Where are Lynndie England and Charles Graner now?

Charles Graner, Jr., the ring leader of the Abu Ghraib "bad apples" was released from Leavenworth in August 2011 after serving 6 1/2 years of a ten year sentence.  His whereabouts were unknown at the time of his release.

England and Graner

Lynndie England, shown here with Graner, was among the most photographed of the MPs who were charged with abusing detainees in Iraq.  England now resides in her hometown of Fort Ashby, West Virginia after serving half of a three year sentence.  She was released in 2007 with her child that Graner fathered.  Graner has since married another Abu Ghraib guard, Megan Ambuhl, and will be on probation until December 25, 2014.

Senate Armed Services Committee Report on the Treatment of Detainees

Levin and McCain

The Senate Armed Services Committee, lead by Senators Carl Levin (D-Michigan) and John McCain (R-Arizona), concluded in a 2008 report that  senior US officials authorized aggressive interrogation techniques and suggested that it was acceptable to mistreat and degrade detainees.  The Committee detailed a link between the interrogation policies for the detainees and techniques used by enemies who have ignored the Geneva Conventions in the past.

Senator Levin stated that the abuses were not "the actions of a few bad apples" and felt that senior officials passed the blame to low ranking soldiers.  The report concluded that the US policies on detainee interrogations were wrong and that they must never be repeated.

Antonio Taguba and his report, May 2004

General Taguba

General Antonio M. Taguba was chosen to lead an inquiry into the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.  He found that "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees".  He concluded that the abuse was "systematic and illegal".




Taguba's report told of nude detainees with female guards taunting them and of female prisoners exposing themselves to guards.  He also described the detainees being made to perform indecent acts with each other and of guards beating and assaulting the detainees.






General Taguba was limited to investigating the 800th MPs but believed military intelligence was involved and felt like the directive came from Lieutenant General Sanchez, the Army commander in Iraq.  Taguba reported that interrogators encouraged the abuse of detainees and wanted guards to "soften them" and keep them awake at night.  He felt that the MPs were taken advantage of by intelligence and not properly trained.

How did the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal become known and what was the immediate result?

The Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal broke when First Specialist Joseph Darby received a disk from one of the main MP abusers, Lt. Graner.  Darby realized the disk was full of photographs depicting abuse of prisoners and turned it over to Army Investigators (CID).  An internal investigation began and amnesty boxes were set up for MPs and soldiers to turn in any photographs or videos that they may have had.

Graner beating prisoners

Investigations concluded that Specialist Charles A. Graner, Jr. led an "Animal House" atmosphere on the night shift.  He and a few others are shown in numerous photos abusing prisoners but it does not appear the entire 372nd Military Police Company was in on the torture.  The liberal news media and Bush haters everywhere used the criminal actions of a few bad apples to criticize the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq.

Janis Karpinski

Brigadier General Janis Karpinski was the only ranking official to face punishment for the abuse and was demoted and retired a colonel in the US Army Reserve.  Specialist Charles A. Graner, Jr. received the longest sentence among the abusers.  He was sentenced to ten years in prison. 

What happened at Abu Ghraib?

 In February 2004, Major General Antonio M. Taguba completed a report about the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib.  The New Yorker obtained a copy of the report and published it.  General    Karpinski was admonished and suspended.  The 372nd Military Police Company and members of the American intelligence community were accused of committing criminal abuses against the inmates.

The riot of 2003 caused the guards to take out more aggression on the prisoners.  The guards became more abusive and degrading to the inmates and continued to soften the prisoners for interrogation.  Military Intelligence praised the MPs and told them to keep up the good work.  The interrogators would then take the prisoners to a cedar building and torture them behind closed doors.

Military Police Moved from Incarceration Staff and Placed Under Military Intelligence (MI)

After General Miller's visit to Iraq in September 2003, the military police (MP) were removed from General Janet Karpinski's command and moved to the interrogation staff.  The MPs were now made to soften up the detainees so they would be more likely to give up information when they were interrogated.  Civilian contractors such as Military Intelligence (MI) and Other Government Agency (OGA)  would come in and instruct the MPs to keep the prisoners awake using whatever means necessary.

According to the film, The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, MPs were instructed to do things that they felt were morally and ethically wrong.  They were instructed by MI to use stress positions, loud music, keep the detainees fully nude and laugh at them.  The MPs were told to use their imaginations and to do whatever they wanted to keep the prisoners awake.

Major General Geoffrey Miller, Donald Rumsfeld, Ricardo Sanchez and Interrogation Techniques

General Geoffrey Miller established a system at Guantanamo Bay that was based on getting information from detainees using harsh interrogation techniques.  With Donald Rumsfeld's approval, interrogation techniques were ramped up in order to gain vital information in America's war on terror.  An action memo, signed by Rumsfeld on  December 2, 2002, called for restraint when handling interrogations but many of Rumsfeld's critics claim that Rumsfeld was giving a nod to torture when he asked the question why prisoners were only being made to stand for four hours at a time when he himself stood for eight to ten hours per day.  Rumsfeld did not believe the reports from "human rights organizations" that torture was going on at Gitmo.

General Geoffrey Miller

General Miller was sent to Iraq in August of 2003 to see if he could help interrogators obtain better information and immediately called for tougher treatment of detainees.  At the end of General Miller's visit, General Richardo Sanchez issued a memo for extreme interrogation techniques to start being employed.  Prison guards remember a change at Abu Ghraib about this time.  Prisoners were left naked and handcuffed for long periods of time, sometimes standing on boxes or in compromising positions.

Oftentimes prisoners were kept with sandbags on their heads.  The main reason was to keep them or their captors identity hidden.  The sandbags also kept the detainees disillusioned and appeared to the guards to be somewhat cruel.

The "Hard Site" and the Failure of "Intelligence" at Abu Ghraib

According to the film, The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, the "hard site" at the Abu Ghraib prison facility in Iraq was where high security prisoners were kept.  These men were "American killers" who had belonged to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Saddam's guard, or were just terrorists in general.  Tier 1B housed women and children prisoners who were kept in an attempt to get their "wanted" family members to turn themselves in.  There was sometimes less than ten guards for 1,000 prisoners at the "hard site."

Most of the prisoners taken to Abu Ghraib were not guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Between 75 and 80% of the prisoners interrogated did not have any intelligence to provide but were imprisoned sometimes for months on end.

Abu Ghraib - The Location, Atmosphere, and Situation at Abu Ghraib by September 2003

The 372nd Military Police (MP) Company arrived at Abu Ghraib in the summer of 2003.  They had been trained to support combat operations but were left to become prison guards.  The heat index was reaching 130 degrees at the time and the putrid smell of sweat, trash, feces, and urine filled the air.  The prison was shelled and shot at every day and the road outside the facility was the deadliest in the world.  Abu Ghraib had been used by Saddam to torture and kill thousands of Iraqis in years past and the troops felt like a cloud of death shrouded the facility. 

By the end of September, Abu Ghraib's prison population had swelled to over 6,000 inmates with a total of just 380 guards.  Brigadier General Janis Karpinski pleaded for resources and assistance for Abu Ghraib and other prison facilities but none came.  The only plan for relief was to retrain the Iraqis to take control of guarding the prisons in 90 days which was unrealistic and impossible to hope for.

American Techniques of War and Iraqi Civilians

Based upon an excerpt from the the film The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, it appears the United States military used little discretion in their rounding up of enemy combatants.  US troops would burst into houses startling the Iraqi families, breaking and stealing.  They would then tie up the men and set them out on the curb.  This treatment humiliated the Iraqis, many who were not guilty of any crime.

Ahead of the troops, enemy takes were still burning and bullet holes were everywhere.  Troops were told to shoot if it looks like the enemy, although most US troops had never experienced combat before and thought all Iraqis looked like the enemy.

The Justice Department and the UN Convention Against Torture

John Yoo of The Justice Department, at the time working under Alberto Gonzales, set out to interpret the wording of the UN Convention Against Torture in order to find out how far the United States could go when interrogating captured enemy combatants.  He concluded in a memo in August of 2002, that physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent to organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death, paving the wave for brutal interrogations.  He believed that this was an acceptable explanation since the original wording of the Conventions had been vague.

John Yoo

Critics of the Yoo memo claim that he limited the definition of torture so narrowly that almost anything was legal as long as the combatant was not killed or did not receive severe bodily injury.  They likened his conclusion to allowing the same type of treatment that Saddam Hussein had previously done in his prisons.  One critic could not fathom that Yoo's memo was actually US policy when he felt it should have been discarded as the mad writings of a lowly lawyer. 

The Geneva Conventions and the War on Terror

The Geneva Conventions were signed by the United States in 1949 and establish standards in the treatment for prisoners of war, civilian, and military when armed conflict occurs between two signatory nations.  They entitle the captives to being treated with dignity and prohibit torture and degrading treatment.  The Geneva Conventions are important to Americans because the US has always maintained the highest standard of treatment for its captives and expected the same treatment for its soldiers, although US soldiers have rarely received civilized treatment when captured.

Captured Taliban Fighters

Afghanistan

 

The Geneva Conventions became an issue in the War on Terror when the US military needed to know how to treat its prisoners of war.  Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters were not signatories of the Geneva Conventions, or any other civilized agreements, and the US felt it vital to be able to interrogate these captives in an effort to gain intelligence.  The Department of Justice Legal Council John Yoo argued for the Bush Administration that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to al-Qaeda and the Taliban fighters because they did not sign the Conventions or did not accept and follow the rules of warfare.  President Bush decided in early 2002 that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the unlawful combatants captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan.  

The Context of the Abu Ghraib Prison Abuse Scandal

The summer and fall of 2003 saw the insurgency across the Sunni Triangle against the United States gain strength.  L. Paul Bremer had dissolved the Iraqi military leaving its troops out of work.  These men were trained in weaponry and many were angry at the US.  Attacks against coalition forces increased as improvised explosive devices (IED's) became more sophisticated and a common tool used against the troops.  The Jordanian Embassy was attacked with a car bomb in early August followed by a truck bomb at the United Nations building a few days later.  Police stations and even the Red Cross were targeted in the attacks.

The US troops responded harshly against the insurgents as well as the Iraqi population.  The US would launch dragnet operations, usually in the dead of night, looking for suspected insurgents.  Thousands of Iraqis were gathered and imprisoned, although most were not actually charged or guilty of any offenses.  Sometimes coalition forces would take family members of the person they were searching for and leave word for the wanted person to turn themselves in.  These raiding missions only served to anger the Iraqi population and strengthen the insurgency.