Exposed: The Anatomy of a Torture Scandal

Not long before Lynndie England ever stepped foot in Iraq, long before she became the poster-child for torture, she was a whistleblower at Pilgrim's Pride chicken factory in Moorefield, W.Va. -- a notion that doesn't quite fit with her current image.

In the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, Americans were offered two kinds of analysis. We were given a choice regarding the horrendous abuse of those detained in Abu Ghraib (70 percent to 90 percent of which, according to the Red Cross, were arrested by mistake or had no intelligence value): Was it just a few bad apples -- a crazed night shift of sadists that raped, sodomized, beat and electrocuted prisoners (including women and children) -- or was it systemic, based on orders that came straight from the top?

Tara McKelvey's new book Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War offers a more nuanced and in-depth exploration of how and why incidents of abuse and torture like Abu Ghraib happened (and continue to happen) in the war on terror. Namely, that it took both lower-level bad apples, and high-level hypocrites to produce such violence. Confronting the fact that both choice and command played a part in Abu Ghraib forces us to face a more complex and unsavory truth. But anything less simply doesn't make sense. If it were only a few bad apples, why haven't all of those few been prosecuted? In the famous prisoner pyramid photograph, there are 32 boots visible. Yet, only seven soldiers were charged, with Charles Graner and Lynndie England effectively serving as the poster couple for the abuses. Furthermore, how could it possibly be just a few bad apples when even the Army's own investigations have called the torture systemic and illegal. Similarly, to claim that those participating in the abuse were only following orders doesn't mesh with the fact that there are, as McKelvey states in the book, those who refused to take part in abusive practices and faced no reprimand.

A bad idea ... normalized

While Abu Ghraib was made world-famous by U.S. abuses, the prison had a famed and longstanding opening act as Saddam's notorious site of torture and executions. Despite the obvious negative associations, a military report stated that Abu Ghraib was "the largest and most suitable prison site for dangerous and long-term criminals within the country of Iraq." Apart from calls from human rights organizations to find another facility, even a Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) officer argued against it in no uncertain terms: "It was no different than going into Dachau and saying, 'We're going to use this as a prison facility.'" (One of the camps of Abu Ghraib, Camp Ganci, was named after a firefighter killed in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The more conflated associations with horrendous violence, apparently, the merrier.)

McKelvey shows how this same kind of willful ignorance led Geoffrey Miller (of Gitmo fame) and Ricardo Sanchez (commander of coalition forces in Iraq 2003-2004) to declare Abu Ghraib the "headquarters" for Iraqi intelligence collection. Sam Provance, an Abu Ghraib whistleblower, tells McKelvey, "Computers started coming in, and they just never stopped coming. Brand-new, state-of-the-art desktops, laptops." Provance might have appreciated the technology if not for a few other supplies they needed: "... there were still no lights in the guardhouse. It was crazy. It was like, 'Oh, my God. What do you expect from us?'" A fair question given the fact that the reported ratio of prisoners to guards in 2004 was 75:1, not to mention that previously cited statistic of up to 90 percent of prisoners possessing no intelligence.

McKelvey writes convincingly of the pressures that ensued from such an impossible situation: The sense of frustration and anger, as well as grief over lost comrades, was palpable among the soldiers at Abu Ghraib. Their requests for backup support and resources were often ignored. They faced hundreds of malnourished, frustrated detainees on the prison compound every day. At the same time, they were threatened by an enemy that moved in darkness beyond the prison walls.