corrente

Military intelligence tries to get the story straight:

[Special Agent Tyler Pieron of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division, a] key Army investigator in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal has testified that he found "absolutely no evidence" that the military chain of command authorized any of the mistreatment of detainees, but rather that it was the work of a small band of guards "just having fun at the expense of the prisoners," according to court-martial documents obtained today by the Los Angeles Times.
(via AP)

Unfortunately, that's not what one of the accused soldiers says (""Chain of command" said "Smile for the camera!", back)

Not all intelligence officers agree with Special Agent Pieron, either:

Also testifying at the hearing was Sgt. Samuel Jefferson Provance III, a staff member of a military intelligence battalion. He said that interrogators would sometimes seem to go too far in trying to extract information from detainees.

While Pieron said his unit interviewed all of the military interrogators and found no examples of them encouraging the abuse, Provance said that intelligence officers never reported the abuse.

He said one day in the interrogators' office he heard his "peers" talking about "what MPs did to the detainees." He described it as "things like beating them up and using them as practice dummies and knocking them out."

He added that a colleague from a Nevada National Guard unit, whom he described as an older female soldier, told him of "some stuff that she saw going on." He said she documented the abuse but that her chain of command admonished her for reporting it.

I wonder why? Seems like the National Guard soldiers don't know enough to keep their mouths shut, doesn't it?

"She was afraid of her chain of command," Provance said. So, "she sent the documentation to her relatives."

Maybe Seymour Hersh should give her a call....