Investigation into the alleged abuse of prisoners of war by members of the 800th Military Police Brigade at Abu Ghraib Prison, Camp Bucca, and other correctional facilities in Iraq.

Investigation into the alleged abuse of prisoners of war by members of the 800th Military Police Brigade at Abu Ghraib Prison, Baghdad, Iraq.

"US Army 15-6 Report of Abuse of Prisoners in Iraq" is a report of an investigation of the eight hundredth military police brigade. This investigation is a result of a request from the Lieutenant General on January 19, 2004, to have a grasp of the conduct of operations within the eight hundredth Military Police brigade. It contains the findings, observations, and recommendations regarding the subject.

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.

The 2004 revelations of detainee maltreatment at the Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad, Iraq have led to an exhaustive overhaul of Army doctrine and training with respect to this topic. The Army has identified disconnects in its individual, leader, and collective training programs, and has also identified the absence of a deliberate, focused doctrinal crosswalk between the two principal branches concerned with detainees, Military Intelligence (MI) and Military Police (MP). These problems and their consequences are real and immediate. The perceptions of just treatment held by citizens of our nation and, to a great extent the world at large, have been and are being shaped by the actions of the US Army, both in the commission of detainee maltreatment but also, and more importantly, in the way the Army addresses its institutional shortcomings. This study examines the relationship over time between doctrine in two branches of the Army Military Police (MP) and Military Intelligence (MI) and the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (GPW). Specifically, it analyzes the MP detention field manual series and the MI interrogation field manual series to evaluate their GPW content. It also further examines the relationship of military police and military intelligence to each other in the enemy prisoner-of-war (EPW) and detainee operations environment, as expressed in their doctrinal manuals. Finally, the study looks at the Army's experience in detainee operations through the prism of six conflicts or contingency operations: the Korean War, Vietnam, Operation URGENT FURY (Grenada, 1983), Operation JUST CAUSE (Panama, 1989), Operation DESERT STORM (Iraq, 1991), and Operation UPHOLD DEMOCRACY (Haiti, 1994).

Many Americans have condemned the “enhanced interrogation” techniques used in the War on Terror as a transgression of human rights. But the United States has done almost nothing to prosecute past abuses or prevent future violations. Tracing this knotty contradiction from the 1950s to the present, historian Alfred W. McCoy probes the political and cultural dynamics that have made impunity for torture a bipartisan policy of the U.S. government. During the Cold War, McCoy argues, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency covertly funded psychological experiments designed to weaken a subject’s resistance to interrogation. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the CIA revived these harsh methods, while U.S. media was flooded with seductive images that normalized torture for many Americans. Ten years later, the U.S. had failed to punish the perpetrators or the powerful who commanded them, and continued to exploit intelligence extracted under torture by surrogates from Somalia to Afghanistan. Although Washington has publicly distanced itself from torture, disturbing images from the prisons at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are seared into human memory, doing lasting damage to America’s moral authority as a world leader.