Army red-faced over
new prison antics

Startling pictures of wild Iraq party
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/ ... 8272c.html

Pvt. Allen, the Camp Bucca flasher, shows how she got busted from specialist.

Female soldiers stripped to their skivvies for a mud-wrestling bout, and sergeants allegedly were lending their rooms to G.I.s for sex last year at the Army's Camp Bucca prison in Iraq.
Photos of a wild Oct. 30 party at the camp show women soldiers baring their breasts to male onlookers, and other female G.I.s clad only in bras and panties wrestling and cavorting in a mud-filled plastic pool as men cheer, leer and snap pictures.

The episode, which experts called a serious breakdown of military discipline, prompted a probe in Iraq and still is under investigation by stateside military authorities.

A series of 30 photos of the goings-on were leaked to the Daily News recently.

The soldiers involved had been assigned to guard Iraqi prisoners being transferred to Camp Bucca from the scandal-scarred Abu Ghraib prison.

A source familiar with the camp said bright lights seen in some of the pictures may have been trained on large, open-air holding pens - indicating that Iraqi detainees could have seen or heard the commotion.

But an Army spokesman in Baghdad denied the incident happened within sight or earshot of Iraqi detainees.

"Bucca is a large detainee camp, and soldiers are in a completely different area from detainees," said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, an Army spokesman in Baghdad. "This happened behind some buildings set off in an area that would not have been seen by detainees." A commander's inquiry was conducted at Camp Bucca but a report was not filed until Dec. 8 - nearly six weeks after the incident and more than a month after most of the soldiers involved had returned to the U.S.

The more serious allegations - that various sergeants had organized the party, lent their rooms to soldiers for sex and were seen "noticeably drunk" during the episode - are being investigated by military authorities in the U.S.

"Soldiers have access to nonalcoholic beer, but alcohol is strictly prohibited under General Order 1," Johnson said. "There is no evidence that alcohol was involved."

At the time, there were about 4,000 detainees at Camp Bucca. The prisoner-to-guard ratio was 7 to 1 - above the ideal 5-to-1 ratio but nowhere near the ratio at Abu Ghraib, which varied from 15 to 1 to, at times, 75 to 1.

So far, only one soldier has been punished. Deanna Allen, 19, of Black Mountain, N.C., was demoted from specialist to private first class. Allen, of the 105th Military Police Battalion, is still a guard at Camp Bucca, where four prisoners were killed last week during a riot in one of the camp's 10 compounds.

The mud-wrestling party allegedly was organized by sergeants of the 160th Military Police Battalion, an Army Reserve unit from Tallahassee, Fla., to celebrate their return to the States that week.

They were replaced by the 105th Battalion, a National Guard unit from Asheville, N.C.

A stateside probe was launched by the leaders of the 160th on Jan. 9. But by then most participants and witnesses had scattered and returned to their civilian jobs.

To date, no one from the 160th has been punished, according to its commander, Col. Isadore Rommes.

The episode "came at a time when a unit was preparing to leave and there was a transfer of authority," said Johnson, the Army spokesman. "But that is not an excuse. Some people did some stupid things."


Flasher was just 'very stressed'


BLACK MOUNTAIN, N.C. — A yellow ribbon circles a spreading shade tree outside the modest, single-story brick house where Deanna Allen's family awaits her return from Iraq.

The pretty, blond G.I. enlisted in the National Guard after 9/11 because "she wanted to do her part" after the terrorist attacks, her grandmother told the Daily News.

Allen had spent three years in the ROTC program at nearby Henderson High and was allowed to graduate six months early so she could go to boot camp, her grandmother, Luci Tomlin, said.

But she wasn't in Iraq for more than a few weeks before she found herself at the center of a breakdown in military discipline at the prison the Army was calling a model of reform after the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal.

Allen is the Camp Bucca flasher.

Photos of the 19-year-old military policewoman smiling and baring her breasts for leering male soldiers are the centerpiece of a series of scandalous snapshots taken during a mud-wrestling sexcapade at the camp in Umm Qasr.

Allen "is very patriotic and 100% American," Tomlin said. "She was a leader and she had tremendous potential but she wants to fit in so much she doesn't always use as much discretion as she should."

Other soldiers "dared her to do it," Tomlin said.

"She is a very beautiful young woman," the grandmother said, "and she is built like the proverbial ... well, you know. She gets a lot of male attention."

Tomlin said her granddaughter had a troubled childhood and was "very stressed out, being so far away from her family." Allen, who is still serving in Iraq, was demoted after military brass saw the photos.

"It's a shame," Tomlin said. "You take away the guys and the booze and she'd take on Saddam Hussein himself."






http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/ ... 8353c.html

Female soldiers dress down & get dirty for mud romps

By BRIAN KATES
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

In front of a cheering male audience, two young women wearing only bras and panties throw themselves into a mud-filled plastic kiddie pool and roll around in a wild wrestling match.

At one point a man in the audience raises a water bottle and douses the entwined pair.

At another, a "referee" moves in to break up the scantily clad grapplers.

A young blond lifts her T-shirt to expose her breasts. A brunette turns her back to the camera and exposes her thong undies.

These scenes, taken from 30 photos leaked to the Daily News, could have been snapped at an out-of-control frat party.

But this happened a world away from any American college.

The photos were taken in Camp Bucca, the military prison at Umm Qasr in the hot sands of southern Iraq near the Kuwaiti border.

The women are not coeds but military policewomen who had left their uniforms in a pile not far off.

The men are soldiers, too. Most of them wore T-shirts emblazoned with Army logos, but at least one was still wearing his uniform.

Some were sergeants, including the referee, and some allegedly were drunk.

The photos were taken last Oct. 30, in the same period when enemy detainees were being transferred to Camp Bucca from Abu Ghraib, the prison made notorious by photos of Americans torturing naked Iraqis.

The Camp Bucca pictures document no such abuses.

But they do show what experts called a disconcerting lapse in discipline at a time when Army brass was touting the camp as a model of reform.

"It was basically a goodbye party for those of us who were leaving and a welcome party for those coming in," the alleged referee, Sgt. Emil Ganim of the 160th Military Police Battalion, told The News. "It was a chance for people to blow off some steam before coming home after spending a year in a combat zone."

But one participant described less-benign behavior.

Two sergeants, she said, told her "they had been lending out their room for soldiers to have sex" - a serious infraction of military regulations.

One female soldier, a prison guard with the 160th Military Police Battalion, was photographed baring her breast and showing off her thong panties.

The picture apparently was taken in the room of one of those sergeants, an investigator reported.

The witness told investigators that two high-ranking noncommissioned officers, a first sergeant and a master sergeant, were present. She "noted that these NCOs had been drinking and were noticeably drunk," the report said.

Ganim said American civilians at the camp also participated in the party, and "if anybody had liquor, it was them."

Ganim has since returned to his civilian job as a deputy sheriff in Leon County, Fla.

"It appears that this event was allegedly coordinated by NCOs [sergeants] of the 160th," according to the initial investigation.

One of the soldiers told investigators the mud-wrestling match was underway when she arrived.

"She took off her uniform and joined the other female soldiers that were wrestling," the report says. But "once soldiers started asking for the females to expose themselves [she and two of the other wrestlers] put their uniforms back on and left the area."

But at least one woman was not deterred.

Deanna Allen, a 19-year-old prison guard with the 105th MP Battalion, smiled and lifted her T-shirt. Photos show a man standing close to her and leering at her breasts while another G.I. snaps pictures.

"From what I understand they dared her to do it," said Allen's grandmother, Luci Tomlin, in Black Mountain, N.C. "It was a loose moment. She is a strong-headed young lady. Sometimes she can be a little irrational."

Allen, who is still stationed in Iraq, did not respond to E-mailed questions from The News. She was demoted in rank to private first class.

"A sex party with alcohol that is prohibited would suggest a serious breakdown of military discipline," said Washington-based lawyer Eugene Fidell, a military-justice expert. "Just how it would be handled would be determined by the commander, who has very broad discretion in situations like this.

Fidell said punishments could range from "a good chewing out to loss of rank" for enlisted personnel and "a letter or career-killing transfer" for officers who allowed it to happen.



Male soldiers (background) leer at their mud-wrestling female comrades in these pictures leaked to the News, which were taken October 30, 2004. Probers say it appears the mud romps were coordinated by sergeants, who also acted as refs during the matches.

This one time... at base camp...

even in hell you can have some fun

Am I the only one to think that the word "probe" isn't exactly the best word to use on this occasion?

... um, I stuck my rifle in my pussy?



--PunkDavid

Shouldn't this have waited until Mardi Gras?

Seriously though, meh.

Thanks, I just laughed so hard I spewed coffee all over my monitor!!!

let the boys (and girls) have their fun

Uh, no. Not only is it against military policy, it's a fucking warzone, not a goddamned frathouse. Gimme a break, let them have their fun. Have we no standards for anything anymore?

I'd also like to point out how funny it is that conservative groups will fight to ban Kid Rock from the inaugural, but not bat an eyelash at stuff like this.

They'd fucking flip out if there was a Democrat as commander-in-chief though.

--PunkDavid

i totally agree with you.

It's a slipperly slope from this kind of behavior to stripping down Iraqi detainees, torturing them, and humiliating them in front of a camera ...

... wait a minute.

Cause half their daughter's are already on the regular Girls Gone Wild videos

Well, if it's having problems with recruitment, the Army should definitely be using this for its promotions . . .

from todays NY Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/ ... 8671c.html

but yeah I agree,let them have some fun.

I'd have to see if they actually were in violation of any rules of conduct before I condemned them. Even so, young people that are stressed out will act really really stupid sometimes? No way!

They are not there to have fun, for Christ's sake. That's what leave is for. Do you not see how shit like this makes our military look not only to people here at home, but to the rest of the world as well?

Well, you can hold them to low standards if you wish, but I demand more from our men and women in uniform. It's not fucking Mardi Gras, it's a war. Sexual relations are not permitted under Army regulations. Cameras are not permitted under DOD regulations. Besides all that, do you think it's appropriate considering the circumstances of where they are, and what their mission is? Like those involved in the Abu Ghraib abuse, I consider these soldiers a disgrace to the uniform.

This would be a great time to remind everyone that lying about getting a jewish hummer is much, much, a thousand times much worse than lying about a war.