The Scandal's Growing Stain
Abuses by U.S. soldiers in Iraq shock the world and roil the Bush Administration. The inside story of what went wrong

Haider Sabbar Abed al-Abbadi kept his shame to himself until the world saw him stripped naked, his head in a hood. "That is me," he claims to a TIME reporter, as one of the lurid photographs of detained Iraqis suffering humiliation at the hands of U.S. soldiers scrolls down a computer screen. On that awful November night, four months after his arrest, he and six other prisoners were herded into Cellblock 1A. The guards cut off their clothes, and then the degrading demands began. He says he is the hooded man in the picture in which a petite, dark-haired woman in camouflage pants and an Army T shirt gives a thumbs-up as she points to a prisoner.

Those scenes, caught in shocking candor by someone's digital camera, played over and over in the world's newspapers and magazines and across the airwaves. Of all places, these atrocities occurred at Abu Ghraib prison, once the infamous home of Saddam Hussein's torture chambers.

As public doubts about the war grow, the images of sadism symbolized all that is going wrong with the U.S. venture in Iraq. The photos touched off a global outcry, especially in the Arab world, where they provoked fresh fury among millions of Muslims opposed to George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and provided grist for every conspiracy theorist who claims the U.S. is bent on debasing Islam and humiliating Arabs. "We're going to live with the consequences of this for the next 40 years," says a senior White House official, and few would accuse him of exaggeration. Most immediately, the scandal has imperiled the U.S. effort to pacify Iraq by turning even more ordinary Iraqis against the occupation and reinforcing the sense that control is slipping everywhere.

The President, who says he first learned of the existence of the photographs when they were aired two weeks ago on CBS's 60 Minutes II, went on Arab television to proclaim the abusive treatment "abhorrent" behavior that "does not represent the America that I know." His words weren't enough to dent the outrage of Muslims who wondered why he failed to apologize. A day later Bush finally said he was sorry, but America's image in much of the Arab world may well be irredeemable. U.S. officials tried to portray the sordid scenes as the isolated acts of a few low-ranking soldiers who were violating U.S. policy.

But the horror stories keep coming. An Army investigation of conditions at Abu Ghraib concluded that prison guards had carried out "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton abuse" for months. The Army is investigating reports of crimes committed at other detention facilities in Iraq. In recent testimony before the Senate, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the Pentagon has obtained more photos and video footage that show U.S. troops engaged in even worse behavior. "We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience," Senator Lindsey Graham said. "We're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges." The seven reservists involved in the photographed abuses have been charged with conspiracy, maltreatment and indecent acts; six soldiers up the chain of command have been severely reprimanded and one was admonished. But many are looking for accountability higher up.

A House of Horrors
Reports of scandalous U.S. behavior inside Abu Ghraib have circulated in Iraq since the day it reopened in August 2003. Officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross (icrc) brought serious allegations of abuse—which they are bound to keep confidential—to U.S. attention beginning in October. In February, after more prisoner interviews, Red Cross officials sent a comprehensive report directly to the staffs of Lieut. General Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and L. Paul Bremer, head of the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority.

Aides to Bremer and Secretary of State Colin Powell say that as early as last fall, both men raised the issue in meetings with the rest of the Administration's national-security team. Yet no action was taken until mid-January, when Specialist Joseph Darby, a member of the 372nd Military Police Company, got hold of some of the incriminating photographs. He slipped an anonymous note under the door of a superior officer, reporting the misbehavior, and then turned over the photos proving it.

Beginning the next day, the Army launched a discrete investigation. Sanchez immediately admonished Janis Karpinski, the overall prison commander, for "serious deficiencies" and quietly suspended her from command. In January Sanchez ordered a full-scale probe of prison practices under the charge of Major General Antonio Taguba, who completed his "Secret/No Foreign Dissemination" report in early March. The report, first obtained by the New Yorker and now on the Internet, blames MP commanders for poor leadership and a refusal to enforce basic standards. But it points to plenty of other failings as well. Overcrowded cells held too many prisoners guarded by unsupervised reservists with inadequate training.

What Did They Know?
The firestorm of outrage provoked by the Abu Ghraib pictures seemed to catch U.S. officials by surprise. Army General John Abizaid, chief of the U.S. Central Command that oversees Iraq, told TIME that after learning of the abuses in January, he sent word of it to General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Though military investigators had been aware for months that graphic photos existed, Pentagon officials showed no particular urgency in finding out how bad they were or informing anyone else about them.

A senior White House aide says that in February, Rumsfeld advised Bush of an "issue" involving mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq. But he did not warn anyone that cbs was about to document the abuse with shocking photos.

Once all the apologies were spoken, a battered Administration was searching for more tangible ways to repair the damage. Major General Miller has been hustled back to Baghdad to fix the prison system. Abizaid tells TIME that he thinks the outrage will fade as the U.S. demonstrates its willingness to take action against the perpetrators. "Our openness about it," he says, "is a lesson about the rule of law." As the President told Arab interviewers, "A dictator wouldn't be answering questions about this."

Nevertheless, the scandal has made it exceedingly difficult for the U.S. to build support for its faltering project in Iraq by pointing to good intentions. For many Iraqis, no amount of U.S. generosity or contrition will ever erase the taste of humiliation conveyed by the photographs. Abu Ghraib was Saddam's torture chamber, and now it's ours.

—from TIME, May 17, 2004

Questions

1. Why and to what extent have the Abu Ghraib prisoner photos damaged the U.S. effort in Iraq?

2. How has the U.S. tried to repair the damage?