“We had no training whatsoever”. In the BBC’s coverage of the Abu Graib torture appears the following fascinating passage:

“…(O)ne of the six soldiers charged, Sergeant Chip Frederick — a reservist whose full-time job is as a prison officer in the US state of Virginia — …said he and his fellow reservists had never been told how to deal with prisoners, or what lines should not be crossed. ‘We had no training whatsoever,’ he said.

‘I kept asking my chain of command for certain things… like rules and regulations. And it just wasn’t happening,’ he said.

He said he never saw a copy of the Geneva Conventions – which govern the treatment of prisoners – until after he was charged. The Army investigation confirmed that reservists at Abu Ghraib had not been trained in Geneva Convention rules.”

The comanding officer of these military police, Brigadier General Janice Karpinski, has been suspended and is among military personnel being investigated since publicity about the torture practices emerged. Army investigators have apparently determined that her leadership failures were to blame for the abuses.

It strikes me we have come a long way from Nuremberg, when “only following orders” was offered as a defense. These barbarous sons of bitches are claiming that they would have needed to be instructed in how to take care of their prisoners humanely? And that, in the absence of guidance, their natural fallback was bestial torture? (Oh, wait, the MP interviewed is a correctional officer in his domestic life…) If the cause for concern about their commanding officer was her “lack of leadership and clear standards”, by the by, should the buck stop there? IMHO, it should proceed up the chain of command to the buffoon-in-chief in the White House himself.