All language subtitles for Standard.Operating.Procedure.(2008).DVDRip.AC3.XviD-MDCTeam

It was a Charlie Foxtrot,
without a doubt.

Without a doubt.
I've never seen anything like it.

I never thought that
I would ever see American soldiers

so depressed and morale so low,

and it was just unbelievable.
Everything about it.

You got to consider yourself dead.

And if you come back,
you're just a lucky bastard.

You know, but if you're there
and you consider yourself already dead,

you can do all the shit you have to do.

I wouldn't recommend a vacation
to Iraq anytime soon.

When Saddam's sons
Uday and Qusay were killed,

there was a great deal of information seized.

This was a key operation.

We no longer have to worry
about Uday and Qusay,

but we need to use this information
to find Saddam.

After that big event,
the Secretary of Defence came to visit us.

He wanted to see the prison.
He wanted to see the progress.

He wanted to...
Of course, every trip out there by anybody

included a trip to the torture chambers
and the hanging facility.

So we scheduled different events.

The first stop was
Saddam's hanging chambers.

We were preparing
to continue his walking tour

and he said,
"No. I don't want to go anywhere else.

"Let some soldiers come over here
and we'll take some pictures.

"I don't need to see anything else
in the prison."

And then he left.

Enter General Miller,

the guru of interrogation
and obtaining actionable intelligence.

And he arrives the day after Rumsfeld's visit.

He was gonna "Gitmo-ise" the operation.

Contract interrogators,

military people that had experience
in Afghanistan or down at Guantanamo Bay,

they all arrived after Miller's visit.

He gives an in-brief. He's not afraid to say,
"You have to treat the prisoners like dogs.

"They have to know that you are in control."

Cell block 1A transfers to the control

of the military intelligence
brigade commander, Colonel Pappas.

Cell block 1B, several days later,

under the control of Colonel Pappas
and away from me.

They're going to use those cells exclusively

for higher value security detainees.

Abu Ghraib was becoming exactly

what General Miller said
he wanted to make it,

the interrogation centre of Iraq.

"October 1, 2003.
First day at the prison.

"It's 9 p.m., and we can hear shots.

"No white lights are allowed
to be on at night.

"No leaving the building after dark.

"I hope we ain't here long.

"We drove in and two helicopters were landing,

"taking prisoners off.

"I'm scared of helicopters
because of the dream.

"The tail was swaying back and forth.

"Then a huge flame shot up,
and it exploded.

"I have a bad feeling about this place.

"The prison is called Abu Ghraib.
30,000 people were murdered here.

"There's a chamber
where these men were hung.

"I'm not sure about ghosts,
but it is freaky.

"I'm hoping to be home for Christmas,
or soon after. I love you. Sabrina."

We're coming up the road,
we see this huge structure.

It's like six football fields.

Then we seen this sign saying like,
"Fallujah," right there, next town over.

We're like,
"Yo, we right in the heart of it right now."

We get inside, it's nothing but rubble,
blown-up buildings from shelling,

dogs running all over the place,
burnt remains.

The stench was unbearable.
Urine, faeces, body rot.

It was just disgusting.
You didn't want to touch anything.

And then we had to move
into prison cells ourselves.

You're walking around in your compound.
Next thing you know, boom.

Incoming. Everyone's yelling, "Incoming."
Like, boom,

"Incoming, incoming!" You got to run.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Goddamn, you're getting mad,

'cause it happens over and over
and over and over and over again.

After a while, the fear goes away
and you just get angry.

It's like, "Damn it, can we shoot back?"

One pierced the roof of the prison
right to the floor, but it didn't explode.

Land on the floor.
Soldiers in there are like, "Holy crap."

Well, they ain't say, "Holy crap."
Now, you know what they said.

When you walk from the main portion
of the prison, and you get to 1A, 1B,

they already had intelligence detainees down there.

That's when I saw the nakedness.

I'm like, "Hey, Sarge,
why is everyone naked?" You know.

"Hey, that's the MI. That's what the MI does.
That's the MI thing. I don't know."

"Why these guys have on women's panties?"

He's like, "This is to break them."

There's guys naked,
guys in women's panties,

guys, you know,
handcuffed in stress positions,

you know, in isolation cells,
no lights, no windows.

You open the door, turn the light on.
"Oh, my God, Allah."

Click, turn the light off, close the door.
It's like, "Whoa, what is that?"

It was like, "Hey, that's Military Intelligence.
You know, just stay out their way."

And from then on, I was like,
"Something's not right here."

I was working on operations.

Some nights I'd get off work at 10:00.
Some nights I'd be working all night.

Depends on how many prisoners we got in.

Sometimes we'd get up to 200 that evening
and I'd be there till 6:00 the next morning,

and then I had guard duty at 6:00 a.m.
and I'd get off guard duty,

get a couple hours sleep
and then go back to work.

Usually I'd go over to the hard site
after my work day ended.

You know, it'd just be
Megan and Graner and Freddy,

maybe up in the office
watching a movie on his laptop.

Some nights I'd go up there

and there would be different people
in stress positions here and there,

and got them up on MRE boxes doing squats,

or running up and down the tier,
or something.

We thought it was unusual,
and weird and wrong,

but when we first got there,
the example was already set.

That's what we saw.
I mean, it was okay.

The first thing that I noticed were...

Was this guy.
He had underwear on his head

and he was handcuffed backwards to a window.

And they were pretty much
asking him questions.

That's the first time
I started taking photos.

I wrote a letter home to Kelly,
who is my wife.

"October 20th, 2003.

"I can't get it out of my head.

"I walked downstairs to find
the taxi cab driver handcuffed backwards,

"naked with his underwear
over his head and face.

"He looked like Jesus Christ.
At first I had to laugh,

"so I went and grabbed a camera
and took a picture.

"One of the guys took my asp
and started poking at his dick.

"Okay. That's funny.
Then it hit me.

"That's a form of molestation.

"I took more pictures now
to record what's going on.

"Not many people know this shit goes on.

"The only reason I want to be there
is to get the pictures

"to prove that the U.S.
is not what they think.

"But I don't know if I could take it mentally.
What if it was me in their shoes?

"I thought I could handle anything.

"I was wrong."

If I come up to you and I'm like,
"Hey, this is going on,"

you probably wouldn't believe me
unless I had something to show you.

So if I say, "Hey, this is going on.
Look, I have proof,"

you can't deny it.

Gus was the prisoner with the leash.

We thought he was maybe
part of the Iraqi army,

because he was always, like, you know,

"Saddam's going to come back
and kill all of you. I hate you."

And all this stuff.
He had all this anger.

And so we thought he was someone
maybe pretty important.

And then we found out the history
of his arrest and why he was there.

And he had gotten drunk
and beat someone up.

He was just a regular prisoner,

like we'd find at one of our county jails,
or something.

Once he came over to the hard site,
he stopped eating.

And we had to pump him, you know,
five to eight IVs a day,

or bags of IV fluid a day
just to keep him alive.

Gus was being verbally threatening
and not following any directions.

Graner put the leash on him.

And then he crawled out on his own
after that.

And then he handed the leash to Lynndie.

And that's when he took the pictures.

And then the guy got up on his own
after that.

They were trying to say
that she was dragging him,

which never occurred.

I was there, and I know it didn't happen.

It may have been unorthodox,
but he came out of the cell

and he didn't hurt anybody,
and he didn't get hurt.

Graner had the camera in his cargo pocket.

And he asked me and Ambuhl
to come downstairs with him.

When he opened the door,

Gus was in there, he was naked.

He didn't want to stand up,
so that's why he brought the tie-down strap.

So he put it around his neck.
So he's gonna make him crawl out.

And I guess he got about halfway
out of the door.

Graner told me to hold onto the end
of the tie-down strap, so I did.

I just grabbed it.
You can see the slack on it.

People said that I dragged him,

but I never did.

Graner took three pictures back-to-back.

You can see Megan on the side standing.

He would've never had me standing
next to Gus if the camera wasn't there.

I'm a 95 to 100 pound female,
short female, at that,

holding a strap that's attached to his neck.
I'm dominating him.

Maybe that's what Graner was going for.

Maybe it was for documentation,
maybe it was for his own amusement.

I don't know. I don't know
what was going through his head.

But he took it.

In all the years as a cop,

I'd say over half of all my cases were solved

because the criminal did something stupid.

Taking photographs of these things
is that one something stupid.

They gave me 12 CDs

and said,
"There's thousands of pictures from Abu Ghraib.

"We want you to find all of them
that depict possible prisoner abuse,

"or people that were in the area at the time
that the abuse was occurring.

"And we need to know exactly
when the pictures were taken."

The pictures spoke a thousand words,

but unless you know
what day and time they're talking,

you wouldn't know what the story was.

I started lining pictures up
based on subject matter.

Put these on a time line
so that the jury could see

when did the incident begin
and when did it end.

How much time elapsed
in between these photographs.

How much actual effort did these people put
into what they were doing to the prisoners.

Who else was there in the room
at the time that it occurred?

How could all this go on
without anybody noticing it?

When you look at this whole case
as one great, big media event,

you kind of lose focus.

These pictures actually depict
several separate incidents

of possible abuse
or possible standard operating procedure.

All you could do is present
what you know to be factual.

You can't bring in emotion or politics
into the court.

When I was in the brig,

every single woman there
was in that brig because of a man.

Different reasons, yes,
but it was because of a man.

And when you join the military,
no matter what anybody says,

it's a man's world.

You have to either equal a man
or be controlled by a man.

If you want to be their equal,
you got to be strong.

They're going to try to control you.

You need to step up and tell them,
you know, show them who's boss.

"I'm not gonna take that.
I'm not gonna let you power me.

"You know, control me
because I'm a woman and you're a man.

"It's not gonna happen."
Even though it's the military.

I mean, hell, if you're in the military,
you got a gun.

Use it.

If I would have thought about that then,
by God, I would have.

But I was blinded
by being in love with a man.

Graner, he's really charming.

If you didn't know him
and you just meet him,

you'd be drawn in to him.

And in a crowded room,
he'd be the one to look at.

He would draw the attention.

If the attention is not on him,
he'll get it there.

That's what he does.
He thrives on that.

If you're not paying attention to him,
he'll make comments about you

and this and that, you know.

Whatever you wanna hear, he'll say it.
And he knows.

He knew. And I was, what,
20 years old when I met him? He was 34.

He had 14 years more experience than I did.

So he knew what to say, what to do.

And I was dumb enough to fall for it.
I should have listened.

Everyone tried to tell me,
"He's too old for you. He's a bad guy."

But I didn't believe them,

because I believed him for some reason.

Can't figure it out now.

The population was just simply growing

but nobody really had a plan
on how you release

a formerly known as "suspected terrorist"
or an "associate of a terrorist."

General Wojdakowski told me,
after the first intake of prisoners,

that this was going to go on
for several weeks

and at the end of it we might have
1,500 or more security detainees

that we would be responsible for.

And I said, "Don't you think
you should have shared that information with me, sir?

"You know, I mean,
we don't have any resources to provide

"for the 200 prisoners
in the cells out at Abu Ghraib.

"And now you're going to give us 1500 more.

"What's the release procedures?"

He said, "You are not to release anybody.
Do you understand me?

"If any one of these prisoners gets released,
or ends up out on the street,

"I'm coming after you."

They would go out
in the middle of the night

and sweep up every single, you know,
fighting age male and lock them all up.

That's why you hear the stories about
sons and fathers and, you know, nephews,

all getting locked up.
That's what they would do.

Imagine someone coming to your town
and taking all the men in it.

They would come in, like, on cattle trucks,
and just like cattle.

I mean, you come to the back door,
I mean, you hear a bang on the door,

you know, bang, bang, bang,
here come the deuce and a half truck

full of scared individuals coming to jail.

Were like,
"They come get me in middle of night.

"Mister, Mister, what, am I in trouble?
What I do? I'm not terrorist."

You know, they were like taxicab drivers
and welders and, like, bakers,

and they're at Abu Ghraib.

We had kids.

If we can't get the insurgent leader,
we took their kid.

"Akbar, I have your son. Your son is in jail.
Turn yourself in and we'll let your son go."

I call that kidnapping.

It got filled up so fast

that we couldn't take
the children out any more

and they had to stay in their cells.

You feel bad for them holding a child

for no reason just 'cause
of who your father was.

You can only make their stay
a little bit acceptable, I guess.

You give them all the candy from the MREs,

to make their time go by better, I guess.

But there's only so much you can do
or so much you could feel.

"The lights went out in the prison,

"so here we are in the dark.

"I hear, 'Missus! Missus!'
I go downstairs and flash my light

"on a 16-year-old sitting down smacking ants.

"Now these ants are Iraqi ants. Large.

"So large they could carry the family dog
while giving you the finger.

"All the ants in the prison
came to this one boy's cell

"and decided to take over.

"All I could do was spray Lysol.
The ants laughed at me and kept going.

"So here we were in the dark
with one small flashlight,

"beating the ants with our shoes.

"So that was the start of my shift.

"They've been stripping
the fucked-up prisoners

"and handcuffing them to the bars.

"I get to laugh at them
and throw corn at them.

"I kind of feel bad for these guys,

"even if they are accused
of killing U.S. soldiers.

"We degrade them but we don't hit them,
and that's a plus.

"They sleep one hour, stay up for one hour
then sleep one hour.

"This goes on for 72 hours
while we fuck with them.

"Most have been so scared
they piss on themselves. It's sad.

"Pictures were taken,
you have to see them.

"A sandbag was put over their heads
while it was soaked in hot sauce.

"Okay, that's bad, but these guys have info.

"We were trying to get them to talk.
That's all."

The big word that always comes up
for me is "surreal".

Everything that you saw,
everything that was going on.

A bunch of unprofessional schmucks
that didn't know their damn job.

All thrown together,
mixed up with a big-ass stick,

and what you get out of it is the shit
you see on the news from Abu Ghraib.

It's disgusting. Pisses me off.

Because the whole time we're screwing around

and not doing the damn job,
Americans are dying.

Abu G. had been hit by a mortar barrage,

killed two Americans
and wounded about 16.

We went to do an interrogation on the Wolf,

the cell leader of that group of people
that mortared the prison.

There was two female specialists,
one was an interrogator, one's an analyst.

They took all of his clothes off
and got him totally naked,

which we weren't supposed to do.

When we got done with the interrogation,

I'm like, "So, what's the scoop
with the guy being naked?

"I mean, what's going on?"
Trying to think how they put it.

The Arab position on the females,
they're a subservient role in their culture.

And to try and break that down,

so they'll cooperate
with the female interrogator,

they interrogate him nude.

I went back and I asked my section sergeant.

And he's like,
"Yeah, we're not really supposed to do that,

"but we let the females
do some things like that,

"you know, to get over the Arab culture thing."

And I'm like, "You just said
we weren't supposed to be doing that."

And he's like, "Well, they're allowed to do it,
but you can't do it."

I said, "Okay. What am I supposed to do?"

And he's like, "Well, you know, if I was you,
I wouldn't be around that kind of stuff."

It's not like they were trying
to hide anything.

And that's what stands out to me,

is if you know you're doing
something wrong, dead wrong,

you're gonna hide it.

You're gonna do your best to conceal it
so people that know better don't see it.

As I walk in,
here's a guy in his black PT shorts

and T shirt and shower shoes,

and there's another guy off
just with his pants and his shirt.

Each one had a naked detainee.

Someone says,
"We're MI. We know what we're doing."

And I'm like, "Okay."
You know, because I had no idea.

They're not wearing rank.
I don't know what rank these people are.

And they'll put their handcuffs above their head,
stretch them out that way,

you know, stretch them out long.

Then they started handcuffing them together.
I'm like...

The whole time they're yelling,
"Confess. Confess. Confess.

"You know you did it.
Tell us what you did. Confess."

Then they start handcuffing them into

what appeared to be
simulated sexual positions.

And, I'm just like.
I thought I had missed something.

Come to find out, what's going on is,

these guys were accused
of raping a teenager inside the jail.

No military intelligence value.

Cruz is yelling at him,
"Get undressed, get undressed!"

And the guy's like, "No, mister, no."

So after they're undressed,
they throw water down on the floor

and they make them low crawl,

making him try to drag his genitals
onto the concrete.

And I'm like,
"What is going on here?"

I said, "Is this the way
you all interrogate people?"

He goes, "There's a lots of different ways
we interrogate people."

So I said, "I've had enough," and I left.

The next morning,
the lieutenant's right out back.

I said, "Sir, military intelligence
over at the hard site.

"They are doing some pretty weird things
with naked detainees."

He told me I had no business
being over there.

And he also told me,
"Stay out of MI's way and let them do their job."

Okay.

Okay, on the right,
in black trunks, it's Cruz.

Right next to him, myself.

To the left against the wall, Graner,

and we're looking at the two detainees
handcuffed on the floor.

Can't see anything else, actually.

It was never intended as an interrogation.
It was never an interrogation.

The yelling was just for show, I believe.

To show the spectators
this would be done to anybody

who breaks the rules.

Abu Ghraib was mortared almost every day.
People were dying there.

So my frustration level was really high.

And when I heard about detainees
that raped a little boy,

I just completely went nuts.

Right before I left, I was so pissed off
that I had a bottle of water

and I splashed some of them
just to show, pretty much, my hate.

At one point,
there was a Nerf ball brought in.

Everybody was throwing it to each other,
playing catch.

Here, I'm going to get it.

Once, I threw the ball,
it hit one of them in the leg, actually.

It's a Nerf ball,
so it can't bring any pain anyway.

Graner wanted me to take some pictures.

He didn't tell me which ones to take
or not to take.

So I was just walking around, and...

"Just take one," you know?

MI came in and they got involved.
They wanted to mess with them, too.

They didn't like it
that they were raping the 15-year-old boy.

They were roughing them up,
having them run up and down the tier,

crawl, run into walls, stuff like that.

And then they handcuffed them together.

That's Graner with his hands on his hips
and the gloves on his hands.

The two guys in the background

are the MI guys.

They didn't wanna be in the pictures.
They were mad.

But I was like, "Well, hey, you know,
don't tell me. Whatever.

"Just taking pictures."

I'm not gonna even comment
on picture taking.

The whole time I was there
I didn't see any pictures being taken.

Even though I was in a few of them
I didn't see a flash or anything.

Because if I did
I would have said something to these guys.

First of all, there's a big sign,
"No photography".

And besides, photographing something
like that is just stupid.

I received a 10 month sentence,
a demotion to E1

and a bad conduct discharge.

I was more humiliated by that sentence
than actually punished.

Eight months in jail
for pouring water on somebody,

and throwing a Nerf ball at somebody.
That's humiliating. People laugh at that.

So I go back home to my prison cell

and I got one of the terps, interpreter,
sitting outside waiting on me.

And he's like, "Mr. Dugan, I'm so pissed.
I'm just so pissed. I'm pissed off.

"The general that you guys did,
he wanted to tell us where Izzat was."

"Well, that's great."

And he's like, "No, the interrogator
wouldn't ask him where Izzat was."

He's the vice president of Iraq,
Saddam's number two guy.

Ten times the general said,

"I'll tell you where Izzat is.
I'll tell you where Izzat is."

And then he never asked the question.

He was standing just in front
of his cell at attention.

I mean, he wasn't handcuffed or anything.

He was like a grandfather.
Very respectful.

They shaved his eyebrows for some reason
and he was so upset.

And I told him not to worry,
that it made him look younger.

I just felt really bad for the guy.

Four days later, we were gonna do him
and the Army kid takes off the sandbag

and the dude looks like Yoda.

I mean, he's got no eyebrows,
he's got no hair.

I'm like, "Who the hell is that?" You know.

And he's like,
"That's the freaking general," you know.

And I'm like, "Bullshit."
And I thought he was playing a joke on me.

"Damn it, I don't want this bullshit.

"I wanna do this guy, I wanna get this stuff.
I want to find out fricking Izzat."

He's like, "This is the fricking general,
I'm not kidding you."

Never got him.

That general wouldn't say
nothing else about it.

He had a serious resolve
that he wasn't gonna cooperate any more.

We got promoted from babysitters
to condition-setters.

We got implemented into the plan.

The military intelligence people
would come up there

and say, "Hey, play music at this time.
Play it loud.

"And if you got to, take the megaphone
and stick it right in front of the door.

"And turn it all the way up
so the guy can't pray,

"you know, he can't sleep.
Totally disorient him."

So I played this song called
Hip-Hop Hooray

over and over and over again.

Hip-hop hooray
Ho

That's what it sounded like.

After a while, the Iraqis were saying...

Hey, ho

This is not working.

So, I changed it
and I put on heavy metal music.

I put on Metallica.

Like, Enter the Sandman,
this very loud song.

Then they were screaming like,
"I don't like it."

But after a while it didn't...
They were numb to that.

I guess they were so deaf from the guitar,
the A chord,

that they were able to, you know, sleep.
Go figure.

I put in country music.
That worked. They couldn't stand it.

They're like, "Oh my God, Allah. Allah."
You know, "Cut it off."

By the time the interrogators would come
to take them out the cells

they were more than ready to go.
Like, "Please take me."

Sometimes MI would come in,

say, "Hey, we're gonna interrogate
this guy today.

"Get him out and you can start...
soften him up a little bit."

Scream at him, yell at him,
make him do PT.

Handcuff him in a awkward position for a while.

Completely strip him
and have a female do it,

because that would embarrass the person
or humiliate them even more.

We didn't kill them.
We didn't cut their heads off.

We didn't shoot them.

We didn't cut them
and let them bleed to death.

We just did what we were told,
to soften them up for interrogation.

And we were told
to do anything short of killing them.

We would make them stand
in awkward positions

for hours at a time to stress them out
and to strain them.

And we would have them crawl
up and down the tier.

We'd pour cold water on them.

Point at him and laugh at him
while he was in the shower naked.

Shower him with all his clothes on.

Cut off all his clothes with a knife.

Burn him with a cigarette.

We'd just do what they want us to do.

If they want us to PT the guy
that's what we do.

If they want us to keep him up,
that's what we do.

They say, "I want him to be awake."

They say, "He's dirty.
I want him to shower a lot."

Did any of this seem weird?

Not when you take into account
that we're being told

that that's helping to save lives
and you see that people are coming in

from right outside the wire
with their body parts missing,

and they need to know
who's doing it so they can stop it.

And these are your battle buddies.

Gilligan was the one on the box
with the wires.

He was accused of killing two CID agents.

It was his box.
He had to hold it, he had to stand on it.

It was cold so he had a blanket on.

I mean, he was never physically
ever touched that I saw.

He was just very, very tired.

He kept giving us different names,
so Graner nicknamed him "Gilligan."

When I got there he was in the shower.
There was wires on his fingers

and he was told he would be electrocuted
if he fell off.

There was no electricity
going through the wires

and to say, "Hey, if you fall off
you're gonna be electrocuted."

I mean, that would keep anybody awake.
So, it was part of the sleep plan.

You had to keep him awake.

It would have been meaner
if there was electricity

and he really could be electrocuted.

It was just words.

The wires were taken off
after photos were taken.

You'll see Sergeant Frederick in it.
That's the one I took.

And the one where
I'm outside the shower looking in.

I took that one.

He became one of our workers
so he was let out, like, every day.

He was, like... He's kind of fun.
But I think it was proven he was innocent.

We'd give him an extra meal for helping out
and cigarettes, that kind of stuff.

He was about 25. 24, 25.
Young guy. Pretty decent.

Each of the pictures had file time stamps

but they were all off anywhere
from a year plus to a couple hours.

And every time they got copied to a CD
from one computer to another,

the times would change
based on that computer's time setting.

But the one time setting
that did stay constant

is what we call metadata.

Metadata's a big, two-dollar word
for information about information.

Pictures have information inside the file

that tells you about
when that file was created,

what software created it,
the exposure settings,

and the date and time
that the camera thought it was

when it took the picture.

I was really elated to see
that the metadata was still intact.

The three main cameras belonged to
Graner, Harman and Frederick.

Graner's camera, the Sony FD Mavica,
that took most of the pictures.

There was a Sony Cybershot,
I believe belonged to Harman.

And Deluxe Classic Cam,
which belonged to Frederick.

I then realised that these people
were actually taking pictures

of the exact same incident
almost at the exact same time.

Found a total of eight separate
time-synch incidents

where I could say,
"This camera thought it was this time.

"This camera thought it was that time."

Once I was able to adjust it,
all the pictures just seemed to line up.

There was a guard log

where they recorded incidences
that occurred at the jail.

It actually confirmed
the time line was accurate.

Sabrina Harman's camera
thought it was 2002.

I had to adjust her camera one year,
nine months, 11 hours, 29 minutes.

Frederick's and Graner's
were only seven or eight hours off.

Nobody really got any intelligence there.
Very few of us.

Most of our interrogators
were 18-year-old kids that are reservists.

And if you think about it,
you got a 45 to a 65-year-old,

one, two, or three, or four-star general
that you're gonna be talking to.

And you're 18 years old,
just got out of high school, joined the Army,

and went through interrogator school.

What the hell are you gonna ask
that 55-year-old general,

that's seen the world,
done everything and been everywhere?

You know, these kids are intimidated as hell.

And the generals and the colonels
and these older guys know it.

And it's like, they laugh at them.

So I'm working this guy,
not getting crap out of him.

His brother was also captured with him.
So I went into the hallway

and decided I'd see
what was going on with his brother.

There's six interrogation booths,
and each one has a two-way mirror,

so you can view what's going on
with the interrogation.

You got an Army female and an Army male
playing grab-ass

and not asking the detainee questions.

There was a guy coming on to a girl
and a girl being receptive,

when they're supposed to be
interrogating this schmuck.

And I said,
"Hey, why don't we, like, switch guys?"

So this new detainee's in my booth
and I say,

"Listen. I've been sitting here for two hours,

"and I've actually been sitting here
for two days

"'cause I was standing outside a two-way mirror

"watching you with the other guys, okay?

"I know you know all kinds of crap.

"And I know that you're pulling
a lot of bullshit

"on these Army kids."

I said, "I'm not gonna put up
with your bullshit, okay?

"It takes me three minutes and 47 seconds
to smoke this cigarette.

"I'm gonna go outside,
I'm gonna smoke this cigarette,

"and when I come back in,

"you're gonna tell me every damn thing
I wanna know. You understand me?"

I said, "Do I look like
I'm in the fricking Army to you?"

And I put my fist through the plastic table
and I went outside to smoke my cigarette.

Then after about a minute and a half,

there was crying and yelling
coming out of my booth.

And my terp was standing near the doorway

and he's like,
"You scared the shit out of this guy.

"He don't know what you're gonna do.

"He'll tell you anything you want.
I mean, whatever you want to talk about."

So I walked back in there real calm
and I sat down in the corner

and I said, "So, what's your decision?"

My prisons were spread all over the place,

so I was on the road quite a bit.

One time I arrived down at Abu Ghraib
and Lieutenant Wood said to me,

"Oh, ma'am, we have an interrogation going on.

"Would you like to come over and see it?"

She took me over there and we stood
in the hallway and I observed it,

and it looked perfectly normal.

I've wondered many times

if they didn't take me in there specifically
so I would be able to say,

"Yes, I saw an interrogation, and, yes,
it looked perfectly normal."

It's kind of funny how when, say,
General Karpinski or some other big shot

would come look at the prison, we'd...
you know, have a dog-and-pony show.

And everybody would get
their mattresses back.

Everybody would get their clothes back.

And then as soon as the people left,

whoever was deprived of certain things
got deprived of it again.

That just seemed normal
to deprive people of something

if they're not cooperating with you.

CIA, Iraqi Survey Group,

DIA, FBI,

Task Force 121,

the other government agencies,
that's what we called it, the OGA.

They had no rules.

We called them the ghosts
'cause they'd come in,

you don't know who they are.

Whoever their prisoners were,
you never logged them.

"How's it going there, soldier?

"You know, here's this guy,
don't log him in the book.

"He's not here, hasn't been here.

"Just put him in a cell in there and,
you know, don't mark it.

"When the Red Cross comes here,
move them another place.

"When the Red Cross goes
to the other place,

"move them back to where they were.
You know, 'cause they don't exist here."

I'm used to being out in the road, you know.

"Hey, soldiers, go do this."

"Roger that, sergeant, airborne.
See you later, we're done."

But now we're a part
of this big high-profile operation.

You know, we're getting, like,
the deck-of-card guys,

the guys who were on the deck of cards.
We're getting them.

Like, whoa, we have a big job.
Wow, we got to guard these guys now?

That's when things changed.

They'd take them into the shower room,
put a sheet up over the door,

stick them underneath the shower spigot.

Or stick them in the garbage pails
with the ice. Then have at it.

A burlap sack on their head,

the wetness, it's sticking to your nose,
sticking to your mouth.

Makes them feel like they're drowning.

Open a window while it's, like,
40 degrees outside

and watch them disappear into themselves.

For hours and hours and hours,
all you would hear is screaming, banging.

When they were done, eight, ten hours later,
they'd bring their guy out.

They'd be halfway coherent or unconscious.

Put them back in their cell, and then,
"We'll be back for them tomorrow."

I know what it sounds like to hear,
you know, skin smacked or punched.

I know the difference
between someone screaming

because they're upset

and then someone screaming
because they're in pain.

You know, I know the difference.

It was early in the morning,

like 4:30, around that time,
so everything was silent.

OGAs were, "Okay, we have
another special prisoner here."

He was wearing only a shirt.

So he came in, he was shackled,
handcuffed and everything, with a hood on.

When he came in, we didn't ask,

we didn't ask nobody who this guy was,
what he did. That wasn't our business.

Two soldiers took him
straight to the shower,

where he was interrogated by one OGA.

He was there quite a while.

I think he was there
about an hour and a half.

All of a sudden,
the OGA guy opened the door and said,

"Can you help me here?

"Tie him a little higher
'cause he don't want to cooperate now.

"He's, I guess..."

You know, he was just sagging.

There were some CIA guys there.
I think they were CIA. Well, yeah, they were.

But at the time,
we didn't know what agency they were with.

They asked us to handcuff him to the window,
so he has to hold himself up

'cause he was playing possum.
Now I'm just holding him by the jumpsuit.

I'm not holding him
under the arms or anything.

And his jumpsuit is riding up his crotch

and I commented and said, you know,

"Damn, this guy's pretty good
at playing possum."

'Cause I know I'd be howling
like a, you know,

whatever with this riding up my crotch
like his jumpsuit was.

Everybody just kind of laughed
and nobody really thought anything of it.

And I remember how, like,
far back his arms were going

and it was just a really awkward position.

Again, you know, I was like,
"You know, this guy's pretty damn good

"'cause, you know,
his arms are almost about to break.

"I'm surprised they haven't broken.
I'm waiting for the pop."

And then all of a sudden,
just like, I guess,

blood started pouring
out of his nose and mouth.

And so we realised something was,
you know, was wrong.

That's when I went and raised the hood.
And that's the first time I saw his face.

I was surprised 'cause his face
was totally messed up.

He got huge black eyes
with bruises everywhere.

And I was like,
"Whoa, what happened to this guy?"

And then one of his eye was open.

So I kind of, like, did the thing like Pierce
so he could move his eyes.

And nothing.
He was just looking down like this.

And I was, "Whoa, this guy's...
this guy is not even alive."

This whole time
we were messing with this guy,

you know, carrying him and lifting him,

and this entire time the guy was dead.

I even got some blood on my uniform
'cause he was dripping.

It kind of felt bad, you know, 'cause I'm like,
I know I'm not part of this, but, you know...

But it kind of make you feel like you are
'cause you're there with the guy.

Colonel Jordan, he was in charge of the MIs,

he came in, the medics came in,
Captain Reese came in,

Captain Brinson, the first sergeant,
Sergeant Snider, everybody showed up.

You had the entire chain of command
right there,

trying to figure out what was going on.

We checked him and, you know,
sure enough he had died.

And we kind of...

I don't know, I walked out of the room,
just kind of like, you know...

You know, like nothing happened.
And then I asked one of the CIA agents,

you know, I was like,
"Well, what do you guys normally do

"in a situation like this?"

They were kind of, not panicky,

but, you know,
they were on their phones calling,

whoever, to see how to, you know,
see what to do or what not.

Well, what do we do with him?

We can't take him out in a body bag
'cause that may start a riot.

So we had to keep him there overnight.
And so we got a body bag.

We got a bunch of ice.
Iced him down.

Left him in the room where he was at.
And then we shut and locked the door.

I remember saying to the NCO,

"You need to take the spare key
and hold on to it,

"or someone will probably go in there and,
you know, mess with him."

We should have just taken both keys

and held on to them
instead of leaving one there.

But I guess he, you know,
had to leave one there,

in case they wanted to come
take the body that night or something.

It was pretty much supposed to be,
you know, hush-hush.

Didn't want the word to spread around.

"It was a crazy day yesterday.
The guy they brought in died.

"He was beat pretty bad.
I'm not sure what happened.

"It was on the shift before us.

"They stuck him in a room
next to where I was working last night

"and put him in a body bag on ice.
How fucking gross.

"He's already been defrosting for 24 hours."

Captain Brinson had a meeting
in the main office with all of us.

And he said that there was a prisoner
who had died in the shower

and he died of a heart attack.

Sergeant Frederick got the key,
and we just checked him out.

He started to melt,
and it started to smell.

He was there for at least
24 hours prior to us getting there.

So he was there for a pretty long time.

His knees were bruised,
his thighs were bruised by his genitals.

He had restraint marks on his wrists.

It was kind of obvious,
after you just kept looking,

that there was no way
he died of a heart attack.

You've gotten into trouble
because of the thumb.

I can understand.
It does look really bad.

But whenever I would get into a photo,
I never know what to do with my hands.

Any kind of photo,
I probably have a thumbs-up,

'cause it's just something
that automatically happens.

Like when you get into a photo,
you wanna smile.

It's just, I guess, something I did.

He was a ghost detainee,
so he wasn't supposed to be there.

They didn't want him to be in there
when the Red Cross came,

so we had to do something.

So someone came up with the idea
to take him out of the body bag,

dress him in the orange jumpsuit,
put his dead body on a gurney,

stick a IV in his dead arm
and take him out of the facility.

From that point on,
we never heard anything of it. It was just...

The guy died, they put him in a body bag,
put him on a gurney, he was gone.

Go about your business, keep working.
Disappeared. He dissolved into thin air.

They tried to charge me
with destruction of government property,

which I don't understand,

and then maltreatment of taking
the photos of a dead guy.

But he's dead.
I don't know how that's maltreatment.

And then altering evidence,

for removing the bandage from his eye
to take a photo of it

and then I placed it back.

When he died, they cleaned him all up
and then stuck the bandages on.

So it's not really altering evidence.
They had already done that for me.

In order to make the other charges stick,
they were gonna have to bring in the photos,

which they didn't want to bring up
the dead guy at all, the OGA,

'cause obviously they covered up a murder
and that would just make them look bad.

So they dropped all the charges
pertaining to the OGA in the shower.

Camp Ganci had a huge riot.

It was a female MP.

She got smashed in the face with, like,
a cinder block or something like that.

They were gonna break out
of the tent encampments,

get the MPs, and hold them hostage.

We brought them down the hallway,
put them on the floor.

That's where I come in.

I can't go to sleep at night,

worrying about the detainees
trying to kill me

when I got people outside the walls
trying to kill me.

This has got to stop.
These guys are gonna have to...

They got to know. So I lost it.

Threw the guys on the floor,
I fell on the pile,

did like a WWF, you know,
just jumped on them a little bit.

I wanted to do more, I was mad.

I'm like,"You done hurt one of our soldiers,
like, that's it."

So I stepped on the finger,
stepped on the guy's finger,

stepped on the guy's toe.

I wanted to hurt him,

the gentleman who hit the female in the face
with the brick.

I wanted to hurt him really bad.

I finished my day in the motor pool
and I had generator detail that night.

Just sitting there at night,
it gets very boring.

Computer system was very slow.
I was waiting for e-mail to come up.

And Sergeant Frederick walked in.
He had to print out some papers and stuff.

And we started talking.
He got a call on the radio

that he had some individuals
he had to in-process.

He said, "Come on,
you walk down to the holding cell with me."

So I walked down with him.
And they had the seven individuals there.

And I said, "Hey, Freddy,

"you want me to grab one of the detainees
and take him down for you?"

He said, "Yeah, go ahead."

And as I'm getting closer to Tier 1 Alpha,
I could hear Graner yelling.

And I'm like,
"Where do you guys want him?"

They said, "Just put him on the floor."

So I pushed him onto the floor
with the other guys.

And that's when all the pictures and stuff
started happening.

That's when Javal was stepping on the fingers
and stuff and on the toes,

and Lynndie was also.

And that's when all the pictures started

and Graner asked me
to take the staged photo,

of him with the one detainee
where he was cradling the detainee's head,

and he was acting
like he was gonna strike the detainee.

Never struck him.

As soon as I took the photograph,
he laid the detainee down.

And then they start
the stripping of the detainees

and taking more photographs.

Graner walks over to one of the detainees,
punches him in the temple,

for what reason, I don't know.

I mean, hits the detainee hard.

And, after he does that,
Sabrina matches up the numbers,

says, "This guy's in here for rape."

So Graner rips the leg open
on the jumpsuit that he had.

Sabrina writes,
"I am a rapeist," on him.

The guy hasn't moved for, like,
two or three minutes.

I kind of look at him and I said,

"Hey, Grane, something's wrong with that guy."

And I walked over and I lifted the sandbag,
up to where I could see his eyes.

The guy was unconscious. I said,
"Graner, you knocked that dude out."

And he kind of shook his...

And after he punched him,
he kind of shook his hand

and he said,
"Ouch! Damn, that hurt."

And he didn't seem too concerned about it.

And then I walked back over by Freddy.
We were standing there.

And Freddy looks at me and he says,
"Hey, watch this."

Goes over, gets the guy
that I escorted down,

lifts the guy up, marks an "X" on his chest,
punches the guy right square in the chest.

I'm like, "What?

"Who are you and
what did you do with Freddy?"

Then they started the whole,
one facing the wall on his knees

and setting the other one on top of him.

They had flex-cuffs, which are,
more or less, big zip ties.

And I told Graner,
"This guy's gonna lose his hands

"if we don't get them off of him.
I mean, they're purple."

I said, "Well, I got my Gerber on me.
I can probably get them with that,

"but we're gonna have to stand him up."

It took a little while,
but I finally got them off of him

and then the blood started flowing back
in his hands.

And as far as I know,
the guy kept his hands.

That's when Graner and Freddy
started with the human pyramid thing.

Graner told me that he was doing
what he was told,

that's why he was doing it.

And as I was leaving the tier that night,
I was told that I didn't see shit.

And me being the person that I am,
I try to be friends with everybody.

I said, "See what? I didn't see nothing."

I was always asked by CID,

"Why didn't you report this?
Didn't I feel that it was morally wrong?"

I said, "Yes, but when you're in war,
things change."

We were told, "No pictures of prisoners."

I was asked to take it.
I'm a nice guy, so I took it.

I try not to have anybody mad at me.
That's the way I've always been.

But I guess being a nice guy
doesn't always pay off.

Some people ask me now
why I'm not as nice as what I used to be.

I say, "Put yourself in my shoes.

"Go through what I've went through
in the last two and half, three years.

"See how nice you'll be."

Sivits just happened to stick around
for maybe five minutes.

I mean, he never hurt anyone.

He got a year in jail for nothing.
Just for being there.

He shouldn't have got any time at all.

I don't think he would've even been charged
if he wasn't in that video.

- Who took the video?
- I did.

The last thing I remember
was one guy standing

and one guy kneeling.

And the one guy had his hand
on the other guy's head.

And that's the last photo that I took.

Then we left to go use the phones.

It was Kelly's birthday,
so I went to make a phone call.

Me and Megan were still upstairs
in the office.

And we walked out
and they were throwing them into a dogpile,

and taking pictures from the top tier.

About that time,
raner and Davis and Frederick

started jumping on the dogpile.

And that's when I went downstairs
with a camera.

Graner said he wanted some taken
down there, too.

Me, Freddy and Sabrina
were taking pictures,

three different cameras that night.

They were lined up against the wall,
and Graner started taking them one by one.

We didn't know what he was doing.

Nobody knew.
He didn't say anything.

And then he told us
that he was piling them in a pyramid.

And we're like, "Okay, why?"

He's like, "To control them,
so they're all in one area."

So we're like, "Okay."

Freddy is the one
that started them masturbating.

I don't know why, but he did.

He started the one, and then he wanted to see
if the others would do it too, I guess.

I don't know.

But he had them all doing it
at the same time.

At one point, six of the guys stopped,

and the one guy kept doing it
for like 45 minutes.

No joke.

The one guy that was still masturbating,
that was the one picture with me in it.

He wanted me in it,
and I didn't want to be in it.

I was like, "I'm not going over there."

- Who wanted you in it?
- Freddy.

And then Graner joined in.
Graner was like, "Yeah, just come on."

I was like,
"No, I don't want to go over there."

And he's like, "Come on, just do it for me,"
and this and that. And I'm like, "Fine."

Was this your birthday?

They brought them in after midnight.
So, yeah.

- Which birthday?
- 21st.

I had heard Graner saying,
"Well, this is your birthday present,"

or something, and I'm like...

I don't know why he would have said it

'cause I really wouldn't have wanted that,
but, yeah.

I mean, he used me.

And even though I was stupid enough
to fall for it.

I mean, now I'll know what to look for.

Least he's moved on past me.

This was the infamous
seven-man naked-Iraqi stacking.

The facial expressions
kind of set the tone

for what they were thinking
and feeling at the time.

You look in their eyes,
and it looked like they're having fun.

This scene is what sealed their fate.

Pretty much everybody that participated
is in the photograph at one time or another.

Here you see Graner in a punching motion.

Two cameras actually caught him
at the exact same time

from two totally different angles.

And again you see it where they had
the seven men stacked naked

with the hoods over their heads.

You actually see both of the cameras
inside each of the pictures.

It's not so much that you're there
committing these acts of abuse.

If you're in the pictures
while this stuff was going on,

- you were gonna be in trouble.
- Big trouble.

If you make our President apologise
to the world, I would say so, yeah.

"I haven't slept all night. I just can't sleep.
Six prisoners escaped last night.

"That's eight we've lost in three nights.
Something bad is going to happen here.

"I hope I'm wrong,
but if not, know I love you.

"We might be under investigation.
There's talk about it.

"Yes, they do beat the prisoners.
I don't think it's right and never have.

"That's why I take the pictures
to prove the story I tell people.

"No one would ever believe the shit
that goes on. No one.

"If I want to keep taking pictures
of these events,

"I have to fake a smile every time.

"I hope I do not get into trouble
for something that I haven't done.

"I love you. Sabrina."

I guess reality hit
that what was going on wasn't right,

which, of course,
you know from the beginning,

but then it's your job.
I mean, there's really nothing.

You can't just walk away and say,
"Hey, I'm not coming back,"

or "I'm not doing this."

'Cause either way,
you're gonna get screwed.

We had an Iraqi prison guard
smuggle in a pistol, a 9mm,

and a brand-new bayonet.

The prison guard wrapped it up in a sheet,

shimmied it up to a cell.

The detainee went underneath his pillow,
pulled out a 9mm,

hit Sarge Cathcart in the vest.

Sergeant Elliot
had to stick the shotgun inside

to get the guy to stop shooting.
And all he hit him in was his leg,

'cause he was in the corner praying, like,
"Allah, Allah." And he was willing to die.

All the Iraqi prison guards
that were involved,

they rounded them all up and fired some,
but the Iraqis hired them right back.

Not only did you have to risk your life
from the shelling on the outside,

you was risking your life

dealing with the unscreened
Iraqi corrections guards.

You know. And the detainees.

So strike one, two and three.
One of them is going to take you out.

Not all of them were bad,
but a vast majority were bad.

The guy who smuggled in the pistol,

I thought was a good guy.
I thought was a good guard.

He turned out to be Fedayeen.
Smile in your face, stab you in the back.

They rushed in right away
and took care of this guy

who had just tried to kill us. So...

But it doesn't appear when you see a picture
that that's what happened.

Your imagination can run wild
when you just see blood.

The pictures only show you
a fraction of a second.

You don't see forward
and you don't see backward.

You don't see outside the frame.

"This is the first time I've seen
military police dogs here.

"Two dogs with two owners
go to the man against the wall.

"The guy is scared out of his mind.
The dogs get closer.

"The Iraqi starts screaming
and runs straight to Graner.

"And one of the guys lets his dog
loose enough to bite him in the leg.

"The guy is hysterical.
The dog got another bite.

"Blood was everywhere.

"It was teeth marks
that looked something like this.

"One of our medics came,
and he taught me how to give stitches.

"It was kind of fun,
but I felt horrible for this guy.

"The dogs should've never been there."

One of the things
an interrogator does every time,

it's the last paragraph of all your reports,

is you evaluate the truthfulness
and reliability of the information

that was just given you.

That's the very last paragraph
of every report you ever write.

So if I get information through torture
I have no way to verify anything

because, well, I would just assume
that you're going to tell me

whatever the hell you want
so the pain stops.

But if I give you some carrots
and I give you some reasons

to cooperate with me,

usually you're going to get
more righteous information.

General Sanchez routinely subjected
Colonel Pappas

to this finger pointing,
poking a finger in his chest

and saying, "I want Saddam. Find Saddam!
Find Saddam! Do you understand me?

"Find Saddam!
Find Saddam at whatever the cost."

If you poke your finger
in somebody's chest long enough,

they'll do whatever they need to do
to get you to stop doing that.

It's a downward spiral.

"This isn't working. Try this.
This worked in Gitmo.

"This worked in Bagram.
Try this. It's okay."

It doesn't stop the mortars,
doesn't get the information they want,

and it doesn't find Saddam.

It wasn't any information they obtained
in any interrogation

or interview out at Abu Ghraib.

It was soldiers on the ground
who found Saddam.

You ready for this?
The farm that Saddam was hiding on,

a little tiny farm
right next to the Tigris River.

Saddam knocked on the door,

and he said, "I'm Saddam Hussein.
I'm the President of Iraq.

"I am the leader of Iraq
and all the people of Iraq are my people.

"All the homes in Iraq are my homes."

And he went to the kitchen
and he made hisself a single egg

and he ate the egg and he left.

And he came back about four hours later,
and he's like, "I'm staying here."

And the dude's wife, like, freaked.

Saddam was captured
on the 13th, Sunday morning.

And then on Monday,
I had to report to Colonel Pappas' office.

He asked if we wanted to volunteer
for a special projects team.

He'd just got off the phone
with Defence Secretary Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld and Sanchez had authorised
all approach techniques

on the high value detainees.

They said we had the opportunity
to break the insurgency right then,

'cause of the stuff
that was captured with Saddam.

And at that time I believed it.

You have to look at exactly
what the pictures depict.

It was important to separate those
that were criminal acts

and those things that were not criminal acts.

And that's what the prosecution
would have to focus on.

If somebody was physically injured,
you know you have a criminal act.

Putting somebody
into sexually humiliating positions,

you have a criminal act.

Making them abuse themselves sexually,
you have a criminal act.

Standing by and watching somebody hit
their head on the wall

and taking photographs at the time,

that's dereliction of duty,
so it's a criminal act.

The individual with the wires
tied to their hands and standing on a box,

I see that as somebody
that's being put into a stress position.

I'm looking at it, thinking,

"They don't look
like they're real electrical wires."

Standard operating procedure.
That's all it is.

Does this one actually constitute a crime
or is it standard operating procedure?

That's probably
standard operating procedure.

The panties on the head are an added touch,
but it's no more than sleep deprivation.

They weren't being tortured, per se.

They were going through discomfort
to try to aid in obtaining information.

I've been in the Army for 20 years.
You know, I've been to Desert Storm One.

I spent four months at Guantanamo Bay.

People that haven't been
where I've been,

I can't expect them to see the pictures
in the same way.

I came back from a meeting,
it was very late at night.

I opened my classified e-mail.

"Ma'am, just wanted to let you know
I'm going in to brief

"the CG on the progress
of the investigation at Abu Ghraib.

"This involves the allegations of abuse
and the photographs."

And I sent an e-mail back to him and I said,

"I don't know what to say.
First I've heard of it."

I was preparing in my mind
to hold a mini-press conference,

to tell the truth and to tell it early.

To say, "This is what we've uncovered.

"We're looking into it
because we discipline ourselves.

"We're Americans,
and we know right from wrong."

General Sanchez said, "No, absolutely not.
You're not to discuss this with anyone."

The fear of the truth,

silenced people.

Everybody knew.
Everybody that was inside of that prison,

that stayed there, lived there,
worked there, they had the pictures.

They would come over
and they would get copies from Graner.

And he had all these discs
so he would make copies.

"Well, here you go, here you go,
which ones do you want?"

Everybody had a copy of a picture.
Everybody knew.

When those photographs came out,
the infamous photographs,

the day after Colonel Pappas issued

a battalion-wide amnesty period.

Any type of evidence was destroyed.

Burn it, throw it away,
erase it off your hard drive

and be done with it.

He just wiped out
every last single defence witness,

every last single person

that would've been available
to come forward

and say, "Look, this is what I know,"
in one day.

You know, after the amnesty period,
who's gonna want to come forward?

Who's gonna want to say,
"Hey, I know something.

"I know what happened"? No one.

Find a way to make it go away
and that's what they did.

Sacrifice the little guys,
that's how they cover it up.

I'm a 28-year-old young American.
A volunteer soldier.

And I'm gonna get
everything blamed on me.

"Well, sweetie, you married a criminal.
Yep, the pictures are out

"and I'm under investigation
as of 10 a.m. this morning.

"So much for turning those pictures in
when I come home.

"I knew I'd be in trouble
just by being there.

"But how else would you let people know
the shit the Army does?

"You think I'd be scared,
but I'm not.

"I knew I'd go down with them.
Wrong place, wrong time.

"What sucks is almost
the entire company knows what happened,

"have seen the pictures
and have done nothing."

My husband is in prison right now.

I can't move on from this
until he comes home.

So, that's pretty difficult.

This huge political monster
cost Lynndie England three years,

Ivan Frederick eight years
and my husband ten years.

When I went through Desert Storm,
we were seen as the rescuers, the heroes.

Our mission was to reclaim Kuwait.
That was something that was honourable.

This war in Iraq, like Vietnam,

will probably get remembered
as the one time that we were not the heroes,

we were not the saviours.

And these photographs
will play a big part in that.

War is a stressful time for people.

They were getting shelled
on a frequent basis at that prison.

A young person with no experience in the world,

being thrown into something like that,
may get confused.

We all say that hindsight is 20-20.

And I'm sure they all look back
realising what happened was wrong,

and they played a part in something
that was very embarrassing for the country.

But at the time, they were in a war zone

where the rules get fuzzy sometimes.

Lynndie England,
I really feel sorry for that gal.

It's obvious she is one
of those young people

that doesn't have much experience in life.

There had been no indication

that she would have been involved
in anything like this.

But she was in love.

Ambuhl. She...

Well, she knew when the line was drawn
and when it was time for her to disappear.

Because she would be present
during some things

and then noticeably absent during others.

So she was probably
one of the smarter ones.

In the pictures that came out in the media,
all you seen was me.

You didn't see Megan

'cause that was the cropped picture.

Graner told me he just wanted her
out of the shot,

'cause it was interfering with,
I don't know, his picture.

Maybe it was to secretly protect her,

because now that I know
that they were closer

than what I thought at the time,
maybe he was trying to protect her.

When did he find out
that you were pregnant?

Well, when I found out on February 20th,

I come back and I told
the First Sergeant Commander.

And, of course,
they wanted to know who the father was.

So they knew, and then I told him.

At first he sounded excited

and then he was just like
he didn't want anything to do with me.

He didn't want anything to do with the baby.

Once the story broke,

and it came out that I was pregnant,
he denied that the baby was his.

He was accusing me of cheating on him,
which I never did.

So if that's how he wants to play it,
then that's fine with me.

He'll never see him.

It's his choice.

I was in the mess hall.
I look up

and I saw myself and Dan Rather
and I'm like, "What the hell?"

It's like, "Javal, Sergeant Javal Davis."

I'm like, "Whoa. Yo, that's me.

"Where the hell did they get
this picture from?"

They went to my high school.

They acquired a picture of me
from the newspaper

when I was running track,
going over a hurdle.

They cut my face out
and showed me like this.

But, in actuality,
I was jumping over a hurdle.

So they made me look like
this mean-ass guy.

They're showing naked people in a pyramid
and then they show a picture of me.

I'm like, "Hold on.
If you look at these pictures,

"do you see a black guy anywhere
in any of these pictures?"

There would be no me,
no no one else,

no shock-the-world, no scandal,
if there wasn't any photographs.

It'd went away, it'd went underneath a rock,
and that would have been the end of it.

Photographs are what they are.

You can interpret them differently,

but what the photograph depicts
is what it is.

You can put any kind of meaning to it

but you're seeing what happened
at that snapshot in time.

You could read emotion on their face
and feelings in their eyes,

but it's nothing
that can be entered into fact.

All you can do is report
what's in the picture.

Somebody caught our administration
with their pants down. That's it.

They're pissed off at that.

You can kill people off-camera.

You can shoot people.
You can, you know, blow their heads off.

As long as it's not on camera, you're okay.
But if it's on camera, you're done.

You know, torture didn't happen
in those photographs.

That was humiliation.
That was softening up.

Torture happened during interrogations.

Guys going through interrogation,
and they're dead,

and they were killed, and they died.

That's where the torture happened.
We don't have photographs of that.

I just thought it was a bunch
of schmuck MPs acting like idiots.

I don't think so any more, not at all.

I think you got a bunch of kids
getting shammed.

It's just cover-ups
and people are afraid of culpability

and ramifications of their actions,
so there's nobody saying crap.

Except they're throwing a lot of people
under the bus.

I received a phone call

from a Pentagon reporter who said,
"You were relieved from command."

So I said, "I haven't heard about it."

I didn't hear from General Helmly.
He didn't call me.

He didn't summon me to Washington D.C.
To be in front of his desk

so he could relieve me.

This is cowardice of a different kind.

You're afraid to look
Janis Karpinski in the eye?

I got a letter 10 days later from his office,

relieving me from command
of the 800th brigade.

My name was a good name in the military
until I did what I did.

My uncle died in Vietnam 13 years
to the day till I was born.

My dad has two bronze stars
for valour from Vietnam.

My grandfather's got a bronze star from Vietnam.

And then I come along
and get involved in that.

That just put that name in the mud.

You're taught from the very beginning
that you have to follow your orders.

And if you don't,
you're gonna get in trouble.

And if you do,
obviously you end up in trouble.

You know, it's easy for retired colonels
and generals, and majors,

or whatever to stand there and say,

"Well, these people
should have known illegal orders

"and they should've stood up
to these lieutenant-colonels and majors.

"And they should-a stood up to them
at the time in a war zone,

"where, you know, lives were at stake."

And it's just kind of unrealistic
to think that...

that that would happen.

You were getting shelled every day,
shot at every day.

Detainees, you know,
putting together shanks,

weapons, starting riots.

You know, this guy blew up, like,
10 of my buddies.

He needs to get his behind kicked.

I know what I can do and I know what I...
and I think I know what I can't do.

I think I know what I can't do,
but I see these guys doing this

and I see, you know,
the CIA guys coming and doing this.

You know, after a while it's like,
"You know what?

"It's free reign, just don't kill them."

I was not the same person there
that I am sitting in this chair,

or that I was before I got there.

I don't know what I could've done different.

I could've said,
"Screw you, I'm not working here"

and just gone to jail
for disobeying an order, I guess.

But, I don't know.

I'm sure everybody can do
something different put in...

I just don't know
what I would've done different,

put in the same situation.

If I could back all the way up,
I wouldn't have joined the military.

That's what I would have done different.

It's just not worth it.

You go through all that trouble to start back
where you were when you first went in.

Trying to get in school,
trying to get...

It just wasn't worth it.

I just want to go on with life.

You know, get a job,
raise my son.

I don't think I have a lot of choices.

Can't change anything, so...

And if I did,
then I wouldn't have Carter.

I mean, I wouldn't trade him
for the world, so...

I wouldn't want to go back
and change anything.

It's how the world turns, ain't it?

People backstabbing other people.

Unfairness. It's drama. It's life.
You live it. Now I just got to move on.

I don't know.
I swear to God, I don't know.

I'm so fricking confused
about the shit that happened there.

I go over it in my head every day,
and I dream about it every fricking night.

Dream about all kinds of things.
Most of them aren't good.

You know, before I thought
about breaking the fricking back

of the insurgency and how stupid we were,

and how we could've fixed this shit,
and how we could've saved fricking lives.

But, really, there's not a snowball's chance
in hell you could fix any of that.

If we leave, they're killing each other
and they're not killing us.

If we stay, they're killing each other
and they're killing us.

That's the end result
of this whole fucking debacle.

To the east side of Abu Ghraib
was a huge date palm forest.

Within five, ten minutes after sun up,

millions of fricking birds took off
out of the date palms

and just blacked out the sunrise
to the east where I'm looking.

And they'd fly northwest
and go over the top corner of the post.

And I'd try to get out of my booth

or take a break, a cigarette break,
around sunset,

because those birds came back every night
about 30 minutes, 15 minutes before sunset,

and landed back in the date palms.
So I started my day, every day,

at least watching those guys,
the birdies take off

and at least thinking
something in the world was still normal.

They could fly away from Abu G.

They came back every night,
but they could fly away every morning.

It helped deal with the weirdness.