Standard Operating Procedure

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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

sh*t you have to do.

I wouldn't recommend a

vacation to Iraq anytime soon.

JANIS KARPINSKI:

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 Defense 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-ize"

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

center of Iraq.

SABRINA HARMAN:

"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.

"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, feces, 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,

(IMITATES MISSILE SOUND)

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.

Boom! Ting-ting-ting.

Land on the floor.

Soldiers in there are like, "Holy crap."

(EXPLOSION)

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 1A1B,

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 out

of 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.

HARMAN:
"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 sh*t 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.

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