Why weren’t they arrested on criminal charges?
3 reservists discharged from Army after abuse
Abuse?
Brig. Gen. Ennis Whitehead III, the acting commander of the 143rd Transportation Command, found the three soldiers had maltreated prisoners at Camp Bucca, southern Iraq, on May 12. The general found that Master Sgt. Lisa Marie Girman, 35, a Pennsylvania state trooper, knocked a prisoner to the ground, “repeatedly kicking him in the groin, abdomen and head, and encouraging her subordinate soldiers to do the same,” Harris said.
Staff Sgt. Scott A. McKenzie, 38, a lieutenant at a boot-camp-style prison run by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, was found to have dragged a prisoner by his shoulders and then to have held his legs apart “and encouraging others to kick him in the groin while other U.S. soldiers kicked him in the abdomen and head,” Harris said.
McKenzie was also found to have thrown the detainee face-down to the ground and have stepped on “his previously injured arm.”
Some might well call that torture.
Their penalty?
The U.S. Army discharged three reservists and ordered them to forfeit two-months’ salary for abusing prisoners at a detention center in Iraq.
In other words, barely a slap on the wrist.