Overview

In April 2004, the Abu Ghraib photographs set off an international scandal. Yet until now, the full story has never been told. Tara McKelvey the first U. S. journalist to speak with female prisoners from Abu Ghraib traveled to the Middle East and across the United States to seek out victims and perpetrators. McKelvey tells how soldiers, acting in an atmosphere that encouraged abuse and sadism, were unleashed on a prison population of which the vast majority, according to army documents, were innocent civilians. Drawing upon critical sources, she discloses a series of explosive revelations: An exclusive jailhouse interview with Lynndie England connects the Abu Ghraib pictures to lewd vacation photos taken by England's boyfriend Charles Graner; formerly undisclosed videotapes show soldiers Robotripping on cocktails of over-the-counter drugs while pretending to stab detainees; new material sheds light on accusations against an American suspected of raping an Iraqi child; and first-hand accounts suggest the use of high-voltage devises, sexual humiliation and pharmaceutical drugs on Iraqi prisoners. She also provides an inside look at Justice Department theories of presidential power to show how the many abuses were licensed by the government.

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Reviews

Were the abuses at Abu Ghraib, revealed three years ago, isolated aberrations? The government says so. American Prospect senior editor McKelvey persuasively argues to the contrary.Only a dozen military investigations have been held on detainee abuse, and only nine soldiers have been sentenced for crimes against prisoners; up the chain of command, no senior officer has yet been punished, even though officers are supposed to know what's going on in their commands - and can hardly do otherwise and serve effectively. Says one sniper, ordered to get his sideburns trimmed, If they're so worried about little shit like that, they're going to notice if an Iraqi is getting shit smeared on him or electrocuted or walked down the hall with a leash around his neck. A programmatic cover-up has since shielded the brass - and, even more to the point, the OGA (other government agency) that really ran the infamous jail, namely the CIA, since, as a former guard remarks, The army as it is traditionally understood did not exist in that prison. The CIA interrogators found willing accomplices in young men and women such as former prison guard Charles Graner and his girlfriend Lynndie England, already well trained in striking obedient poses for the camera. Combine this drug-addled low-hanging fruit (who proclaimed, We are above even President Bush. No one has power over us ) and non-Arabic speaking CIA interrogators with a staff of translators who were bringing Iraq's civil war inside the walls to settle old tribal scores, and it is small wonder that horrifying abuses took place. What remains to be discovered, as McKelvey urges, is how far up the line those abuses originated; though Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the highest-ranking officer in Iraq at the time, approved of the interrogators' methods, he has yet to answer for them. The same goes for Donald Rumsfeld.An eye-opening, depressing look at events that, more than any other single episode, turned the war in Iraq against the U.S. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Tara McKelvey is a senior editor at The American Prospect, and a contributing editor at Marie Claire magazine. She is also a research fellow at the NYU School of Law's Center on Law and Security and has writen for The New York Times Book Review and The Nation among other publications. She lives in Washington, DC.

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