Abu Ghraib and Beyond

The Bush administration says the U.S. atrocities at Saddam's old jail were the work of a few. But prisoner abuse is more widespread, and lots of people are passing the buck. A NEWSWEEK investigation

Jan Grarup / Rapho for Newsweek
By John Barry, Mark Hosenball and Babak Dehghanpisheh
Newsweek

May 17 issue - Abu Ghraib Prison sits in the middle of one of Iraq's nastiest patches. Ever since "major combat" ended a year ago, snipers hidden in the palm groves that surround the vast prison compound have routinely fired on U.S. patrols. The guardrails on the highway in front of the prison are mangled for miles from the large number of IEDs (improvised explosive devices). Helicopters constantly buzz around. At night, soldiers in the guard towers get drawn into raging gun battles. And mortars rain on the prison like a lethal hailstorm. "I can't even count how many mortar attacks we've had," S/Sgt. Joseph Lane, an operating-room technician in the prison hospital, told NEWSWEEK last week. "Sometimes there are two or three in a day." And all this while military police must process thousands of Iraqis each month, never knowing who among them is a "bad guy" trying to kill them.

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