SOUTH POMFRET, Vt. — Last Sept. 20 at 9:54 p.m., two rebel mortar shells landed inside the Abu Ghraib prison walls, killing Army Sgt. David T. Friedrich and Spc. Lunsford B. Brown II. The two soldiers were assigned to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, one of the units involved in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.
Neither Friedrich nor Brown has been implicated in the current scandal in any way. But their deaths, and the events surrounding them, may help us understand the context in which the breakdown occurred. Both men were in "intelligence," a word that evokes a shadowy, romanticized game of wits and derring-do, played by highly trained agents with methods, knowledge and resources beyond the ken of ordinary citizens.
But that's not Friedrich and Brown. They were not highly trained special agents. They were not Iraq specialists. They were not veteran interrogators. Instead, they were, like most of the men and women in today's Army, average soldiers pretty good at their jobs, but also very small cogs in a very large machine. To keep the machine functioning, the cogs need clear orders, rules, discipline and leadership.
Thirty years ago, when I joined Army intelligence, it was routine to take a ribbing about military intelligence being an oxymoron. Most of us were Friedrichs and Browns. But mixed among us were more than a few cowboys and fantasists, James Bond wannabes in love with the secrecy and the power. More than once in my three years in Cold War West Berlin, these types got into trouble, breaking rules, compromising operations, even flirting -- or worse -- with the Soviet or East European intelligence services. What kept it all going were clear rules, solid training and the elaborate customs and hierarchy of military discipline.
That was in a cold war: Hot war is dirtier. The process of outsmarting your opponent, controlling his territory, overrunning his objectives, shooting and being shot at, and taking human life is so stressful and potentially dehumanizing that clearly understood rules are even more crucial. When policies become muddled, when leaders fail or falter, when discipline breaks down, then the door is opened to disaster.
