Abu Ghraib Guards Say Memos Prove Them To Be Scapegoats

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Karpinski on Abu Ghraib: We were following orders

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Initially, in 2004, when photos of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib in Iraq surfaced, the Bush administration declared the actions shown in the photos to be the work of a few "bad apples" .

Since the release of the torture memos, which detail the Bush administration's Department of Justice (DOJ) correspondence with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), describing many of the actions shown in the photos from Abu Ghraib, those soldiers previously convicted on charges arising from the incidents at Abu Ghraib are seeking to use the information contained in the torture memos to aid in their appeals process.

U.S. military court had blocked those charged from calling senior U.S. officials to testify nor would the government acknowledge procedures or policies related to the commission of the acts in the photos during the prosecution of the soldiers who had worked at Abu Ghraib.

An excerpt from the article :

When the photos of detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq surfaced in 2004, U.S. officials portrayed Army Private Charles A. Graner Jr. as the ringleader of a few low-ranking "bad apples" who illegally put naked Iraqi detainees in painful positions, shackled them to cell doors with women's underwear on their heads and menaced them with military dogs.

Now, the recent release of Justice Department memos authorizing the use of harsh interrogation techniques has given Graner and other soldiers new reason to argue that they were made scapegoats for policies approved at high levels. They also contend that the government's refusal to acknowledge those polices when Graner and others were tried undermined their legal defenses.

Graner remains locked up at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., about halfway through a 10-year prison sentence for detainee abuse, assault and dereliction of duty. His lawyer said this week that he is drafting appeals arguments centered largely on the revelations in the memos and a newly released congressional investigation into the interrogation practices.

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