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Home Front: Culture Wars

HERE’S WHY WOMEN IN COMBAT UNITS IS A BAD IDEA

2014-11-21

h/t Jerry Pournelle Three problems plague the debate over whether all combat units should finally be opened to women. (Actually, there are four problems: The fourth and most important being the likelihood that there will be no real debate, something that I hope this article will help to mitigate). Most career soldiers and officers I know believe the integration of women into Special Forces teams, and into SEAL, Ranger and Marine infantry platoons, is already a forgone conclusion. From their perspective, politicians in uniform (namely, top brass) don’t have the intestinal fortitude to brook the vocal minority in Congress – and the country, really – who think mainstreaming women into ground combat units is a good idea. As for the other three problems, the first is that every sentient adult knows what happens when you mix healthy young men and women together in small groups for extended periods of time. Just look at any workplace. Couples form. At some point, how couples interact – sexually, emotionally, happily and/or unhappily – makes life uncomfortable for those around them. Factor in intense, intimate conditions and you can forget about adults being able to stay professional 24/7. Object lesson for anyone who disagrees: General Petraeus. Problem number two: Those who favor lifting the combat exclusion ban engage in a clever sleight of hand whenever they equate women serving in combat with women serving in combat units. Given women’s performance over the past decade in Afghanistan and Iraq, who but a misogynist would doubt their capacity for courage, aggressiveness or grace under fire at this point? But battles are like exclamation points. They punctuate long stretches when there are no firefights. Spend time around soldiers when they are coming down from adrenaline highs, or are depressed or upset; they are prone to all sorts of temptations. Alternatively, under Groundhog Day-like conditions, troops invariably grow bored and frustrated. How quickly we forget Charles Graner and Lynndie England, and the dynamic between them that helped fuel the sadism at Abu Ghraib. Problem number three involves a different elision. Proponents of lifting the ban love to invoke desegregation and the demise of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Their intent in doing so is to suggest that all three are of a piece: Blacks now serve in combat units, as do (at least in theory) openly homosexual soldiers, and there have been no untoward effects. It is therefore past time to let women be all that they can be as well. Except that attraction between the sexes is nothing like the denigration of another race or the disinterest (or disgust) heterosexual men feel when it comes to the idea of one man pursuing another. Indeed, racism and bigotry lie at the opposite end of the spectrum from attraction. Lumping all three together is a canard. There is no clearer way to put it than this: Heterosexual men like women. They also compete for their attention. This is best captured by the Darwinist aphorism: male-male competition and female choice. Or, try: no female has to leave a bar alone if she doesn’t want to, whereas at ‘last call’ lots of men do. Cast back through history or just look cross-culturally: Men’s abiding interest in women (and women’s interest in having men be interested) creates limitless potential for friction. Is this really what we want to inflict on combat units? More than a decade ago, I described the critical ethos on teams, and in squads or platoons, as ‘one for all and all for one.’ Introduce something over which members are bound to compete, that the winner won’t share, and you inject a dangerous dynamic. Worse, introduce the possibility of exclusivity between two individuals and you will have automatically killed cohesion.

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Home Front: WoT

Lynndie England Blames Media for Photos

2008-03-20

Lynndie England, the public face of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, told a German news magazine that she was sorry for appearing in photographs of detainees in the notorious Iraqi prison, and believes the scenes of torture and humiliation served as a powerful rallying point for anti-American insurgents. In an interview with the weekly magazine Stern conducted in English and posted on its Web site Tuesday, England was both remorseful and unrepentant—and conceded that the published photos surely incensed insurgents in Iraq. "I guess after the picture came out the insurgency picked up and Iraqis attacked the Americans and the British and they attacked in return and they were just killing each other. I felt bad about it ... no, I felt pissed off. If the media hadn't exposed the pictures to that extent, then thousands of lives would have been saved," she was quoted as saying. Asked how she could blame the media for the controversy, she said it wasn't her who leaked the photos. "Yeah, I took the photos but I didn't make it worldwide. Yes, I was in five or six pictures and I took some pictures, and those pictures were shameful and degrading to the Iraqis and to our government," she said, according to the report. "And I feel sorry and wrong about what I did. But it would not have escalated to what it did all over the world if it wouldn't have been for someone leaking it to the media." England, who was a private first class, was in several images taken in late 2003 by U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib. One showed her holding a naked prisoner on a leash, while in others she posed with a pyramid of naked detainees and pointed at the genitals of a prisoner while a cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth. Asked by the magazine if what happened at Abu Ghraib was a scandal or something that happens during wartime, England said it was the latter. "I'm saying that what we did happens in war. It just isn't documented," she was quoted as saying. "If it had been broken by the news without the pictures it wouldn't have been that big." She told the magazine that there are other photographs that have not been released that contain more graphic images than those that were seen on television, in newspapers and on the Internet. "You see the dogs biting the prisoners. Or you see bite marks from the dogs. You can see MPs (military police) holding down a prisoner so a medic can give him a shot," she said. "If those had been made public at the time, then the whole world would have looked at those and not at mine." England was released in March 2007 after serving half her 36-month sentence. She was convicted of six counts involving prisoner mistreatment. England said she is living with her parents in Fort Ashby, W.Va., along with her son, Carter, whose father is Charles Graner Jr., the reputed ringleader of those who took the pictures. They were both members of the 372nd Military Police Company based in western Maryland.

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Iraq

Tortured screams ring out as Iraqis take over Abu Ghraib

2006-09-10

HT to Drudge - Note Obligatory Lynndie England leash photo in post....kinda puts things in perspective. The notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad is at the centre of fresh abuse allegations just a week after it was handed over to Iraqi authorities, with claims that inmates are being tortured by their new captors. Staff at the jail say the Iraqi authorities have moved dozens of terrorist suspects into Abu Ghraib from the controversial Interior Ministry detention centre in Jadriyah, where United States troops last year discovered 169 prisoners who had been tortured and starved. An independent witness who went into Abu Ghraib this week told The Sunday Telegraph that screams were coming from the cell blocks housing the terrorist suspects. Prisoners released from the jail this week spoke of routine torture of terrorism suspects and on Wednesday, 27 prisoners were hanged in the first mass execution since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime. Conditions in the rest of the jail were grim, with an overwhelming stench of excrement, prisoners crammed into cells for all but 20 minutes a day, food rations cut to just rice and water and no air conditioning. Some of the small number of prisoners who remained in the jail after the Americans left said they had pleaded to go with their departing captors, rather than be left in the hands of Iraqi guards. "The Americans were better than the Iraqis. They treated us better," said Khalid Alaani, who was held on suspicion of involvement in Sunni terrorism. Abu Ghraib became synonymous with abuse after shocking pictures were published in 2004 showing prisoners being tortured and humiliated, galvanising opposition to the US presence in Iraq. The witness gained access to the prison just days after the Americans formally handed over control to the Iraqi authorities on Sept 1. Inside the 100-yard long cell block the smell of excrement was overpowering. Four to six prisoners shared each of the 12ft by 15ft cells along either side and the walls were smeared with filth. The cell block was patrolled by guards who carried long batons and shouted angrily at the prisoners to stand up. Access to the part of the prison containing terrorism suspects was denied, but from that block came the sound of screaming. The screaming continued for a long time. "I am sure someone was being beaten, they were screaming like they were being hit," the witness reported. "I felt scared, I was asking what was happening in the terrorist section. "I heard shouting, like someone had a hot iron on their body, screams. The officer said they were just screaming by themselves. I was hearing the screams throughout the visit." The witness said that even in the thieves' section prisoners were being treated badly. "Someone was shouting 'Please help us, we want the human rights officers, we want the Americans to come back'," he said. Prisoners interviewed in the presence of their jailers said they were frightened for their safety. They complained that chicken and milk had been cut from their rations, leaving them on rice and water. They also complained about the oppressive heat. Outside the prison, relatives of some of the inmates said they were being tortured by their captors. One woman, who gave her name as Omsaad, said: "My son Saad [who was arrested in Fallujah as a suspected insurgent] said he is being tortured by the Iraqis to confess the name of his leader. I met my son and he told me they were being treated badly by the Iraqis." Haleem Aleulami, who was released from the jail last week, three weeks after being arrested in Ramadi for carrying a pistol in his car, said the Americans had treated him better when they ran the jail. He claimed that visits from the International Red Cross staff had dried up and accused local human rights workers of being members of Shia groups who turned a blind eye to problems in the jail. "The people are Iraqis and they are members of the Sciri and al Dawa parties. They have a good relationship with the leaders of the jail and they keep quiet," he said. The guards swore at the ordinary prisoners, he said, but those in the terrorist section were treated more brutally. "The guards were swearing at us, but in the terrorist section they were beating them. I heard it all the time. Everyone knows what is happening." And Khalid Alaani, who was also picked up in Ramadi suspected of involvement in Sunni terrorism, said: "We preferred the Americans. We asked to move with them to Baghdad airport because we knew the treatment would be changed because we know what the Iraqis are. When the Americans left everything changed." Staff at the jail said that the prisoners were allowed out from their cells for only 15 to 20 minutes a day because of the danger from the regular mortar attacks. They are no longer allowed access to the main hall where the Americans had allowed them to watch television and the room is now reserved for the use of officers and guards. Staff explained that the air conditioning in the cell blocks had broken, although it was working in their quarters. One officer, Capt Ali Abdelzaher, said: "We have a problem with the financing for the food, not like the Americans, and there is a technical problem with the air conditioning." Capt Abdelzaher also confirmed that a number of inmates had been transferred from the Jadriyah detention centre, along with their guards and interrogators. Graphic stories of abuse at that previously secret facility emerged after US soldiers found 169 prisoners showing signs of torture last November. Most of the prisoners held by the Americans at Abu Ghraib were either released in recent months or transferred to a new £32 million detention centre at Camp Cropper near Baghdad International Airport. Yesterday, the International Red Cross confirmed that its visits to the prison had been suspended since January 2005 on security grounds.

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Home Front: WoT

Lynndie burned in prison "mishap"

2005-12-30

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Lynndie England, the U.S. soldier incarcerated for abusing detainees in Iraq, was badly burned in a prison kitchen accident, her mother said on Thursday. England, who was pictured holding a leash to a naked, hooded Iraqi inmate at the Abu Ghraib prison, was sentenced in September to three years for her part in the abuse scandal that sparked worldwide outrage. She is now confined to the Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar in San Diego, California. England works in the prison's kitchen, where she suffered second- and possibly third-degree burns from being splattered with grease over her chest as she removed chickens from a tall oven, her mother, Terrie England, said in an interview. Ah. Gee. Shucks. "She was in severe pain," she said of the December 14 incident. "Everybody in the prison heard the scream." Terrie England, who is caring for England's infant during her incarceration, faulted prison officials for not giving better treatment during a visit to the emergency room. "They gave her nothing," she said. "When this happened I was furious. ... To think they give you nothing for pain." Brewster Schenck, a spokesman for Consolidated Brig Miramar, confirmed England had been assigned to the kitchen, where inmates prepare and serve food mostly for other prisoners. He declined to discuss the accident or her medical condition. Brewster Schenck? Some parents really hate their kids Terrie England said the arrival of her daughter at the military prison caused a lot of curiosity, including autograph requests. "It wasn't just prisoners, it was guards and everything," she said. Maybe somebody got jealous and tried to shove our girl into the oven She said Lynndie England had been taking a Bible prayer class in prison and telephoning home from prison about once a week. In a September interview with Reuters, England blamed her involvement in the Abu Ghraib scandal on then-lover Charles Graner, who is serving a 10-year sentence on abuse charges and is the father of her baby.

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Iraq

Iraqis call Lynndie England jail term travesty

2005-09-29

Iraqis expressed fury on Wednesday over the three-year jail sentence for Lynndie England, the U.S. soldier notorious for holding a naked inmate by a leash in Abu Ghraib prison, saying it exposed American hypocrisy. They said the sentence would have been more harsh had she been convicted of abusing Americans. "America should be ashamed of this sentence. This is the best evidence that Americans have double standards," said Akram Abdel Amir, a retired bus driver in Baghdad. "There are Iraqis in jail without any charge, just based on suspicion. But when it comes to Americans, the matter is totally different." I figured that'd be their reaction. And they're right. England should have gotten at least ten years.

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Home Front: WoT

Jail term for Iraq abuse poster girl

2005-09-28

US soldier Lynndie England, who said she was only trying to please her boyfriend when she took part in detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, has been sentenced to three years behind bars. Good riddance to her. It should have been at least 20... England's sentencing late on Tuesday wrapped up the last of nine courts-martial of low-level soldiers charged in the abuse scandal, which severely damaged America's image in the Muslim world and tarnished the US military at home and abroad. The jury of five Army officers needed about 90 minutes to determine their sentence for England, a 22-year-old reservist from rural West Virginia. The charges carried up to nine years, but prosecutor Captain Chris Graveline asked the jury to imprison her for four to six years. The defence asked for no time behind bars. England sat with her eyes forward as the verdict was read, occasionally looking down.

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Iraq

Lynndie England Convicted of Prisoner Abuse Charges

2005-09-26

Army Pfc. Lynndie England, whose smiling poses in photos of detainee abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison made her the face of the scandal, was convicted Monday by a military jury on six of seven counts. England, 22, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy, four counts of maltreating detainees and one count of committing an indecent act. She was acquitted on a second conspiracy count. The jury of five male Army officers took about two hours to reach its verdict. Her case now moves into the sentencing phase, which will determined by the same jury. She faces a maximum 10 years in prison. Fort Leavenworth is lovely this time of year. England's trial is the last for a group of nine Army reservists charged with mistreating prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Two others were convicted in trials and the remaining six made plea deals. Several of those soldiers testified at England's trial.

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Iraq

Here We Go Again...

2005-09-24

Human Rights group alleges Iraq prisoner abuse Abu Gharib redux, via Drudge... WASHINGTON (AFP) - Troops from the army's elite 82nd Airborne Division routinely beat and mistreated Iraqi prisoners at a base near Fallujah in central Iraq with the approval of their superior officers, a New York-based human rights group said. Beat on the brat with a baseball bat... Human Rights Watch said three soldiers -- two sergeants and a captain who were not identified by name -- provided the accounts of abuse, which they said occurred at Forward Operating Base Mercury near Fallujah from September 2003 through April 2004. They're lucky to be alive... They alleged that a sergeant broke one prisoner's leg with a metal baseball bat. Others were made to hold five-gallon (19-liter) jugs of water with their arms outstretched, according to the report. Ima kinda partial to wooden bats myself... Detainees, known as PUCs or "persons under control," were subjected to stress positions, extremes of hot and cold, sleep deprivation, denied food and water and were piled in human pyramids, the report said. Sounds like rehased stories to me... The abuse was meted out as part of military intelligence interrogations or merely to "relieve stress" of troops, the report said. Drinking or beating off usually relieves my stress, but that's just me. "Everyone in camp knew if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC tent. In a way it was sport," a sergeant is quoted as saying. Yeah, some sport, beating on detainees. The bad fish smell starts already... "One day (a sergeant) shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the guys leg with a mini Louisville Slugger, a metal bat," he said. After Lynndie England, I'm not buying it. The soldiers were from the 82nd Airborne Division's 1st battalion 504th parachute regiment. Non reservists? Still not buying it. "The accounts here suggest that the mistreatment of prisoners by the US military is even more widespread than has been acknowledged to date, including among troops belonging to some of the best trained, most decorated and highly respected units in the US Army," the report said. Which is precisely why I'm not buying it. The report says that in many cases the abuses were specifically ordered by military intelligence before interrogations, and that it was widely known by superior officers both inside and outside of military intelligence. Some might call these efforts 'extracting intelligence' from enemy combatants but our military is never given the benefit of the doubt. According to the report, the captain made persistent efforts to raise his concern about the abuse with his chain of command but was ignored and told to consider his career. He said when he made an appointment to meet with Senate staffers, his commanding officer denied him permission to leave his base. The captain was interviewed several days later by representatives of the army's Criminal Investigations Command and the army inspector general. The soldiers attributed the abuse to lack of guidance on the Geneva Conventions rules on the treatment of prisoners and assumptions that they did not apply. Damn straight they don't apply to terrorists. "Trends were accepted. Leadership failed to provide clear guidance so we just developed it. They wanted intel (intelligence). As long as no PUCs came up dead it happened," one sergeant was quoted as saying. I find it extremely hard to believe 'clear guidance' was not provided after Abu Gharib. "We heard rumors of PUCs dying so we were careful. We kept it to broken arms and legs and shit," he said. What, no naked pyrimaids? Pikers...

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Iraq-Jordan

Lynndie England Plans to Fight Abu Ghraib Charges

2005-09-20

FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) - Four months after she tried without success to plead guilty, Army Pfc. Lynndie England plans to fight charges she played a key role in abusing detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, her lawyer said. The 22-year-old reservist, who appeared in several graphic photos taken inside Abu Ghraib in 2003, goes on trial here this week on two counts of conspiracy, four counts of mistreating prisoners and one count of committing an indecent act. She will be the last of a group of junior enlisted soldiers charged with abuses at the notorious prison to have their cases resolved. Two have been convicted at trial, while six others made plea deals and received prison sentences of up to eight years. Most were members of the Maryland-based 372nd Military Police Company. A final hearing is scheduled Tuesday to resolve any last-minute motions, with jury selection and opening statements to follow on Wednesday. The trial is expected to conclude by the end of September. In May, England entered into a plea agreement that eventually fell apart, but this time around "there's not going to be a deal," said Capt. Jonathan Crisp, her lead defense lawyer. Crisp said he plans to base much of his defense on England's history of mental health problems that date back to her early childhood. He said he also will focus on the influence exerted over England by Pvt. Charles Graner, the reputed abuse ringleader. Graner, who England has said fathered her young son while they were deployed, is serving a 10-year sentence after being convicted at trial in January. "I wouldn't say it's 'Blame Graner,'" Crisp said of his trial strategy, which includes calling Graner as a witness. "But certainly Graner is involved as far as what was going on." In her attempted plea deal, England pleaded guilty to all of the same counts she faces this week in exchange for an undisclosed sentencing cap. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 11 years. But judge Col. James Pohl abruptly threw out the deal and declared a mistrial during the sentencing phase when testimony by Graner contradicted England's guilty plea. Prosecutors, who declined to talk about the trial, are expected to rely on the photos that have made England the scandal's most recognizable figure. In one photo, she is seen holding a prisoner on a leash. A ruling by Pohl in July, however, tossed out a key piece of the prosecution's case - statements to Army investigators in which England implicated herself in the abuse. The judge said that he believed England did not fully understand the consequences when she waived her rights against self-incrimination before speaking to the investigators in January 2004.

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Home Front: WoT

Lynndie Waives Right to Challenge Charges

2005-05-25

Pfc. Lynndie England yesterday surrendered her right to challenge the seven charges she faces in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, moving her one step closer to a new military trial. Her defense attorney, Capt. Jonathan Crisp, would not provide details as to why he decided not to go forward with the Article 32 hearing — the military equivalent of a grand jury proceeding. He said only that it was part of an "evolving trial strategy." Now the decision on England's charges goes to Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, Fort Hood's commanding general. He'll decide whether she'll face any or all of the charges. Crisp said the waiver was not part of a deal with prosecutors. He said he did not think the sides would reach another plea agreement after England's initial guilty plea was rejected by a judge this month. Prosecution spokeswoman Maj. Rose Bleam said that if Metz orders a trial it could start as soon as next month. England could face up to 11 years in prison. She faces two counts of conspiracy to maltreat detainees, four counts of maltreatment and one count of committing an indecent act.

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Home Front: WoT

At this point, is Newsweek really journalism?

2005-05-20

Jim Geraghty, National Review Online A touch of EFL; links in original. . . . Does it still really count as a 'news' magazine? I mean, for an opinion mag, doesn't National Review or the Weekly Standard do a better job of offering a full picture of Iraq and other issues? Heck, if you don't want a conservative example, how about the New Republic or the Atlantic? . . . . . . I've worked a lot of places, and written for a lot of publications and newspapers with reputations and outlooks far from National Review. I think highly of a lot of people in a lot of places that aren't perceived as "conservative" — the Boston Globe, the Denver Post, Congressional Quarterly. Reporters are like any other field — they come good, bad and indifferent. But some of the biggest names in the industry are now in the business of confirming their own viewpoint, regardless of the facts. After a bunch of young guys were caught making stuff up — Stephen Glass at the New Republic and Jayson Blair at the New York Times — a slew of big-names have been exposed as touting, murmuring, or breathlessly reporting stories that didn't turn out to be true or verifiable — Dan Rather, Eason Jordan, and now Michael Iskoff and the editors at Newsweek. In every one of these cases, stories that were fake, unsubstantiated, or unreliable got through the highly-touted editing and fact-checking processes because the editors wanted them to be true. They 'rang true' to editors' ears. Of course, they thought, Bush's service record was 'sugarcoated.' Of course, U.S. troops would deliberately target and murder journalists whose coverage they didn't like. Of course, U.S. interrogators would flush the Koran. You read the coverage of some corners of the media world, from the New York Times, to the American Journalism Review to the Nation to the Huffington thing and elsewhere, the reaction in the face of retraction is the argument that, "well, this story could still possibly be true — it hasn't been disproven 110 percent." They surmise that the retractions are the result of Bush administration pressure and vast sinister conspiracies. Those of us who don't espouse the mainstream media conventional wisdom have a responsibility to set a better standard. . . . We're writing for the audience that actually wants to know what's going on, that doesn't always assume that Pentagon officials are lying, that has a healthy skepticism of the word of a captured al-Qaeda terrorist, and that gives our guys in uniform the benefit of the doubt. (They've earned it.) When some of our guys foul up big-time, like Abu Ghraib, we want to know. But we don't want the gruesome abuse photos hyped into endlessly displayed news porn. We know it's a horrible sight, but it's not quite as horrible as what we saw on an autumn Tuesday morning a few years ago. We want to know more about Iraq than the endlessly repeated quote from the grumpy cab driver that "things were better under Saddam." We want to know how their population is striding, bit by bit, to a genuine Arab democracy — even when it stumbles. We have faith they'll get there eventually. When the Schiavo memo turns out to be actually written by a Republican, we have to say, 'Well, the Post and ABC botched it by saying it was 'distributed by GOP leadership', but they got a lot of key facts right, and our hunch that this was a Democratic dirty trick was off base.' Of course some Media Matters folks will hype it. Let them. We know what's going on. What was the one moment that things looked darkest for the Bush presidency in the last three and a half years? During the endless all-Abu-Ghraib, all-the-time abuse coverage festival from last spring. When references to the prison abuse scandal were cropping up on the Washington Post's Sports, Arts, and Metro sections. The Isikoff story — and the inevitable coming deluge of in-depth investigative journalism of additional tales of abuse from those utterly trustworthy al-Qaeda prisoners — are a return to the "good old days" of last spring. When Teddy Kennedy could compare the U.S. military's handling of prisoners to Saddam's torture chambers with a gleeful, hearty grin. When our guys on the front lines could be portrayed as sadistic, black-hearted villains. When the face of our guys wasn't the stoic loyalty of a Pat Tillman, the pride and dedication of a Jeffrey Adams, or any other one of our heroes but the nauseating sneer of Lynndie England. Boy, did those days feel good to the media. Call that whatever you like. But don't call it journalism.

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Home Front: Culture Wars

Abu Ghraib - The Musical! Live Onstage! No, Really!

2005-05-12

Since the theater's beginnings in ancient Greece, playwrights have used the stage to explore complex ethical issues and portray disturbing current events. It is a practice that continues into the present day with works like Athol Fugard's "Master Harold ... and the Boys" and Tony Kushner's "Angels in America." On May 12, the Loeb Experimental Theatre will premier a work by a Harvard undergraduate that carries on that tradition. "Abu Ghraib," written and directed by sophomore Currun Singh, probes the meaning of the 2004 prisoner abuse scandal using a combination of dialogue, film, music, and dance. Singh, a social studies concentrator who has participated in student theatrical productions both onstage and behind the scenes since his freshman year, said that the idea for a play based on Abu Ghraib evolved out of the shock and dismay he and fellow students felt as the news story unfolded. His concern about human rights and about tensions in the Middle East also contributed to the creative ferment, as did his desire to work on a production that dealt with more serious issues. "I wanted it to be a serious piece," he said, "a call to action." "A call from Hollywood for the movie rights" Singh soon found a team of collaborators to join him in this risk-taking venture, among them fellow sophomore Xin Wei Ngiam, also a social studies concentrator, who agreed to produce the play. Like Singh, Ngiam found the revelations about events at Abu Ghraib extremely disturbing. "On one level I was just appalled. I was just feeling pure shock and horror. But on another level, I was wondering, how could people do those things?" Ngiam said. The question of how ordinary people can commit unspeakable acts became one of the central issues not only for Singh and Ngiam but for all the students working on the production. Through group discussions and rehearsals, the play developed and changed, propelling the participants through a rollercoaster ride of feelings. "In rehearsal we tried to simulate what had happened, and sometimes it just ended up being funny, obviously because this wasn't the real thing, it was just a play. The experience could be very confusing and disturbing," Singh said. In the play, characters based on real Abu Ghraib military personnel whose names have since become well known - people like Spc. Charles Graner, Pvt. Lynndie England, and Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski - talk casually amongst themselves and intimidate and humiliate the Iraqi prisoners. But the play does what neither the leaked photos, the media reports, nor the military trial have been able to do - namely, to apply invented but plausible identities to the anonymous Iraqi torture victims whose naked bodies have become all-too-familiar over the past year. In key scenes, the prisoners talk about their past lives, how and why they were captured, and how their consciousness has been changed by the treatment they have received. In some respects, these are the most moving and revelatory scenes in the play because they remind us that these unfortunate individuals have families, friends, careers, personal histories, and, above all, human feelings. I know I left that nano-violin around here somewhere... Another element that engages the audience emotionally as well as providing a narrative thread is the gradual moral awakening of Specialist Joseph Darby, the soldier responsible for leaking the incriminating photos to military investigators. Singh and his colleagues made a decision that even the most honest and explicit dialogue could not do justice to the emotions aroused by Abu Ghraib. This is why they have incorporated the element of dance into the production. "We thought that dance might be the most effective way of expressing feelings about these events. Dance can bring out visceral emotions that words can't," said Singh. Singh, a first-time director and playwright, acknowledges that the production could not have reached its present state without the help of the Denver-based group Show-Up Productions a division of Soros Inc. , dedicated to fostering political theater among youth communities. "They've been terrific at raising money, giving us advice, helping us mold the characters, and mentoring me in my first effort at script writing and directing," said Singh. How will Singh know if he's succeeded? He has a pretty good idea of the effect he wants his production to have on the audience. "If they come out slightly uncomfortable, shocked, and motivated to vote Democratic action, that will be what we're aiming for."

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