Some would like to forget him. Others would like to harm him. Sadly, not enough recall him for his exemplary courage and willingness to nakedly stand up for not only his personal beliefs and values but those of the military in which he serves. Such is more than his boss, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld can claim. Darby’s exposure of the situational immoralists in action and the degenerates who then threatened him, his family and vandalized his property, forcing him to go into hiding, is deserving of a national honor.
So who are the moral relativists here? Joseph Darby (“It–Abu Ghraib–violated everything I personally believed in and all I’d been taught about the rules of war.” or those, many of which profanely call themselves Christians, who and criticize and threaten him?
GI Who Exposed Abu Ghraib Feared Revenge
By RICHARD PYLE
Associated Press Writer
Aug 10, 2006
NEW YORK (AP) — The soldier who triggered the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal by sending incriminating photos to military investigators says he feared deadly retaliation by other GIs and was shocked when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mentioned his name at a Senate hearing.
Within days, Joe Darby was spirited out of Iraq at his own request. But his family was besieged by news media, and close relatives called him a traitor. Ultimately he was forced to move away from his hometown in western Maryland.
“I had the choice between what I knew was morally right and my loyalty to other soldiers. I couldn’t have it both ways,” the 27-year-old military policeman said in the just-released September issue of Gentleman’s Quarterly.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Darby said that if presented with the same circumstances at Abu Ghraib today, he would do the same thing. “It was a hard decision to make when I made it, but it had to be done,” he said…
…In the as-told-to article by Wil S. Hylton, Darby said he never expected the Abu Ghraib story to “explode the way it did.”
The abuse of prisoners, he said, was going on before his Army Reserve MP unit was assigned there in October 2003.
“The day we arrived…we saw like 15 prisoners sitting in their cells in women’s underwear,” and MPs explained they were being punished for firing mortars at the compound, he said. “After we took over it just basically escalated.”
Former Brig. Gen. Janet Karpinski, who commanded the jail housing hundreds of known criminals and suspected terrorists, was there only when dignitaries visited, Darby said. “Other than that, she had no idea what was going on,” he said.
Karpinski was demoted to colonel last May. The Army cleared four other generals of wrongdoing, while 17 other officers drew lesser penalties after a broader inquiry into abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan…
…Darby is scheduled to leave the Army and the Reserves, after eight years of duty, on Aug. 31. He no longer lives in his hometown of Cumberland, Md., where “a lot of people up there view me as a traitor. Even some of my family members think I’m a traitor.”
He said he has returned home only twice, for a wedding and his mother’s funeral.
“I’m not welcome there. People there don’t look at the fact that I knew right from wrong,” he said. “They look at the fact that I put an Iraqi before an American.”
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