‘Correct a black mark in US history’: former prisoners of Abu Ghraib get day in court

The widespread abuse at Abu Ghraib came to mainstream public attention on 28 April 2004, a year into the US invasion of Iraq, when CBS News first broadcast photos of US soldiers abusing detainees in their custody. The images depicted a hooded man standing on a box and hooked to electrical wires, and naked detainees piled on top of each other, dragged from a leash or forced to simulate sexual acts - while smiling soldiers posed in front of them with their thumbs up.

Detailed reports of the torture soon followed, and in 2004, an official investigation by US army Maj Gen Antonio Taguba concluded that “sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses” had been inflicted upon detainees.

Despite the global scandal caused by the photographs and subsequent media reports, accountability has been elusive, even as Abu Ghraib has come to epitomize the horrors of the US war on terror.

Only a handful of lower-rank soldiers faced military trials; no military or political leaders, or private contractors, were held legally accountable for what happened at Abu Ghraib or at any other facility where US detainees were tortured. Notably, the conduct at Abu Ghraib was condemned by the highest levels of the Bush administration, including the president and military leadership.

It has been an uphill battle to bring the case against CACI to trial. Since the lawsuit was filed in 2008, the company has tried to dismiss it more than 20 times, citing an array of technical arguments and primarily maintaining that because its employees were working for the US military, immunity and legal protections they argue should be afforded to the government should also apply to them. The company’s late former CEO, Jack London, went as far as writing an 800-page book - Our Good Name - in an effort to defend CACI’s reputation.

Admittedly I’m in a mood…but contrast twenty years to get a subcontractor to admit they did torture, with all of it documented, versus the short sharp utilitarian decision that civilian deaths are acceptable in drone strikes.

Until we summarily execute one, corporate people are more people than people.