It's been almost three years since the scandal at Abu Ghraib brought to light undeniable evidence that the United States Army had been involved in the routine mistreatment of prisoners and "detainees," yet still only a handful of soldiers have been prosecuted - none above the level of staff sergeant. One of those court-martialed soldiers was Specialist Sabrina Harman, an M.P. in the army's 372nd Military Police Company and the woman whose notorious photographs of rampant Iraqi prisoner abuse made headlines across the globe, dealing a massive blow to the initially noble vision of President Bush's "war on terror."
When the pictures from Abu Ghraib first burst forth, it was hard to feel much sympathy for Harman and her fellow reservists as we witnessed their apparent delight springing from the inhumanity occurring at their feet. Her staged photo of a hooded and seemingly hotwired Iraqi civilian has become one of the enduring images of the war in Iraq, and the picture of a smiling Harman flashing a nonchalant thumbs-up toward her camera while hovering over the body of a dead Iraqi is a grotesque reminder of the absurdity surrounding the conflict.
But in a recent article for New Yorker Magazine, Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris provide a chilling context for these crimes, and it's as disturbing as the pictures themselves. The article details conditions at Abu Ghraib that make the acts of abuse seem almost inevitable. More than 7,000 detainees were held in the sprawling 280-acre camp of concrete, tents and barbed wire ("like something out of a Mad Max movie," or a "concentration camp" soldiers explained in the article). The prison was located in a combat zone (a violation the Geneva Convention) and was constantly bombarded with random mortar attacks, often restricting soldiers' and prisoners' use of outdoor showers and bathrooms. Soldiers lived in vermin-infested cells, located only hundreds of feet from an incinerator that was likely misused during the Hussein era.
Abu Ghraib's American reservists, who had absolutely no training in "internment and resettlement" (Harman was an assistant manager at a Papa John's Pizza back home), were put in charge of the facility (America's largest military prison in Iraq). They followed guidelines based on the infamous "interrogation rules" of Guantanamo Bay, which were "designed to create far more license than restriction for interrogators who sought to 'break' prisoners." According to the article, military intelligence operatives and private contractors who ran interrogations instructed soldiers to provide "special treatment" for the detainees, which consisted of systematic abuse of sometimes-innocent detainees. Violent sleep deprivation and sexual humiliation (one prisoner was forced to masturbate in front of female soldiers) were among the laundary list of abuses. After witnessing a particularly violent interrogation in which a 16-year-old boy was attacked with ants "so large they could carry the family dog away while giving you the finger," Harman wrote to her wife on October 20, 2003, "I thought I could handle anything. I was wrong."
Hundreds of thousands of men and women like Harman, at the age of an average college undergrad, have been placed in horrendous conditions to fight an unnecessary war, and more than 4,000 of these soldiers will never come home.
The people of the United States and their duly elected representatives in the federal government have a sacred responsibility toward our soldiers, and the thousands of students who joined the military to cover the ever-rising cost of college deserve more from their country.
Until we change the system that forces fellow students to fight and die for a college education, we must make sure that they are properly equipped, trained and prepared for the horror into which we'll send them. Anything less would be torture.
- A.V.
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