Friday, May 14, 2004
From the NYT's story on a former Abu Ghraib prisoner's account of his ordeal:
Mr. Aboud's allegations of the methods of abuse largely squared with those in General Taguba's report. He also mentioned, again with no prompting, a central allegation of the report: his belief that the orders for torture came from superiors.
"I think this was carried out under orders," he said. He offered as evidence that the man named Steven appeared to be the one directing the soldiers and that several higher-up officers regularly visited the cellblock — at times, he claimed, during actual mistreatment.
He said he asked one of the interrogators, " `Why do you torture us?' " and that the man replied, " `It's not in our control.' "
He also said that the soldiers themselves, as a group, seemed conflicted about what they were doing.
