Letter: Top U.S. brass won’t take fall for prison abuse

Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2004 | 9:03 a.m.

The prisoner abuse scandal has moved to the back pages of the news. Even though there seems to be evidence that torture was promoted from the top down, including President Bush's lawyers and the Pentagon, and even though several prisoners have died in custody, military prosecutors maintain the whole thing was the fault of Pfc. Lynndie England. England's superior officers say she was undisciplined and even had sex with another soldier and got pregnant. In other words, she was the "bad apple" -- the Eve in the garden where life began. The torture thing is all England's idea. Besides, says Chief Warrant Officer Edward Rivas, torture doesn't work. Prisoners tell you what you want to hear.

It does sound irrational on the surface. The Red Cross says that 70 to 90 percent of the prisoners at the ex-Saddam torture prison were innocent Iraqis and could not tell their captors anything about WMD because they didn't know anything about the weapons that didn't exist in the first place.

So why the torture, and how did England know about the methods, which were known only to interrogators? It's more likely that England is just a pawn, that torture was systemic to terrorize the population of the country that was being occupied just to keep them in line. It looks as though another United States soldier is about to make a sacrifice for her country, or at least for the big brass and her president.

JERRY BITTS