GI Who Exposed Abu Ghraib Feared Revenge after Rummy Said his Name

[leftchick]

http://www.wjla.com/headlines/0806/351750.html

NEW YORK (AP) - The soldier who triggered the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal by sending incriminating photos to military investigators says he feared deadly retaliation by other GIs and was shocked when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (newsbio) mentioned his name at a Senate hearing. Within days, Joe Darby was spirited out of Iraq at his own request. But his family was besieged by news media, and close relatives called him a traitor. Ultimately he was forced to move away from his hometown in western Maryland.

"I had the choice between what I knew was morally right and my loyalty to other soldiers. I couldn't have it both ways," the 27-year-old military policeman said in the just-released September issue of Gentleman's Quarterly.

<snip>

Darby is scheduled to leave the Army and the Reserves, after eight years of duty, on Aug. 31. He no longer lives in his hometown of Cumberland, Md., where "a lot of people up there view me as a traitor. Even some of my family members think I'm a traitor."

He said he has returned home only twice, for a wedding and his mother's funeral.

"I'm not welcome there. People there don't look at the fact that I knew right from wrong," he said. "They look at the fact that I put an Iraqi before an American."

[bananas]

1. k&r nt

[UndertheOcean]

2. k&r..

n/t

[ThomCat]

3. Anyone who could call him a traitor

is sick in the head. He was one of the few to show any real respect for what it should mean to be an American.

[Synnical]

4. (shaking head)

[gully]

5. Where is he and how do WE support him?

He deserves a medal of honor.

[Ghost in the Machine]

6. AMEN!

A true PATRIOT! Only a warmongering neo-con would call him a traitor.

[Stockholm]

7. Why did Rommel mention his name at a public hearing

and perhaps more interesting who leaked his name to the New Yorker magazine?

I wonder who the real traitors are in this case...

[NoBushSpokenHere]

8. This almost makes me want to start a

real DU community where we could all live and not have to deal with the idiots in this country. But, that place would probably be targeted by the 'terrorists' too.

[UTUSN]

9. Kick for latest hero-whistleblower of the Vietnam variety

*******QUOTE*******
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-vi...
VIETNAM: THE WAR CRIMES FILES

Civilian Killings Went Unpunished

Declassified papers show U.S. atrocities went far beyond My Lai.

By Nick Turse and Deborah Nelson, Special to The Times
August 6, 2006

.... Moments later, the 19 villagers lay dead or dying.

Back home in California, Henry published an account of the slaughter and held a news conference to air his allegations. Yet he and other Vietnam veterans who spoke out about war crimes were branded traitors and fabricators. No one was ever prosecuted for the massacre.

Now, nearly 40 years later, declassified Army files show that Henry was telling the truth — about the Feb. 8 killings and a series of other atrocities by the men of B Company.

The files are part of a once-secret archive, assembled by a Pentagon task force in the early 1970s, that shows that confirmed atrocities by U.S. forces in Vietnam were more extensive than was previously known. ....

********UNQUOTE*******