Following our post on the alleged detention of children by US forces in Iraq, we received an email from John Heacock, who served for nearly a year in Iraq with the 267th MP Company from the Tennessee National Guard. With his permission, we reprint here in full.

I hopped a link from Alterman’s blog and saw your publicizing of alleged children imprisoned and abused in Iraq. I spent almost a full year at the main prison in Iraq, Camp Bucca, which is near Um Qasr on the SE Iraq-Kuwaiti border.

There was a special compound for kids, defined as younger than 18, mainly those who were picked up with adults (generally relatives like Dads) for crimes or suspicions of crimes. I think the # peaked at around 60 or so.

I can’t comment on any alleged abuses at Abu Ghraib, except to note that my unit’s encounters with the 320th MP of PA (4 of whom got nailed for abuse early in the war) and the MD MPs now being pilloried were consistent with their reputation as unprofessional, hyper-aggressive cowboys (and cowgirls). The one common denominator I’ve seen among too aggressive guards and MPs is fear: the soldiers who don’t have the skills and tools to handle the prisoners with confidence resort to over-the-top intimidation to deter conflict. These yahoos appeared definitely afraid of the prisoners. The claim that a child was doused with water, driven around in the cold, and brought before his Dad to get information, is, sadly, quite believable. At the same time, I know as many soldiers who would have halted such actions if they’d known about it. Like any other work setting, people figure out who’s ethical and who’s a psycho pretty quickly, and adjust their behavior accordingly in their presence.

(BTW, you should also look into the story of the 18-year-old Iraqi girl who was held at Abu G for kissing her husband in public, after self-appointed morality police brought her there (her husband, of course, wasn’t held). It made the front page of Stars & Stripes. A textbook case of nobody having a plan, and nobody taking responsibility in the bureaucracy.)

Getting back to the kids: for the most part, the kids were treated better than the other prisoners. The majority spoke some level of English, which makes things easier for both guards and prisoners, and reduces miscommunication, confusion, and de-humanization. One of the biggest problems was adults trying to claim that they were under 18 so they could be held in the kid’s compound. They had different reasons for lying about their age, and none of them were good. The 2nd worst issue was the “Lord of the Flies” element of the kids forming groups/gangs/cliques, and conflicts between them, although flare-ups manifested themselves more in spats over food or cigarettes, or rough play during soccer games. The Syrian kids stuck together really well, causing some complaints and intimidation among the other, mainly Iraqi, kids.

Some of the kids clearly suffered from depression or other emotional problems, which shouldn’t be too surprising, given their circumstances. The guards had enough trouble maintaining order and safety in the camp, and lack the ability, training, or time to diagnose and treat emotional problems.

This goes for adult prisoners too: I remember one guy we nicknamed ?Osama? because he looked like Bin Laden. He was kept in our high-threat detention area, nicknamed “Iraqitraz,” which was actually nicer than it sounds: well-shaded, individual cells for those who’d tried to escape or attack guards or other prisoners (the latter being much more common than the former). Osama was clearly messed up: catatonic/psychotic, occasionally violent. The doctors tried to drug him up with what they had, but I don’t think they had the right meds. I talked with one doctor about him, and they were trying to find a medical facility or family to take him, but the doc predicted that he’d just be taken to Baghdad and let out somewhere. (Which, BTW, is how prisoners were released by us: load them on buses, drive them a few hundred miles away, give them $5 each, and drive off).

Back to the kids: I remember trying to see if we could get books or writing materials because some of the kids complained about being bored, and I suggested an informal school, which they liked. The people at the top of our pecking order were either the MI people, who were more interested in schmoozing with the captured Iraqi officers (a far cry from Abu Ghraib!), or the MP Battalion leadership, who avoided at all costs entering the camp or doing any real work. It fell on deaf ears.

The problems with the treatment of the kids at Camp Bucca was about the same as the flaws with the other prisoners: lack of a policy regarding standards of guilt or length of imprisonment, bureaucratic indifference, laziness of those of high rank whose job it was to process prisoners, scarce resources, and conflicting guidance from above. Consequently, we had hundreds if not thousands of prisoners that we didn’t know why they were being held, who would never be convicted of a crime under any civilized standard of proof, and who spent more time awaiting a hearing than they would have been held in prison if convicted. A typical example: men held for months for stealing gasoline or butting in lines, when their sentence would have been 2 weeks or 30 days. I once asked the sole JAG attorney (a 1st Lt., BTW, the lowest rank for JAG) why we weren’t following the Geneva Convention rules about hearings and length of incarceration, and he expressed shock; when I told him he could go to either the main camp or Iraqitraz to see the shortcomings for himself, he told me that the camp commander wouldn’t let him into either site. It’s hard to do your job ensuring that the military follows its rules when you can’t even see what’s going on.

I hope you are wrong in thinking the shit will really hit the fan when facts about how kids were treated get out, but I’m afraid that you are right. I hope that the story of the kid at Abu Ghraib is the only incident. We tried to treat our kids as well as we could, and keep them safe from other prisoners and each other, and did a B+ job. The fact that the Army doesn’t even admit holding juveniles is a telling reflection of how clueless it was about having some plan or philosophy of imprisonment.

–John Heacock