The Midnight Shift at Abu Ghraib

By Richard H. Curtiss

The Ziggarat at Abu Ghraib is a tower that has stood for more than 3,000 years. It is a Baghdad landmark that can be seen for miles. Every spring during plowing new pots and ceramic shards are found in the fields.

Abu Ghraib is also an Iraqi experimental farm. Not far away, there is a prison that dates back to the time of Saddam Hussain's mass murders. About once a year, when the prison would become too full, dozens or hundreds of Iraqis were executed-with or without trial-in order to clear the decks for more victims.

A good friend of mine was seized in one of the real or fancied coups against the Iraqi president and held at Abu Ghraib for at least three years. Each time a new purge was proclaimed, I dreaded that I would see his name. One day, after a brand new purge, my friend, along with dozens of others who had been held in this bestial prison, was listed among the victims. By that time even I couldn't remember why he had been arrested.

Much more recently, when it was clear that the Saddam Hussain regime was about to fall, thousands of Iraqi prisoners were freed. They probably would have liberated themselves anyway as the jailers fled. The suddenly liberated prisoners were part of the flotsam and jetsam who had no place to go just as U.S. soldiers and Marines arrived after their lightning dash from Kuwait to Baghdad and beyond in a matter of days.

That was when Iraq's long-repressed multitudes seized any loot they could find and killed anyone who stood in their way. The anarchy which began when the Abu Ghraib jail opened continues to this day.

A short time after the U.S.-led invasion and conquest of Iraq, a tiny group of prison guards from the United States appeared on the scene and soon made headlines in every language. The abuse they meted out to the new prisoners of Abu Ghraib took place in the fall of 2003 and the following winter. These horrors became symbols of everything the world disliked about the U.S. But even the horrific headlines could not fully convey the reality of occupied Iraq. Nicholas Berg, a Pennsylvania businessman who didn't comprehend for a second how dangerous it was to wander around Baghdad while telling people he was Jewish, was beheaded supposedly in retaliation for the crimes at Abu Ghraib.

After the story and damning pictures became public, President Bush summoned Arab reporters to assure them that Abu Ghraib "is a stain on our country's honor," and that the Abu Ghraib abuse was the fault of seven low-ranking enlisted soldiers in the One-Alpha cell block. Vice President Richard Cheney described the perpetrators as "rogue soldiers."

The ringleader of the group was an Army specialist from Uniontown, Pennsylvania who had first served in the U.S. Marines and later in the Army Reserve. Charles A. Graner, Jr., 36, obviously loved his work and couldn't get enough of it. He not only was a sadist but an exhibitionist as well, and got a thrill out of hurting Iraqi prisoners whenever he could. One Iraqi was knocked out by the force of one of Graner's blows.

Graner was brutal and endlessly innovative in devising fiendish ways to brutalize prisoners, forcing them to masturbate, and putting them into simulated sexual poses. Testimony showed that prisoners were kept naked much of the time, hoods covering their heads, and often chained to bars in painful "stress positions." Graner was accused of smashing inmates with fists or iron rods, and once forcing them to eat food from a toilet. He confronted prisoners with unmuzzled police dogs, and made them wallow naked in the mud outside in near-freezing temperatures. He also tied a leash around one inmate and made him crawl like a dog. In short, Graner abused detainees for sport.

At Graner's January courtmartial trial Army Sgt. Kenneth A. Davis-who described Specialist Graner as a "faithful" soldier who helped hand out Bibles to Iraqis-testified that he had raised concerns with his platoon leader in the fall of 2003 after passing through cell block One-Alpha. "There were some pretty weird things going on with naked detainees," he said. Another guard, Spec. Megan Ambuhl, who was allowed to leave the service after her testimony, told investigators that "they were told to laugh and jeer when the detainees were in the shower." There Graner and his coterie of men and women laughed at them in these positions and endlessly took photographs.

Graner sent his friends and family chatty little e-mail messages with captions to explain photos he had sent-including a picture of a man's head bloodied beyond recognition. One message ended "Like I said, sometimes you get to do really cool stuff over here."

Witnesses testified that Graner also had them soak detainees' mattresses with very cold water so they could not be used for hours until they dried.

Graner's primary defense was that the CIA and other civilians had wanted him to "soften up" the prisoners to make them easier to interrogate. While Graner'sreasons for the abusive behavior varied from day to day, the one bit of constancy was that the horrors continued-but just on the night shift during which only Graner and one other person were assigned.

These stories from Graner's night shift surfaced when an enlisted man slipped under the door of a senior officer a CD containing photographs, along with a recitation of some of these perversions. Others then began to come forward with stories of what they had seen passing by One-Alpha. Among those who helped end the abuses was Master-at-Arms First Class William J. Kimbro, a U.S. Navy dog handler who refused to participate in improper interrogations despite significant pressure from the intelligence personnel. Specialist Joseph M. Darby also helped put a stop to the abuse.

The highest ranking officer to be disciplined so far is Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, who has been relieved of her duties for incompetence. Col. Thomas M. Pappas was the highest-ranking military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib, and his deputy was Lt. Col. Steven Jordan. The only Military Intelligence Officer tried to date is Spec. Armin Cruz, who has been sentenced to eight months in prison. One report has implicated 29 Military Intelligence officers in at least 44 cases of abuse from July 2003 to February 2004. Two investigations now are more than two months overdue.

Six other officers also have been cited, along with some enlisted personnel. Among the latteris PFC Lynndie R. English, who is about to be sentenced and who, meanwhile, has given birth to a son allegedly fathered by Graner. Sgt. Javal S. Davis is scheduled for trial in February and Spec. Sabrina Harman in March.

Graner has been sentenced to 10 years in prison by an 10-member military court that included both officers and enlisted men. For a conviction only seven members need to agree.

Meanwhile, three British enlisted men have been charged with abusive conduct in Basra, in southern Iraq, and abuses have been alleged in other areas of Iraq as well. Two additional Americans have been charged with pushing an Iraqi into the Tigris River, where he drowned.

Inevitably Americans will contrast the Abu Ghraib atrocities with those that came to light in Vietnam 35 years ago. The worst involved the U.S. Americal Division. Lt. William Calley was accused of killing 347 Vietnamese men, women and children in the hamlet of My Lai (also, more correctly, Son My). Calley ordered one group of civilians into a ditch and mowed them down in a fury of machine gun fire. He was charged with murder in September 1969, a full two months before the story was broken by leading journalist Seymour Hersh.

Calley was an unemployed college dropout before he graduated from Officer's Candidate School at Fort Benning, GA. Also charged, but never tried, was his company commander, Capt. Ernest Medina. Calley was sentenced to life in prison and a dishonorable discharge in March 1971, but subsequently was released in 1974. He is now an insurance salesman.

In contrast to Calley, there also were some good guys in that war, in which 58,000 Americans died, One was Hugh Thompson, a U.S. helicopter pilot who saw what was going on on the ground in My Lai and landed his helicopter to stop it. He aimed his guns at the American soldiers and said, "if you shoot another person I will shoot at you." That ended the massacre. Thompson then got into the muddy ditch where the victims had fallen and looked for children who still were alive. When the My Lai massacre finally hit the American media, Thompson repeated his story before a board of inquiry, thus setting a precedent for the future.

In Graner's case, he seemed astonished when he finally realized that, despite the headlines his actions had created around the world, he would be forced to leave the Army. He begged not to be dishonorably discharged and thus have his career ended. It clearly took Graner a long time to realize how grave the charges against him were and how deeply he had dishonored the United States.

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Richard H. Curtiss is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

This article was published in the March 2005 edition of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs