly would have reacted very quickly."

But that's the point. She didn't know what was going on, and she should have.

I saw the same thing happen over and over during my 24 years in a chemical plant. The Powers on High believed that if you had a good crew with a strong supervisor in charge, and a weak crew with a poor supervisor in charge, the solution was to swap the supervisors. See? The logic was that the strong crew could carry the weak supervisor and the strong supervisor could carry the weak crew.

It NEVER worked out that way. EVERY SINGLE TIME they tried that crap, the weak supervisor turned the good crew to shit and the strong supervisor made the weak crew top performers. Yeah. Leadership matters.

So what does this have to do with those pictures of mistreated prisoners? Take a look at the faces of those soldiers again, especially the female soldiers. They look less like sadists than delinquents. They look like they're showing off at some wild party trying to impress everybody with how "cool" they are. What they are doing is despicable, but they seem totally oblivious.

Okay, Recondo was correct on his first point. If I find out that CIA spooks were involved, I'm going to owe Rick a dozen doughnuts.