And you thought you'd already read the worst about this war

[barking_iguana]

Navy veteran blows whistle on illegal gun sales in Iraq (to insurgents, etc.) so he's sent to US military prison for 97 days and subjected to "harsh interrogation methods"

There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.

He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers - all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.

The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.

"It was a Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ) for guns," he says. "It was all illegal and everyone knew it."

So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn't know whom to trust in Iraq.

For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.

Also held was colleague Nathan Ertel, who helped Vance gather evidence documenting the sales, according to a federal lawsuit both have filed in Chicago, alleging they were illegally imprisoned and subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics "reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants."

That's the most egregious case, but there's been a consistent pattern of US government persecution of those who've exposed corruption in the contractors (Iraqi and American, including Haliburton and Custer Battles) in Iraq. Read the article.

Comments

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

Remind me why I oppose the death penalty.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Uh, because it would more likely be imposed on Vance than on Cheney?

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

No, that’s a nerd reason, I wouldn’t have a nerd reason.

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

Wait, no, that’s not a nerd reason, I was confused.

But anyway that’s not really the essence of the reason, since I have no doubt that Bush or Cheney would have someone put to death if it suited them, the law be damned, and having death penalty on the books is beside the point in that case.

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, the reason, since this one is sufficient, is the assumption of fallibility and the impossibility of reversing death. If necessary this reason can be embellished in a slippery-slope-like but non-fallacious argument.

This may sound nerdish but nerds actually go around using resurrection spells instead of avoiding death. Okay, my reason is nerdish but if I call it wonkish it sounds even worse, even though it means the same thing.

There are other good reasons besides this sufficient one, but they are harder to argue.

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think I have wording now that lets me explain the ‘slippery slope’ part. This is that it is more important not to develop a habit of putting convicts to death than it is to put them to death, for otherwise if our standards of conviction slip—and they will sometimes do so—then we’ll end up executing people who should not have been executed. Instead we should develop a habit of not executing people.

It is an empirical argument rather than a ‘logical’ one.

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

Incidentally I don’t think a lot about a federal execution of Dick Cheney, although I suppose I’d have to oppose that, too.