Lynn C. Woolsey: “last week, the trial of low-level military officers involved in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq reached a…”

“last week, the trial of low-level military officers involved in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq reached a climactic turning point. Colonel James Pohl, the military judge trying PFC Private First Class Lyndie England declared a mistrial in the case. Now this case will have to be tried again from the very beginning. England's case was thrown out after Private Charles Graner claimed that the photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib Prison were taken for training purposes. This claim contradicts England's guilty plea in which she accepted responsibility for her actions and admitted that she had acted outside the scope of military orders. There is no shortage of evidence that England is guilty of having participated in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners which included subjecting the prisoners to forced nudity, savage beatings, electric shock and harassment by dogs. Some prisoners, as a matter of fact, died as a result of the abuse. Nor is there a question that the abuse of prisoners violates our American ethical and moral code. Red, the color of blood, is the color that resulted from the beating in Abu Ghraib Prison last year. But now yellow is the color of the high-ranking military and administration officials who are cowering behind junior soldiers, hoping to duck responsibility for setting up a culture supporting the use of torture in American-run prisons in Iraq. The question is, who is responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib Prison?…”