Breaking News: The Army officer in charge of the interrogation/torture  operation at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 is being court-martialed. My first  thought was: Finally an officer is being held accountable. In view of  the repeated rebuff to my own attempts to stop the torture and identify  those responsible, however, you will perhaps excuse my skepticism that  justice will be done.
An Army intelligence analyst,  my job at Abu Ghraib was systems administrator ("the computer guy").  But I had the bad luck to be on the night shift. And so I saw the detainees  dragged in for interrogation, heard the screams, and saw many of them  dragged out.
Watching Act I of the faux-trial  of Lt. Col. Steven Jordan last week at Fort Meade, Maryland, confirmed  my worst suspicions. I know Jordan; I was in place for his entire tenure  at Abu Ghraib, including when prisoners were being tortured; he was  an immediate boss.
Enter from the wings reserve  Maj. Gen. George Fay. MG Fay was handpicked to run interference for  then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by conducting the same kind of  "full and thorough investigation" that former President Richard  Nixon ordered for Watergate.
With Fay, too, I speak from  personal experience. Shortly after photos of the torture at Abu Ghraib  were published, I found myself being interviewed by Fay on May 1, 2004.  It was a surreal performance, with Fay seeming to take his cue at times  from Peter Seller's Inspector Clouseau.
Except it wasn't funny then;  and it is not funny now. To me, Fay showed himself singularly uninterested  in what really was going on at Abu Ghraib. I had to ask him repeatedly  to listen to my account. Whereupon he said he would recommend action  against me for not reporting what I knew sooner for, if I had done that,  I could have prevented the scandal. Right.
In my view, it was clear that  Fay's job was to quiet any discordant notes from noncommissioned officers  like me and help Rumsfeld push the responsibility down to "bad apples"  at the bottom of the chain of command.
When Maj. Gen. Taguba's Abu  Ghraib investigation report was leaked to the press on May 4, 2004,  I was very surprised to find myself listed as the only military intelligence  soldier to witness to the truth. And for my conscientiousness, the Army  imposed an exclusive gag order on me 10 days later; a week after that  my top-secret clearance was suspended, and eventually I was reduced  in rank.
Memory Loss
So it came as no surprise to  me that Fay would continue to play a disingenuous role at the court-martial  of Lt. Col. Jordan.
Jordan is the only officer  and the last of the 12 persons charged in the scandal to go to trial.  Eleven enlisted soldiers have been convicted of crimes, with the longest  sentence, 10 years, given to former Cpl. Charles Graner, Jr., in January  2005.
Two of the charges against  Jordan (together punishable by eight years in prison) were obstruction  of justice and lying to Fay.
On the day before Jordan's  trial began, Fay contacted Army prosecutors to claim that he "misspoke"  in earlier testimony that he had advised Jordan of his rights before  interviewing him in 2004. The Army judge was quick to approve a defense  motion to dismiss the false-statement and obstruction of justice charges.
Eight years off a possible  sentence even before the trial begins! Not bad.
The next stiffest possible  sentence was five years for disobeying Fay's ban on discussing the  investigation with others. But not to worry. Testifying last Wednesday,  Fay could not remember when he had told Jordan to avoid discussing the  investigation.
Enter Defense Attorney Maj.  Kris Poppe: (To Fay) "Today you testified you gave a specific order  not to discuss-to speak to no one. And that testimony is based on  your memory, is it not, sir?"
"It is," Fay replied.
So, presumably, we can now  strike five more years off a possible sentence.
What's left of the charges?  Cruelty and maltreatment of detainees punishable by one year in prison.
But the Army prosecutor amended  that particular count by reducing its scope from three months to a single  day. The only other charges are failure to obey a regulation (a possible  two-year sentence) and dereliction of duty (six months).
It seems a safe bet that Jordan,  like his immediate supervisor, Col. Thomas Pappas, will get off with  a reprimand and a minor fine.
If They Had Asked Me
According to press reports,  other witnesses will be called to testify at the Jordan court-martial.
Strange. Although I was at  Abu Ghraib for the entire time Lt. Col. Jordan was there, for some reason  the prosecution does not seem interested in using my testimony at this  trial.
I could, for example, provide  testimony demolishing the myth that Jordan was not really all that much  involved in interrogations.
One of the soldiers who worked  very closely with Jordan verified that he was fully familiar with the  infamous "hard site," where much of the torture took place. Jordan  had been seen there on more than one occasion, hanging out laid back  with his feet propped up. My soldier informant also bragged that he  had joined Jordan in beating up a prisoner.
Jordan also took liberties  with what were standard procedures, much like the CIA and other civilians  who did not seem to bother much with such niceties. One of the sergeants  with direct access to Jordan told me that Jordan felt empowered to ignore  regulations and interview detainees alone, which was highly irregular  even for swashbuckling CIA interrogators.
I cannot tell whether the Army  is deliberately oblivious to my potential input or that it is simply  not taking these things seriously.
Last month, a person from the  Army's Criminal Investigations Division and one from the team prosecuting  Jordan came to interview me. Why? Because they had seen me in a documentary  and learned from the film that I was at Abu Ghraib at the same time  as Lt. Col. Jordan. Never mind the copious testimony I had given over  the past several years.
Never have I been called to  testify at any of the trials.
No One Accountable
In keeping with the Rumsfeld  adage "Stuff Happens," and the Senate Armed Services Committee timidity,  no senior U.S. Army officer or defense official is likely to be held  accountable for the torture, "ghost" prisoners, and other abuses  at Abu Ghraib.
Only the bad apples at the  bottom; none of the ones at the top.
Not the Commander in Chief,  who authorized torture by Memorandum of Feb. 7, 2002, announcing and  implementing a new policy that detainees be treated "humanely, as  appropriate, and as consistent with military necessity."
Not then-Defense Secretary  Donald Rumsfeld, nor his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, nor U.S. pro-consul  Paul Bremer, nor troop commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, nor Maj.  Gen. Geoffrey Miller (in charge of Gitmo-izing Abu Ghraib), nor Sanchez's  intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, nor National Security Council  functionary Frances Townsend.
All of the above visited Abu  Ghraib during the torture year of 2003 before the photos surfaced the  next year.
Had it never occurred to them  that their incessant pressure on Army interrogators to find non-existent  WMD in Iraq and nonexistent ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda, together  with the expanded list of torture techniques duly approved by hired-gun  lawyers in the Pentagon, the Office of the Vice President, and the Department  of Justice, would lead to the abuses of Abu Ghraib?
Not to mention things like  the marginal notes from Rumsfeld, on the list of torture techniques,  "Make sure this happens."
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Only one general officer passes  the smell test, and he with flying colors-Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba.
On Jan. 31, 2004, he was asked  to look into the abuses at Abu Ghraib. A mark of his seriousness of  purpose is the fact that Taguba completed his investigation in two months  and did not sugarcoat his findings: "Systemic and illegal abuse of  detainees ... numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal  abuses."
In an attempt to explain how  it could be that Taguba could deviate so far from the official line,  one wag speculated that, for some reason, Taguba "didn't get the  memo."
He did an honest job-and  we would probably not ever have seen his unvarnished findings, had not  some patriotic truth-teller (aka leaker) made it available. That was  the end of Taguba's Army career, however. Several months after his  report leaked, Taguba got a phone call from his boss telling him to  retire.
Looking back, Taguba recently  told Seymour Hersh, "I assumed they wanted to know. I was ignorant  of the setting." [See The New Yorker, June 25, 2007.]
The general spoke of his futile  attempts to get senior generals to focus on the problem of torture.  One lieutenant general was at least candid in rebuffing Taguba: "I  don't want to get involved...because what do you do with that information,  once you know?..."
Taguba also spoke of the indignities  thrown his way by Rumsfeld and martinets like Gen. John Abizaid who,  like so many other high officials-civilian, as well as military-seem  to have forgotten the oath we all took to defend the Constitution of  the United States.
A few weeks after his report  became public, Abizaid turned to Taguba with a pointed warning: "You  and your report will be investigated."
Preferring to hold onto his  belief in an Army led by generals with integrity, Taguba later expressed  his disappointment that Abizaid would have that attitude.
Awakening to the new reality,  though, Taguba let it all out in a very telling way: "I had been in  the Army 32 years by then, and it was the first time that I thought  I was in the Mafia."
Sam Provance, a former  sergeant specializing in intelligence analysis, refused to remain silent  about the torture of Abu Ghraib, where he served for five months at  the height of the abuses. He was punished for refusing to take part  in the cover-up, and pushed out of the Army. For his sworn testimony  to Congress, click here.