Where Are Lynndie England and Charles Graner Now?

   Lynndie England is living at home in the rural town on Fort Ashby, West Virginia. England has lived in the town since she was a toddler. Although England has been released from confinement after being sentenced to 3 years, she is not free by any means. Psychologically, Lynndie fights demons regarding her actions in Abu Ghraib, her current living situation in a trailer with her parents and her 4 year old son, her lack of ability to find a job, and her reputation around town.
   England has not been able to find work for several reasons. She is classified as a felon, which greatly limits her opportunities for work. Even if she gets past that initial step, her reputation precedes her and gives a strong prejudice from perspective employers.
   England has a four year old boy that was fathered by Charles Graner, who was also a major offender at Abu Ghraib. They are no longer in a relationship.
   The local townspeople often hassle England about Abu Ghraib, ironically some appearing to support her actions. England also seems to not regret any more than being arrested and charged for her actions. She does not appear remorseful for the pain she has caused in any way since her torment was inflicted on the enemy of the United States, the Iraqis.
  In Kansas, Charles Graner was released 6 1/2 years into his 10 year sentence for good behavior. He is married to Megan Ambhul, another soldier involved with Abu Ghraib. He has expressed interest to England about receiving visitation time with their son.

The Senate Armed Services Committee Report on Treating of Detainees in December 2008

  The Senate Armed Services Committee Report on the Treatment of Detainees made several specifications concerning the maltreatment at Abu Grhaib. It tied in several factors that subsequently contributed to the actions made by the U.S. soldiers.
  Sequentially, one of the first factors that was addressed was President Bush's decision to not abide by the guidelines of the Geneva Convention. If our soldiers had been required to follow the Geneva Convention's guidelines, the inhumane treatment may have been less severe. Although the guidelines are decidedly vague and easily misconstrued, abiding by the guidelines would have been more appropriate than not.
  The report also addressed the perspective of terrorists of al Qaeda and the Taliban. These terrorists are trained and passionate in the belief that the United States is an immediate threat to Islam. The abuse, torment, and torture  inflicted by the U.S. soldiers has only added fuel to that fire.
  With an intention of convincing U.S. soldiers to resist capture during wartime, soldiers are introduced to SERE tactics. These tactics, consisting of several physically and psychologically stressful strategies, were never meant nor should they had been approved to be used by U.S. soldiers. It was found that soldiers were ordered to use those tactics by senior officials, including Donald Rumsfeld, who now deny any wrong-doing.

Antonio Taguba and his report, May 2004

   In Antonio Taguba's report in 2004, there were several reasons given to explain how the abuse at Abu Ghraib came to begin. Taguba compared three similar camps. His findings were that the other camps were in fact praticing lawfully under the Geneva Conventions. This did not apply to Abu Ghraib.
   Along with the lack of training of the police, there was a lack of presence of higher level officers, such as General Karpinski.
    General Taguba found that the problems occurred do to the failure of leaderhip. There was a lack of presence of commanding officers as well, specifically General Karpinski. It was actually found that Karpinski was untruthful about the frequency of her visits; the visits were far less than reported.
    It was also found that a lack of training was a cause of the tormenting of prisoners. There was no training prior to arriving in Iraq. Along with lack of training, it was also noted that there was no communication inbetween shifts happening amongst the military police. This caused a huge hole in the understanding of the progress and status of prisoners.
   Within the report, a list of harsh tactics, including unmuzzled guard dogs, was provided. Sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, and stress positions are examples of other tactics used.
   Though there was no written evidence of direct orders from commanding officers for the abuse to be used against detainees, Taguba was convinced that the orders were in fact given.

The film The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib

   The horrendous acts of eleven United States soldiers were leaked after a soldier by the name of Darby borrowed a couple of picture files to get some memorable photos of the country. After all, the soldiers had seen several landmarks while being stationed in Iraq. The soldier was surprised to find photos of the soldiers abusing prisoners, and he turned them in to higher ranking officers. The soldier was told that he would be anonymous for his safety, yet he was given national credit by Rumseld, so Darby had to immediately leave the area in fear of retaliation.
  The eleven soldiers were punished for their crimes; the charges ranged from a demotion in rank to a ten year sentence. The soldiers strongly felt that if the photos had not leaked, noone would have been punished for the treatment of the prisoners. The eleven soldiers were at fault, however, there were definitely puppet masters from the States that were giving orders and signing consents that allowed and pushed the soldiers to behave the way that they did. In order to escape public judgement and consequences, the Department of Defense used the spiderweb of correspondences and responsilbities within the levels and departments of the Bush Adminstration to mask the truth of who was involved.

What happened at Abu Ghraib?

   Abu Ghraib, a prison once utilized by the regime of Saddam Hussein as a chamber of torture and execution, was hypocritically cleaned up and converted by the United States military into a physical and psychological torture camp. As thousands of Iraqi citizens were expediently arrested and detained, the ratio of prison police to prisoner rapidly increased.
   As the numbers of prisoners increased, so did the levels of expectation from the Bush Administration in regards to incoming intelligence. The Secretary of Defense had already signed and specified the types of consequences that were deemed appropriate to inflict on prisoners. The severe tactics (nakedness, sexual ridicule, harassment, physical and emotional strain) fell into a gray area in the Geneva Conventions, which President Bush had already separated the war from due to the nature of the wanted terrorist group. It can be implied that this gray area commenced the domino effect of abuse of the Iraqi detainees.
   It would appear that Abu Ghraib displayed a catastrophic example of peer pressure in regards to the guards. The guards saw horrible abuse inflicted on prisoners, and those guards began to conduct the same sorts of procedures. The few reports that did make it to superiors were ignored, while those conducting the worst of the abuse were commended. Prisoners were dragged down hallways completely naked, chained and left hungry and naked, forced into sexually humiliating positions, tortured with loud sounds and bright lights, and harassed constantly.
  In fall 2003, there was a prison riot from distressed prisoners. The prisoners were harshly punished, and at that point, it would appear that if the military police had any previous regard for humanity or reservations about the punishment, those reservations were lifted. The abuse quickly escalated.
    One person was reported dead as a result of a homicide.Another was reported to be punched in the chest extremely hard. The prisoner was close to cardiac arrest. Prisoners were denied the care of doctors as well.
   During the interrogations, the abuse continued. The prisoners were abused to coerse them into giving information before the interrogation. During the interrogation, the level of torture increase significantly.

  

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

After Geoffrey Miller's visit to the prison, the military police were reclassified as being part of interrogation. Those who were reassigned were ordered to make specific prisoners miserable by use of psychological torture. The group was given orders to deprive prisoners of sleep, yell at them, play loud music, and use stress positions for long periods of time. These are only a small amount of examples of the use of psychological torture that the prisoners of Abu Ghraib endured. The military police began to question whether they should follow orders or do what is ethically right.

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

   Geoffrey Miller turned Guantanamo Bay from a functioning prison into a prison that implemented extremely harsh techniques that eventually led to the prison being shut down. There are official documents from FBI agents that witnessed the techniques that descibed prisoners nude, chained and forced to remain in a stressful position, often soiling themselves and left for almost an entire day with no food or water.
  Rumsfeld signed and approved the techniques that Geoffrey Miller used. He approved the harshest strategies for extracting intelligence in the history of the United States. He sent Miller to Iraq in August 2003 to increase the incoming intelligence from prisoners.
   When Miller arrived, he explained that the prisoners needed to be treated like dogs, and he felt the prisoners had been treated too well so far. Ricardo Sanchez sent out a memo on September 14, 2003 that explained the harsh tactics that could be used. Since the infomation and memos coming from superiors were inconsistent, the guards at Abu Ghraib were confused about tactics that were approved or not approved.

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

   The "Hard Sites" were the parts of Abu Ghraib that housed the population that had intelligence of terrorism, criminal background, or insanity issues. There were six or seven guards gurding a population of 1,000 at a time. There were women and children in the population of the highest security area of the prison. The women and children were used to threaten the other prisoners and coerse them into talking.
   There was a huge amount of frustration from the intelligence officers concerning the lack of intelligence coming in from the prisoners. The answer was simple: 70-80% of the prisoners had no intelligence to give. They should not have been detained in the first place. Rumsfeld was openly frustrated with not getting intelligence as well, and seemed to blame the intelligence officers for the lack of incoming information.

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

    The 372nd Military Police Company encountered a dark prison that was previously run by Saddam Hussein. There were huge shortages of provisions at the prison. The prison in July and August of 2003 housed less than 1,000 prisoners. In September, there were roughly 6,000 inmates. The 6,000 inmate population was controlled by 300 American guards. The prisoners were separated by general population, the intelligence and insane population, and the women and children population.
   The guards had absolutely no training. They were simply told that they were taking over for the last group of guards.
   The prison is described as an eerie, perhaps haunted prison that smelled of human urine, feces, and sweat. The heat could reach 130 degrees.  Wild dogs roamed the prison and would dig up remains of the dead. The feeling of death from the era of Hussein was felt in the prison, with hooks and ovens as evidence of the horror. The street leading to the prison was utterly terrifying due to the violence that was a regular occurance on it. I envisioned the prison as a place worse than a scare any nightmare could give.

American Techniques of War and Iraqi Civilians

    From what I have learned so far about the American techniques during the war in Iraq, I believe that there was chaos, many failed situations, and several levels of miguided leaders. These problems were stemming from a war cabinet leading from overseas, an unstable basis of understading concerning who exactly the enemy was, the strategies that should be used to fight the enemy, who should be detained in order to extract intelligence, and what tactics were acceptable to be used to extract the intelligence. The war had begun based on miscommunications, lies, and personal agendas in 2001, and in 2003 those issues had continued to spiral the intentions and goals of the war out of control in several detrimental ways.
   Iraqis were treated inhumanely to say the least, and the tactics that were used by American soldiers in raiding and detaining appear to be similar at first glance to those used by the German Nazis during World War II. The techniques used by American soldiers were brutal, inhumane, and misguided.

The Justice Department and the UN Convention Against Torture

The issue is that the Convention against Torture is very vague. It limits actions considered torturous to obstructing necessary bodily functions, causing organs to fail, or causing death. There is no specification of what the definition of "severe" is. This leaves a huge gray area that gives the opportunity for officials to misconstrue or abuse the standards. The view of John Yoo and the Justice Department is that torture is not by any means allowed, yet the criteria for what torture is is so vaguely defined that it is near impossible to limit torturous acts.

The Geneva Conventions and the War on Terror

   The Geneva Conventions are a set of rules, or standards, that were established in 1949. The standards in the Conventions ensure the humane treatment of people captured and detained during times of war.    The Geneva Conventions are essential to the safety of Americans because they protect those in foreign countries that may be captured and detained. The Coventions are meant to ensure safety in circumstances that could be otherwise dangerous and/or deadly in times of war.
   John Yoo and the Justice Department felt that the rules of the Geneva Convention should not apply to al Qaeda because the members were not POWs, they didn't sign the Convention, nor did they follow any of the rules themselves. In fact, they publicly and brutally broad casted executions of captured victims, directly breaking the rules of the agreement.
  In 2002, for the first time in history, President Bush decided not to apply the Geneva Convention standards to al Qaeda due to the nature of the group. This was a huge mistake because when you take away the standards and limitations of what can be done during times of war, the issues become very subjective.

The Context of the Abu Ghraib Prison Abuse Scandal

     In the summer and fall of 2003, American soldiers were in Iraq with little to no supportive intelligence identifying information about the enemy. As the White House was attempting to maintain that Iraq was becoming a safer place for purposes of gaining alliance support, Iraq had become quite the opposite. Iraq was home of frequent terrorist attacks, and with an unstructured government, progress was little to none. Many were skeptical of the positive reports of Iraq's progress, and those concerns were validated in August of 2003.  After the Jordanian Embassy and United Nations were attacked, there was an urgent calling for intelligence from Washington D.C.
General Ricardo Sanchez confirmed having very little direction or information. He shortly thereafter, by the order of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, ordered troops to begin raiding and arresting Iraqis for interrogation purposes. Most were detained because of minimal, unrelated offenses. Soon, there were thousands of Iraqis being detained and controlled by about 300 guards. Abu Ghraib Prison began being used as a holding area for detained Iraqis. Due to the high number of Iraqis who were illegitimately being held, intelligence was not coming in as Rumsfeld had hoped. Rumsfeld approved extremely harsh interrogation tactics to force Iraqis to talk. The tactics were meant to mimic those used in Guantanamo Bay by American soldiers after 9/11.
The calling for intelligence also came as an effect of four American contractors being killed in Spring of 2004. The president immediately called for retaliation. The U.S. Marines attacked, although soon, it was apparent that civilians were being killed as well as insurgents. The Marines were instructed to pull back, and surround and guard the area of Fallujah instead. This became the cause of resistance groups actually becoming closer and stronger inside the city. This entire sequence caused the United States to appear inferior, and was just another cause of lengthening our time in Iraq.