I had been told by Iraqis in the Middle East that I talked to about Abu Ghraib six months earlier that the prison was so bad that the women in the prisons were sending messages home to their brothers and fathers to please come kill them, because they had been defiled in prison by the Americans. I mean, I knew that, but how do you get to that story? You know -- you know, it's just impossible to get to that story. The photographs made it work.
So, I'm doing this stuff. I get a call in the middle of these stories, and does everybody know? Of course, everybody knows what's going on. Are you kidding? The timeline, the chronology, I told you, what does president not do? He doesn't do anything. He doesn't take any steps at
all, confronted with Abu Ghraib, not one step to change anything. They just hope they can get away with a couple of low-level court-martials as they did with Calley. They did, but they could have. Anyway, it was a rational chance, rational gamble.
Hersh on Vietnam and Abu Ghraib and much more...
...She just was going to clean it up and take it to her office as a second computer. No thoughts. And she is deleting files. She sees a file marked “Iraq.” And she hits it, and out comes 60 or 80 digital photographs of the one that The New Yorker ran of the naked guy standing against a cell in terror, hands behind his back so he can’t protect his private parts, which is the instinct. And two snarling German dogs -- shepherds....
