Home » Archives » "US troops fear retribution for prison scandal"

US troops fear retribution for prison scandal

May-15-2004 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

[Link to Full Article]
By Deborah Pasmantier

Mosul, Iraq - American soldiers patrolling the mean streets of Mosul are livid the barbaric abuses committed at the Abu Ghraib prison will expose them to vicious retribution.

Most Task Force Olympia soldiers, based at one of Saddam Hussein's glitzy former palaces in the northern city, are reluctant to talk about the abuses by their fellow soldiers.

When they do, words like "appalled" "disgusted" "shocked" and "disappointed" are on the tip of their tongue.

Above all, they fear paying the price for the crimes of a few and are furious their efforts to drive reconstruction projects will be undermined.

"I'm hurt and angry to see that some will compromise the values that I hold - leadership, loyalty, respect, duty," says Captain Angi Bowman, 33.

"I'm proud to be a US soldier and it (the scandal) is diminishing in the eyes of the world what we are doing here," she adds.

On the ground, soldiers who for months have been trying to repair factories and hospitals to improve desperate living conditions, are obsessed with the "negative image" portrayed of the army.

"I was upset. My first idea was it's gonna set back all the good work we have done here," says Corporal Brown Davis, 27.

Read the rest.


Advertisements