Part 2 of 3
[BRENT PACK, ARMY SPECIAL AGENT, CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DIVISION] Each of the pictures had file time stamps, but they were all off, anywhere from a year plus to a couple of hours. And every time they got copied to a CD from one computer to another, the times would change based on that computer's time setting.
But the one time setting that did stay constant is what we call metadata. Metadata's a big $2 word for information about information.
Pictures have information inside the file that tells you about when that file was created, what software created it, exposure settings and the date and time that the camera thought it was when it took the picture.
I was really elated to see that the metadata was still intact. The three main cameras belong to Graner, Harman and Frederick. Graner's camera, the Sony FD Mavica, that took most of the pictures.
There was a Sony Cybershot that I believe belonged to Harman and the Deluxe Classic Cam which belonged to Frederick.
I then realized that these people were taking pictures of the exact same incident almost at the exact same time. I found a total of eight separate time synch incidents where I could say, "This camera thought it was this time, this camera thought it was that time."
Once I was able to adjust it, all of the pictures seemed to line up.
There was a guard log where they recorded incidents that occurred at the jail. It actually confirmed that the timeline was accurate.
Sabrina Harman's camera thought it was 2002. I had to adjust her camera one year, nine months, 11 hours, 29 minutes. Fredericks and Graner's were only seven or eight hours off.
[TIM DUGAN, CIVILIAN INTERROGATOR CACI CORPORATION] Nobody really got any intelligence there. Very few of us. Most of our interrogators were 18-year-old kids that are reservists. And if you think about it, you got a 45 to a 65-year-old one, two, three or four-star general that you're going to be talking to. And you're 18 years old, just got out of high school, joined the army, and went through interrogator school. What the hell you going to ask that 55-year-old general that's seen the world and done everything and been everywhere? You know, these kids are intimidated as hell. And the generals and the colonels and these older guys know it and it's like, they laugh at them.
So I'm working this guy and not getting crap out of him. His brother was also captured with him.
So I went into the hallway and decided I would see what was going on with his brother. There are six interrogation booths and each one has a two-way mirror so you can view what's going on with the interrogation.
We got an army female and an army male playing grab-ass, and not asking the detainee questions.
There was a guy coming on to a girl and the girl being receptive when they're supposed to be interrogating this schmuck. And I said, "Hey, why don't we like switch guys." So, this new detainee's in my booth and I says, "Listen, I've been sitting here for two hours, and I've actually been sitting here for two days because I was standing outside the two-way mirror watching you with the other guys. Okay, I know you know all kinds of crap. And I know that you're pulling a lot of bullshit on these army kids."
I said, "I'm not going to put up with your bullshit. Okay? It takes me three minutes and 47 seconds to smoke this cigarette. I'm going to go outside, I'm going to smoke this cigarette, and when I come back in, you're going to tell me every damn thing I want to know. Do you understand me?" I said, "Do I look like I'm in the frickin' army to you?
And I put my fist through the plastic table and I went outside to smoke my cigarette. And after about a minute and a half, there was crying and yelling coming out of my booth and my TERP was standing there at the doorway and he's like "You scared the shit out of this guy. He don't know what you're going to do. He'll tell you anything you want. I mean, whatever you want to talk about."
So I walked back in there real calm and sat down in the corner and I said, "So, what's your decision?"
[JANIS KARPINSKI, BRIGADIER GENERAL, 800TH MP BRIGADE] My prisons were spread all over the place. So I was on the road quite a bit.
One time I arrived out at Abu Ghraib and Lieutenant Woods said to me, "Oh, ma'am, we have an interrogation going on. Would you like to come over and see it?" She took me over there and we stood in the hallway and I observed it, and it looked perfectly normal.
I've wondered many times if they didn't take me in there specifically so I would be able to say, "Yes, I saw an interrogation and yes, it looked perfectly normal."
[JEFFREY FROST, SPECIALIST MILITARY POLICE] It's kind of funny how when, say, General Karpinski or some other bigshot would come look at the prison we'd have, you know, a dog and pony show. And everybody would get their mattresses back, everybody would get their clothes back, and then as soon as the people left, whoever was deprived of certain things got deprived of it again. That just seemed normal to deprive them of something if they're not cooperating with you.
[JAVAL DAVIS, SERGEANT MILITARY POLICE] CIA. Iraqi Survey Group. DIA.
FBI. Tax Force 121. The Other Government Agencies. That's what we called it: OGA. They had no rules.
We called them "The Ghosts," because they come in and you don't know who they are.
Whoever their prisoners were, you never logged in. "How's it going there, soldier? You know, here's this guy, don't log him in the book. He's not here, hasn't been here; just put him in a cell in there, and, you know, don't mark it. When the Red Cross comes here, move him to another place. When the Red Cross goes to that other place, move him back to where they were. You know, because they don't exist here." "I'm used to being out on the road, you know, hey Soldiers, go do this." "Right to that, Sergeant. Airborne." "See you later. We're done." But now we're part of this big, high-profile operation. You know, we're getting like the deck-of-card guys, the guys who were on the deck-of-cards. We're getting them. Like, "Whoa. We have a big job! Wow! We've got to guard these guys now?"
That's when things changed.
You take them to the shower room, put a sheet up over the door, stick them underneath the shower spigot, or stick them in the garbage pails with ice, and then have at it.
A burlap sack on their head, the wetness is sticking to your nose, sticking to your mouth. It makes them feel like they're drowning. Or open a window, it's like 40 degrees outside, and watch them disappear into themselves. For hours and hours and hours all you would hear is screaming and banging.
When they were done, eight to ten hours later, they'd bring the guy out. They'd be half-way coherent or unconscious. "Put him back in their cell and we'll be back for him tomorrow. " I know what it sounds like to hear skin smacked or punched. I know the difference between hearing someone screaming because they are upset and someone screaming because they are in pain. You know, I know the difference.
1 oga in 1B Shower not to be used until OGA is moved out 1A 34/5
04 Nov 2003
[ANTHONY DIAZ, SERGEANT MILITARY POLICE] It was early in the morning, like 4:30, around that time, so everything was silent. OGAs were, "Okay, we have another special prisoner here." He was wearing only a shirt. So he came in, he was shackled, handcuffed and everything, with a hood on. When he came in, we didn't ask nobody who this guy was, what he did. That wasn't our business. Two soldiers took him straight to the shower where he was interrogated by one OGA. He was there quite a while, I think he was there about an hour and a half. All of a sudden the OGA guy opened the door and said, "Can you help me here? Tie him a little higher, because he don't want to cooperate." Now, he's, I guess, you know he was just sagging.
[JEFFREY FROST, SPECIALIST MILITARY POLICE] There were some CIA guys there, or I think they are CIA, well, yeah, they were, but at the time we didn't know what Agency they were with. They asked us to handcuff him to the window so he has to hold himself up 'cause he was playing Possum. And I'm just holding him by the jumpsuit. I'm not holding him under the arms or anything. And his jumpsuit is riding up his crotch and I commented and said, "Damn, this guy's pretty good at playing Possum 'cause I know I'd be howling like whatever with this riding up my crotch like his jumpsuit was." Everybody just kind of laughed and nobody really thought anything of it, and I remember how far back his arms were going, and it was just really an awkward position, and I again was like, "You know, this guy is pretty damn good 'cause his arms are almost about to break and I'm surprised they haven't broken. I'm waiting for the pop." And then all of a sudden, just like, I guess blood started pouring out of his nose and mouth, so we realized that something was wrong.
Diffusion of ResponsibilityThe exercise of moral control is also weakened when personal agency is obscured by diffusing responsibility for detrimental behavior. Kelman (1973) provides a discerning analysis of the different ways in which a sense of personal agency get obscured by diffusing personal accountability. There are several ways of doing it. A sense of responsibility can be diffused, and thereby diminished, by division of labor. Most enterprises require the services of many people, each performing subdivided jobs that seem harmless in themselves. After activities become routinized into detached subfunctions, people shift their attention from the morality of what they are doing to the operational details and efficiency of their specific job.
Group decision making is another common practice that gets otherwise considerate people to behave inhumanely. When everyone is responsible, no one really feels responsible. Social organizations go to great lengths to devise mechanisms for obscuring responsibility for decisions that will affect others adversely. Collective action is still another expedient for weakening moral control (Zimbardo, 1995). Any harm done by a group can always be attributed largely to the behavior of others (Bandura, Underwood, & Fromson, 1975). Figure 3 shows the level of harm inflicted on others on repeated occasions depending on whether it was done as a group or individually. People act more cruelly under group responsibility than when they hold themselves personally accountable for their actions.
-- Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities, by Albert Bandura
[ANTHONY DIAZ, SERGEANT MILITARY POLICE] That's when I went and raised the hood. And that's the first time I saw his face. I was surprised because his face was totally messed up.
He's got a huge black eyes with bruises everywhere. And it was like, "Whoa! What happened to this guy?"
And one of his eye was open, so I kind of did the thing like here so he could move his eyes, and nothing, he was just looking down like this.
And I was like, "Whoa! This guy is not even alive."
This whole time we were messing with this guy, you know, carrying him and lifting him, and this entire time the guy was dead. I even got some blood on my uniform, 'cause he was dripping.
I kind of felt bad, you know, 'cause I know I'm not part of this but it kind of make you feel like you are 'cause you're there with the guy. Colonel Jordan, he was in charge of the M.I.s. He came in, the medics came in, Captain Reese came in, Captain Brinson, First Sergeant, Sergeant Snyder, everybody showed up. You had the entire chain of command right there trying to figure out what was going on.
[JEFFREY FROST, SPECIALIST MILITARY POLICE] We checked on him and sure enough he had died.
And I walked out of the room, just kind of like "Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo."
Like nothing happened. And then I asked one of the CIA agents, and I was like "Well, what do you guys normally do in a situation like this?" So they were kind of like, not panicky but, you know, they were on their phones calling whoever to see what to do or whatnot.
What do we do with him? We can't take him out in a body bag because that may start a riot.
So we had to keep him there overnight.
And so we got a body bag, got a bunch of ice, iced him down, left him in the room where he was at, and then we shut and locked the door.
I remember saying to the NCO, "You need to take the spare key and hold on to it, or someone will probably go in there and, you know, mess with him." We should have just taken both keys and held on to them instead of leaving one there. But I guess he had to leave one there in case they wanted to come take the body that night or something.
It was pretty much supposed to be hush hush. Didn't want the word to spread around.
[SABRINA HARMAN, SPECIALIST MILITARY POLICE] It was a crazy day yesterday.
The guy they brought in died.
He was beat pretty bad. I'm not sure what happened.
It was on the shift before us.
They stuck him in a room next to where I was working last night and put him in a body bag on ice. How fucking gross!
He's already been defrosting for 24 hours.
Captain Brinson had a meeting in the main office with all of us. And he said there was a prisoner who had died in the shower, and he died of a heart attack.
Sergeant Frederick got the key, and we just checked him out.
He started to melt and he started to smell. He was there for at least 24 hours prior to us getting there. So he was there for a pretty long time.
His knees were bruised. His thighs were bruised by his genitals.
He had restraint marks on his wrists.
It was kind of obvious after you just kept looking that there was no way he died of a heart attack.
Q. You got into trouble because of the thumb.
[SABRINA HARMAN, SPECIALIST MILITARY POLICE] I can understand. It does look really bad. But whenever I would get into a photo, I never know what to do with my hands. Any kind of photo, I probably have a thumbs-up 'cause it's just something that automatically happens. Like when you get into a photo, you want to smile. It's just, I guess, something I do.
[JAVAL DAVIS, SERGEANT MILITARY POLICE] He was a ghost detainee so he wasn't supposed to be there. They didn't want him to be in there when The Red Cross came, so they had to do something. So, someone came up with the idea to take him out of the body bag, dress him in the orange jumpsuit, put his dead body on a gurney, stick an IV in his dead arm, and take him out of the facility.
From that point on, we never heard anything of it. It was just, the guy died, they put him in the body bag, put him on a gurney, he was gone, go about your business. Keep working. Disappear. Dissolved into thin air. Whooosh!
[SABRINA HARMAN, SPECIALIST MILITARY POLICE] They tried to charge me with destruction of government property, which I don't understand, and then maltreatment, of taking the photos of a dead guy. But, he's dead. I don't know how that's maltreatment. And then, altering evidence for removing the bandage from his eye to take a photo of it. And then I placed it back. When he died, they cleaned him all up, and then stuck the bandages on. So it's not really altering evidence, because they had already done that for me.
In order to make the other charges stick, they were going to have to bring in the photos, which they didn't want to bring up the dead guy at all, the OGA, because obviously they covered up a murder and that would just make them look bad, so they dropped all the charges pertaining to the OGA and the shower.
Riot reported over not at Ganci. Notes Due to the escape and riot the hard site continues to be in a state of lock down.
The meaning lock down was lifted for approximately 30 minutes prior to the Ganci riot then there was another lockdown. Note: Received seven inmates from the Ganci's Riot tonight moved to 1B on movement sheet of 4 ...
[JAVAL DAVIS, SERGEANT MILITARY POLICE] Camp Ganci had a huge riot. There was a female MP, she got smashed in the face with like a cinder block or something like that. They were going to break out of the tent encampments, get the MPs and hold them hostage. We brought them down the hallway, put them on the floor, and that's where I come in. I can't go to sleep at night worrying about the detainees trying to kill me, when I got people outside the walls trying to kill me. This has got to stop. These guys got to know, so I lost it. I threw the guys on the floor. I fell on the pile, like a WWF jumped on them a little bit.
I wanted to do more. I was mad. I'm like, "You hurt one of our soldiers, like that's it." I stepped on a finger, stepped on the guy's finger, stepped on the guy's toe. I wanted to hurt him, the gentleman who hit the female in the face with a brick. I wanted to hurt him really bad.
Attribution of BlameBlaming one's adversaries or circumstances is still another expedient that can serve self-exonerative purposes. In this process, people view themselves as faultless victims driven to injurious conduct by forcible provocation. Punitive conduct is, thus, seen as a justifiable defensive reaction to belligerent provocations. Conflictful transactions typically involve reciprocally escalative acts. One can select from the chain of events a defensive act by the adversary and portray it as initiating provocation. Victims then get blamed for bringing suffering on themselves. Self-exoneration is also achievable by viewing one's harmful conduct as forced by compelling circumstances rather than as a personal decision. By fixing the blame on others or on circumstances, not only are one's own injurious actions excusable but one can even feel self-righteous in the process.
Justified abuse can have more devastating human consequences than acknowledged cruelty. Mistreatment that is not clothed in righteousness makes the perpetrator rather than the victim blameworthy. But when victims are convincingly blamed for their plight, they may eventually come to believe the degrading characterizations of themselves (Hallie, 1971). Exonerated inhumanity is, thus, more likely to instill self-contempt in victims than inhumanity that does not attempt to justify itself. Seeing victims suffer maltreatment for which they are held partially responsible leads observers to derogate them (Lerner & Miller, 1978). The devaluation and indignation aroused by ascribed culpability provides further moral justification for even greater maltreatment.
-- Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities, by Albert Bandura
[JEREMY SIVITS, SPECIALIST MILITARY POLICE] I finished my day in the motorpool, and I had generator detail that night. Just sitting there, at night, it gets very boring. The computer system was very slow, and I was waiting for an email to come up. And Sergeant Frederick walked in, he had to print out some papers and stuff, and we started talking. He got a call on the radio that he had some individuals he had to in-process. He said, "Come on, you walk down to the holding cell with me." So I walked down with him, and they had the seven individuals there. And I said, "Hey, Freddy, you want me to grab one of the detainees and take him down for you?" He said, "Yeah, go ahead." And as I'm getting closer to Tier 1 Alpha, I could hear Graner yelling. And I'm like, "Where do you guys want him?" And they said, "Just put him on the floor." So I pushed him onto the floor with the other guys, and that's when all the pictures and stuff started happening. And that's when Javal was stepping on the fingers and stuff, and on the toes, and Lynndie was also.
And that's when all the pictures started, and Graner asked me to take the staged photo of him with the one detainee where he was cradling the detainee's head, and he was acting like he was going to strike the detainee. He never struck him. As soon as I took the photograph, he laid the detainee down. And then they start the stripping of the detainees and taking more photographs. Graner walks over to one of the detainees, punches him in the temple, for what reason I don't know. I mean, hits the detainee hard.
And after he does that Sabrina matches up the numbers and says, "This guy's in here for rape."
So Graner rips the leg open on the jumpsuit that he had, and Sabrina writes, "I am a Rapeist" on him.
Moral JustificationOne set of disengagement practices operates on the cognitive reconstruction of the behavior itself. People do not ordinarily engage in harmful conduct until they have justified to themselves the morality of their actions. In this process of moral justification, detrimental conduct is made personally and socially acceptable by portraying it as serving socially worthy or moral purposes. People then can act on a moral imperative and preserve their view of themselves as a moral agent while inflicting harm on others. Regional variations in the social sanctioning and use of violent means are predictable from moral justifications rooted in a subcultural code of honor (Cohen & Nisbett, 1994).
Rapid radical shifts in destructive behavior through moral justification are most strikingly revealed in military conduct (Kelman, 1973; Skeykill, 1928). The conversion of socialized people into dedicated fighters is achieved not by altering their personality structures, aggressive drives or moral standards. Rather, it is accomplished by cognitively redefining the morality of killing so that it can be done free from self-censure. Through moral justification of violent means, people see themselves as fighting ruthless oppressors, protecting their cherished values, preserving world peace, saving humanity from subjugation or honoring their country’s commitments. Just war tenets were devised to specify when the use of violent force is morally justified. However, given people’s dexterous facility for justifying violent means all kinds of inhumanities get clothed in moral wrappings.
Voltaire put it well when he said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Over the centuries, much destructive conduct has been perpetrated by ordinary, decent people in the name of righteous ideologies, religious principles and nationalistic imperatives (Kramer, 1990; Rapoport & Alexander, 1982; Reich, 1990). Widespread ethnic wars are producing atrocities of appalling proportions. When viewed from divergent perspectives the same violent acts are different things to different people. It is often proclaimed in conflicts of power that one group’s terroristic activity is another group’s liberation movement fought by heroic fighters. This is why moral appeals against violence usually fall on deaf ears. Adversaries sanctify their own militant actions, but condemn those of their antagonists as barbarity masquerading under a mask of outrageous moral reasoning. Each side feels morally superior to the other."
-- Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities, by Albert Bandura
The guy hasn't moved for like two or three minutes. I kind of look at him and say, "Hey, Graner, something's wrong with that guy." And I walked over and lifted the sandbag up where I could see his eyes. The guy was unconscious. I said, "Graner, you knocked that dude out." And after he punched him, he kind of shook his hand and he said, "Ouch! Damn! That hurt!" And he didn't seem too concerned about it. And then I walked back over by Freddy. We were standing there, and Freddy looks at me and he says, "Hey, watch this!" He goes over, gets the guy that I had squirted down, lifts the guy up, marks an "X" on his chest, punches the guy right square in the chest. I'm like, "What? Who are you and what did you do to Freddy?"
Then they started the whole one-face-in-the-wall on his knees, and setting the other one on top of him.
They had flex cuffs which are more or less big zip ties. And I told Graner, "This guy is going to lose his hands if we don't get 'em off of him. They're purple." I said, "Well, I've got my gerber on me, I can probably get 'em with that, but we're going to have to stand him up."
It took a little while but I finally got 'em off of him, and then the blood started flowing back in his hands, and as far as I know, the guy kept his hands.
That's when Graner and Freddy started with the human pyramid thing. Graner told me that he was doing what he was told. That's why he was doing it. And as I was leaving the tier that night, I was told that I didn't see shit. And me, being the person that I am, I try to be friends with everybody, I said, "See what? I didn't see nothing." I was always asked by CID, "Why didn't you report this? Didn't I feel that it was morally wrong?" I said, "Yes, but when you're in war, things change." We were told, "No pictures of prisoners." I was asked to take it, I'm a nice guy, so I took it. I try not to have anybody mad at me. That's the way I've always been. But I guess being a nice guy doesn't always pay off.
Some people ask me now why I'm not as nice as I used to be. I say, "Put yourself in my shoes. Go through what I've went through the last 2-1/2 - 3 years. See how nice you'll be."
[SABRINA HARMAN, SPECIALIST MILITARY POLICE] Sivits just happened to stick around for maybe five minutes. I mean, he never hurt anyone. He got a year in jail for nothing. Just for being there. He shouldn't have gotten any time at all. I don't think he would have even been charged if he wasn't in that video.
Q. Who took the video?
[SABRINA HARMAN, SPECIALIST MILITARY POLICE] I did. The last thing I remember was one guy standing and one guy kneeling. And the one guy had his hand on the other guy's head. And that's the last photo that I took. Then we left to use the phones.
It was Kelly's birthday, so I went to make a phone call.
[LYNNDIE ENGLAND, PRIVATE FIRST CLASS MILITARY POLICE] Me and Megan were still upstairs in the office. We walked out and they were throwing them into a dog pile and taking pictures from the top tier.
About that time, Graner and Davis and Fredericks are jumping on the dog pile.
That's when I went downstairs with the camera. Graner said he wanted some taken down there, too.
Me, Freddy and Sabrina were taking pictures with three different cameras that night.
They were lined up against the wall and Graner started taking them one-by-one. We didn't know what he was doing. Nobody knew. He didn't say anything. And then he told us he was piling them in a pyramid.
And we're like, "Okay, why?" He's like, "To control 'em so they're all in one area."
So we're like, "Okay."
Freddy is the one that started them masturbating. I don't know why, but he did. He started the one, and then he wanted to see if the others would do it too, I guess. I don't know.
But he had them all doing it at the same time.
At one point, six of the guys stopped and the one guy kept doing it, for like 45 minutes. No joke. The one guy that was still masturbating, that was the one picture with me in it. He wanted me in it; I didn't want to be in it. I was like, "I'm not going over there."
Q. Who wanted you in it?
[LYNNDIE ENGLAND, PRIVATE FIRST CLASS MILITARY POLICE] Freddy. And then Graner joined in. Graner was like, "Yeah, just come on." And I was like, "No, I don't want to go over there." And he's like, "Come on, just do it for me." And this and that.
And I'm like, "Fine."
Q. Was this your birthday?
[LYNNDIE ENGLAND, PRIVATE FIRST CLASS MILITARY POLICE] They brought them in after midnight, so yeah.
Q. Which birthday?
[LYNNDIE ENGLAND, PRIVATE FIRST CLASS MILITARY POLICE] 21st. I had heard Graner say "Well, this is your birthday present," or something. I don't know why he would have said that, because I really wouldn't have wanted that, but yeah. I mean, he used me, and even though I was stupid enough to fall for it, I mean, now I know what to look for.
At least he's moved on past me.
[BRENT PACK, ARMY SPECIAL AGENT, CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DIVISION] This was the infamous seven-man naked Iraqi stacking.
The facial expressions kind of set the tone for what they were thinking and feeling at the time. You look in their eyes, and they look like they're having fun. This scene is what sealed their fate.
Pretty much everybody that participated is in the photograph at one time or another.
Here you see Graner in a punching motion.
Two cameras actually caught him at the exact same time from two totally different angles.
And again you see it where they have the seven-men stacked naked with the hoods over their heads.
You actually see both of the cameras inside each of the pictures.
It's not so much that you're there committing these acts of abuse. If you were in the pictures while this stuff was going on, you're going to be in trouble.
Q. Big trouble?
[BRENT PACK, ARMY SPECIAL AGENT, CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DIVISION] If you make our President apologize to the world, I would say so, yeah.
[SABRINA HARMAN, SPECIALIST MILITARY POLICE] I haven't slept all night. I just can't sleep. Six prisoners escaped last night. That's eight we've lost in three nights. Something bad is going to happen here.
I hope I'm wrong. But if not, know I love you.
We might be under investigation. There's talk about it.
Yes, they do beat the prisoners. I don't think it's right. I never have.
That's why I take the pictures, to prove the story I tell to people.
No one would ever believe the shit that goes on.
No one.
If I want to keep taking pictures of these events, I have to fake a smile everytime. I hope I don't get into trouble for something I haven't done. I love you. Sabrina.
I guess reality hit that what was going on wasn't right which, of course, you know from the beginning but then it's your job. You just can't walk away and say, "Hey, I'm not coming back," or "I'm not doing this." Because either way, you're going to get screwed.
[JAVAL DAVIS, SERGEANT MILITARY POLICE] We had Iraqi prison guards smuggle in a pistol, a 9 mm., and a brand-new bayonet.
The prison guard wrapped it up in a sheet, shimmied it out through his cell, the detainee went underneath his pillow, pulled out a 9 mm., hits R. Cafcart ? in the vest.
Sergeant Elliott had to stick the shotgun inside to get the guy to stop shooting, and all he hit him in was the leg, because he was in the corner praying like "Allah, Allah." He was willing to die.
All the Iraqi prison guards that were involved, they rounded them all up and fired some, but the Iraqis hired them right back.
Not only did you have to risk your life from shelling on the outside, you was risking your life dealing with unscreened Iraqi corrections guards. And detainees. So Strike 1, 2 & 3. One of them is going to take you out. Not all of them were bad, but a vast majority were bad. The guy who smuggled in the pistol I thought was a good guy, I thought was a good guard. He turned out to be Fedayeen. Smile in your face, stab you in the back.
[MEGAN AMBUHL GRANER, SPECIALIST MILITARY POLICE] They rushed in right away and took care of this guy who had just tried to kill us.
So, but it doesn't appear when you see a picture that that's what happened.
Your imagination can run wild when you just see blood.
The pictures only show you a fraction of a second.
You don't see forward and you don't see backward. You don't see outside the frame.
[SABRINA HARMAN, SPECIALIST MILITARY POLICE] This is the first time I've seen military police dogs here.
Two dogs with two owners go to a man against the wall.
The guy is scared out of his mind.
The dogs get closer.
The Iraqi starts screaming and runs straight to Graner, and one of the guys lets his dog loose, enough to bite him in the leg.
The guy is hysterical. The dog got another bite.
Blood was everywhere.
It was teeth marks that looked something like this.
One of our medics came and he taught me how to give stitches.
It was kind of fun, but I felt horrible for this guy.
The dogs should have never been there.
[TIM DUGAN, CIVILIAN INTERROGATOR CACI CORPORATION] One of the things an interrogator does every time, is the last paragraph of all your reports, is you evaluate the truthfulness and reliability of the information that was just given you. That's the very last paragraph of every report you ever write. So, if I get information through torture I have no way to verify anything because I would just assume that you are going to tell me whatever the hell you want so the pain will stop. But if I give you some carrots, and I give you some reasons to cooperate with me, usually you are going to get more righteous information.
[JANIS KARPINSKI, BRIGADIER GENERAL, 800TH MP BRIGADE] General Sanchez routinely subjected Colonel Pappas to this fingerpointing, poking a finger in his chest and saying, "I want Saddam. Find Saddam. Find Saddam.
Do you understand me? Find Saddam. Find Saddam at whatever the cost."
DehumanizationThe final set of disengagement practices operates on the recipients of detrimental acts. The strength of moral self-censure depends partly on how the perpetrators view the people they mistreat. Correlative interpersonal experiences during formative years, in which people experience joys and suffer pain together, create the foundation for empathic responsiveness to the plight of others (Bandura, 1986). To perceive another in terms of common humanity activates empathetic emotional reactions through perceived similarity and a sense of social obligation (Bandura, 1992; McHugo, Smith, & Lanzetta, 1982). The joys and suffering of those with whom one identifies are more vicariously arousing than are those of strangers or of individuals who have been divested of human qualities. It is, therefore, difficult to mistreat humanized persons without suffering personal distress and self- condemnation.
Self-censure for cruel conduct can be disengaged by stripping people of human qualities. Once dehumanized, they are no longer viewed as persons with feelings, hopes and concerns but as subhuman objects (Keen, 1986; Kelman, 1973). They are portrayed as mindless "savages," "gooks," and the other despicable wretches. If dispossessing one's foes of humanness does not weaken self-censure, it can be eliminated by attributing demonic or bestial qualities to them. They become "satanic fiends," "degenerates," and other bestial creatures. It is easier to brutalize people when they are viewed as low animal forms, as when Greek torturers referred to their victims as "worms" (Gibson & Haritos-Fatouros, 1986).
During wartime, nations cast their enemies in the most dehumanized, demonic and bestial images to make it easier to kill them (Ivie, 1980). The process of dehumanization is an essential ingredient in the perpetration of inhumanities. Primo Levi (1987) reports an incident in which a Nazi camp commandant was asked why they went to such extreme lengths to degrade their victims, whom they were going to kill anyway. The commandant chillingly explained that it was not a matter of purposeless cruelty. Rather, the victims had to be degraded to the level of subhuman objects so that those who operated the gas chambers would be less burdened by distress.
-- Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities, by Albert Bandura
If you poke your finger in somebody's chest long enough, they'll do whatever they need to do to get you to stop doing that.
It's a downward spiral. "This isn't working, try this. This worked in GTMO. This worked in Bagram. Try this. It's okay."
It doesn't stop the mortars. It doesn't get the information they want. And it doesn't find Saddam.
There wasn't any information they obtained in any interrogation or interview out at Abu Ghraib. It was soldiers on the ground who found Saddam.
[TIM DUGAN, CIVILIAN INTERROGATOR CACI CORPORATION]
Are you ready for this? The farm that Saddam was hiding on, a little tiny farm right next to the Tigris River, Saddam knocked on the door and he said, "I'm Saddam Hussein. I'm the President of Iraq. I am the leader of Iraq and all the people of Iraq are my people. All the homes in Iraq are my homes."
And he went to the kitchen and he made himself a single egg, and he ate the egg, and he left. He came back around four hours later, and he's like, "I'm staying here." And the dude's wife like freaked.
Saddam was captured on the 13th, Sunday morning, and then on Monday I had to report to Colonel Pappas' office. He asked if we wanted to volunteer for a Special Projects team. He just got off the phone with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld and Sanchez had authorized all approach techniques on the high value detainees.
He said that we had the opportunity to break the insurgency right then, because the stuff that was captured was Saddam. And at that time, I believed it.
[BRENT PACK, ARMY SPECIAL AGENT, CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DIVISION] You have to look at exactly what the pictures depict. It was important to separate those that were criminal acts and those things that were not criminal acts. That's what the prosecution had to focus on.
If somebody was physically injured, you know you have a criminal act.
Putting somebody into sexually humiliating positions, you have a criminal act.
Making them abuse themselves sexually, you have a criminal act.
Standing by and watching somebody hit their head on the wall, and taking photographs at the time, that's dereliction of duty, so it's a criminal act.
The individual with the wires tied to their hands and standing on a box, I see that as somebody who is being put into a stress position. I'm looking at it thinking that they don't look like they are real electrical wires. Standard Operating Procedure. That's all it is. [LC 1]
Does this one actually constitute a crime or is it standard operating procedure? That's probably standard operating procedure.
The panties on the head are an added touch, but it's no more than sleep deprivation.
They weren't being tortured, per se.
They were going through discomfort to try to aid in obtaining information.
I've been in the army for 20 years.
I've been through Desert Storm I.
I spent four months at Guantanamo Bay.
People that haven't been where I've been, I can't expect them to see the pictures the same way.
[JANIS KARPINSKI, BRIGADIER GENERAL, 800TH MP BRIGADE] I came back from a meeting, it was very late at night, I opened my classified email: "Ma'am, just wanted to let you know I'm going in to brief the CG on the progress of the investigation at Abu Ghraib. This involves the allegations of abuse and the photographs." And I sent an email back to him and I said, "I don't know what to say. First I've heard of it." I was preparing in my mind to hold a mini press conference to tell the truth and to tell it early, to say, "This is what we've uncovered. We're looking into it. Because we discipline ourselves. We're Americans. And we know right from wrong." General Sanchez said, "No, absolutely not. You're not to discuss this with anyone."
The fear of the truth silenced people.