The Signs Were There

[Barrett808]

The Signs Were There
This story was reported by Bart Jones, Joe Haberstroh, John Riley, Steve Wick, Sam Bruchey and Craig Gordon
It was written by Wick.
May 9, 2004

Thirteen months ago, on a hot Palm Sunday morning in the southern Iraqi desert, four U.S. Army military policemen held off 500 prisoners trying to break through the flimsy gate of a prison camp, with thousands more poised to follow them. The rioting and rock throwing stopped only when a master sergeant from Pennsylvania gave the order to open fire.

Last November, after a riot broke out among prisoners angry at overcrowding at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, U.S. Army military policemen killed three prisoners and wounded nine others. Nine American soldiers were injured. After the riot, an official inquiry said communication within the prison's chain of command was "poor" and added that the guards had been improperly trained.

Months before the Red Cross and a whistle-blowing soldier independently alerted officials in January of widespread prisoner abuse, there were clear signs that the American handling of detainees was out of control.

Interviews with returning reservists of the 800th Military Police Brigade, whose administrative offices are housed in a one-story brick building on Oak Street in Uniondale, along with the blistering report, show the warning signs of an impending disaster. Yet nothing was done. The interviews and the report detail how the reserve military police units under the 800th's direct supervision - whose job was to guard more than 7,000 Iraqi prisoners at 16 Army-run prisons - were ill-prepared, hopelessly outnumbered, poorly trained and badly supervised.

(more)

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usnarr093793960may09,0,5688002.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-headlines

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