What happened at Abu Ghraib?

I've talked about the soldier named Grainer in a previous post, and about how he began to express remorse at the abuse of power and the ethical questions he had regarding the actions taken against the detainees. This instance of humanity was only short lived. He became drunk on power as he was given more and more, and eventually became the most enthused torturer at Abu Ghraib.

His methods of torture were nothing short of disgusting. Detainees were stripped naked with women's underwear or their own forced onto their heads while their feet and hands were handcuffed to random bars of steel throughout the hard sites. Photographs were taken of M.P.s posing next the the nude and tortured prisoners, providing evidence for a scandal that was soon to come.

The prison riot of 2003 only made matters worse. Now the M.P.s were angered and upset about being attacked by their detainees. Not wanting to be seen as weak, the torture increased significantly. Now, bodily harm was being done in addition to humiliating tactics. Some prisoners were accused of raping another inmate, resulting in Grainer forcing them to crawl on the floor to ensure that their genitals would be scraped on the concrete. Soldiers began throwing NERF footballs at them, bruising their bodies. There is photographic evidence of soldiers stacking prisoners into a pyramid, naked, ensuring that their genitals and buttocks were touching each other in a humiliating fashion. Some soldiers posed smiling in these pictures, showing pride in the disregard of humanity they were taking part in. Prisoners were dying from the torture and interrogation methods, but many went undocumented. One prisoner death in particular was proven to be a homicide, but nothing came of it. Instead, soldiers in the photographs were punished for establishing evidence that the detainees were being tortured to death.

The most controversial component of this entire affair is the fact that there was minimal sufficient intelligence to condemn the majority of the hard site detainees. Most of the prisoners had no hard evidence keeping them in Abu Ghraib, but instead were being held on speculation and paranoia. Innocent Iraqis were being tortured to the point of trauma and death...for no official reason whatsoever.