It's quite interesting how all whistle-blowers tend to have in common an unwavering, idealistic, almost naive attachment to truth and justice. I've always admired those who looked past their own personal safety to turn in a person, company, etc. that was doing something wrong. However, despite the huge uproar caused by the Abu Ghraib torture incidents, I wasn't aware of the whiste-blower that exposed what was going on and turned in photos of the torture until tonight, when I saw the story about Joe Darby on 60 Minutes. And dude. The guy blows me away.
Darby inadvertently came across photos of the torture, photos that have become famous, and was shocked when he realized that the MPs in the pictures, people that he knew and had known for a long time, were forcing prisoners to do these things. As the article on the CBS News website put it:
At first, Darby thought the pictures were maybe of American soldiers goofing off. "I laughed. I looked at it and I laughed. And then the next photo was of Graner and England standing behind them. And I was like, 'Wait a minute. This is the prison. These are prisoners.' And then it kind of sunk in that they were doing this to prisoners. This was people being forced to do this," Darby recalls. (my emphasis)
It looks like in this case, the whole wartime idea of making the enemies seem like less than people to make it easier to kill them didn't work on Darby. But that's another story. After he turned the photos in, anonymously, Darby lived in fear until he was told that he was being sent back to the States. However, when Darby told the Army that he wanted to go back to his hometown of Asshole, Maryland (it's really a town called Cumberland), he was told that they had done a safety assesment of the town and found that it wouldn't be safe for him and his wife to go back there. They told him it wasn't an option.
From the article:
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.Jesus. So Darby and his wife were forced to choose someplace else to live, which they don't even tell interviewers out of fear that someone will come looking to hurt them.
Wrapping up the article and the interview on 60 Minutes, here's that idealistic love of truth that I admire so much:
"Do you wish that it wasn't you who was given the CDs?" Cooper asks. "No, because if they had been given to somebody else, it might not have been reported," Darby says. "And would that have been so bad, if it had never been reported?" Cooper asks. "Ignorance is bliss they say but, to actually know what they were doing, you can't stand by and let that happen," Darby replies. "There's still a lot of people though that'll say 'Look, you know, so what they did this. You know, Saddam did things that were much worse,'" Cooper remarks. "We're Americans, we're not Saddam," Darby says. "We hold ourselves to a higher standard. Our soldiers hold themselves to a higher standard." Asked if he'd do it again, Darby says, "Yes. They broke the law and they had to be punished." "And it's that simple?" Cooper asks. "It's that simple," he replies.http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/07/60minutes/main2238188.shtmlhttp://www.whistleblowers.org/
