I was just reading a new 60 Minutes article about a former Army MP named Joseph Darby. If you don't know who Darby is, you know what he is famous for. He is the person who found the Abu Ghraib pictures that sadists such as Charles Graner and Lindie England had taken while they were torturing innocent Iraqis. He put his own safety at risk, to expose the absolute evils that American soldiers were behind at Abu Ghraib. Darby is a true patriot, in the mold of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. So you would think that people would treat him as the hero he is, right? Not so.
Darby's unit was stationed at Abu Ghraib. While there, Darby wanted some pictures of Iraq to send home. So he asked the monster Charles Graner (who I believe is the father of Lindie England's baby, conceived in Abu Ghraib) for a camera. Graner pointed him to one. And it was here that Darby discovered the torture pictures. Unlike Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity who believe that these were just "harmless college pranks," Darby did not have a similar amoral and sadistic personality.
But no matter why they were doing it, Darby knew what they were doing was wrong.
"I've always had a moral sense of right and wrong. And I knew that you know, friends or not, it had to stop," Darby says.
Dabry gave the pictures to an Army investigator, who did nothing.
He says he was very scared and even slept with a pistol under his pillow. "With my hand on it. I put it in my pillow case, I put my hand on it and cocked it, cocked the hammer and I'd sleep with it under my hand under my pillow," he remembers.
He slept like this every night. "I slept in a room by myself. And anybody could come in in the middle of the night. You walk in the door, you hang a left, and then come in and cut my throat," Darby says.
Eventually, the investigation began and the torturers were removed from duty. Darby had given the pictures to the investigators under the condition of anonymity. No one knew that it was Darby who gave the pictures, until Donald Rumsfeld decided to a pull Robert Novak on his own Joe Wilson.
Darby initially wanted to remain anonymous — he and those implicated all served in the 372nd Military Police Company, but became known after Donald Rumsfeld publicly named him during a Senate hearing[1].
The shit had hit the fan. To the military, his family, and Americans across the country, Darby had committed the ultimate crime: betraying the GOP.
The commander of the local VFW post, Colin Engelbach, told 60 Minutes what people were calling Darby.
"He was a rat. He was a traitor. He let his unit down. He let his fellow soldiers down and the U.S. military. Basically he was no good," Engelbach says.
Asked if he agrees with that, Engelbach says, "I agree that his actions that he did were no good and borderline traitor, yes."
"What he says in his defense is 'Look. I’m an MP. And this is something which was illegal,'" Cooper remarks.
"Right. But do you put the enemy above your buddies? I wouldn’t," Engelbach replies.
Apparently this VFW commander is an amoral piece of filth like Garner, England, and all those who sanctioned and excused the actions of these monsters.
He says there was a lot of anger in Cumberland. "‘Cause it really did put our troops in harm’s way more so than they already were," Engelbach says.
Naturally. It was not the actions of the soldiers (or more importantly, the DOD and Bush administration) that put the troops in danger. It was the guy who exposed the evil that did that.
Bernadette Darby says she heard people calling her husband a traitor, that he was a dead man and that he was walking around with a bull's eye on his head.
To keep Joe and Bernadette safe, the military moved them to an Army base with body guards around the clock. "I couldn't go anywhere without security. Nowhere," Darby remembers.
Although fortunately, some people realized the fact that Darby was a once in a generation patriot.
While he was a villain to his neighbors, he was a hero to people he had never met, including Caroline Kennedy and Sen. Ted Kennedy, who gave him a "Profile In Courage" award in honor of President John F. Kennedy.
This is what the GOP is doing to our country, fellow kossacks. Torture, murder, and trashing those who dare to call them on it.