Tonight on PBS Frontline: how we became a nation of torturers

The Slow Rise of Abuse That Shocked the Nation -- by Alessandra Stanley

The images on "Frontline" that speak most eloquently to the sadism that took hold inside the prison at Abu Ghraib are not the snapshots of naked Iraqi prisoners stacked in human pyramids or cowering before German shepherds - photographs that shocked and baffled the world. What "Frontline" also shows are videos shot by American soldiers inside their barracks at Abu Ghraib in November 2003 - homemade movies of young soldiers dancing to hip-hop music that escalates into group attacks on a dummy of a prisoner, a primitive "Lord of the Flies" ritual of punching and stabbing that, if it took place in a bar, might prompt witnesses to call the police. In Afghanistan and, later, Iraq, these soldiers were the police.

American soldiers operated without clear guidelines but under adult supervision. "The Torture Question" methodically makes the case that pressure to wring more information out of prisoners came from the highest echelons of the White House and the Pentagon, well before the 2003 invasion of Iraq with captives from Afghanistan held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and worked its way down to the lowliest, most ill-trained soldiers.

Over a still photograph of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld writing at his standing desk in his office, the documentary shows a 2002 Defense Department document outlining harsher interrogation techniques to be used at Guantánamo Bay, including dogs and keeping prisoners standing in "stress positions" for four hours at a time. That memo was personally annotated by Mr. Rumsfeld, who scrawled a postscript at the bottom: "I stand 8 to 10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?"

Now may not be the most opportune moment to focus on the abuse of prisoners from the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts. Cable news and broadcast networks are fixated on different kinds of issues, from the possibility of top White House aides being indicted to the judicial qualifications of Harriet E. Miers, President Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court. News from Iraq is centered around the recent referendum on a constitution as well as car bombs and American attacks on insurgent forces.

But sadly, the question of torture seems to be timeless. In August, Gen. Richard B. Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was still arguing that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was not a "widespread problem." This month, Army Capt. Ian Fishback and others recalled other incidents of torture in Iraq, by soldiers of the First Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry, of the 82nd Airborne Division at Camp Mercury, near Falluja.

Much of the information in the "Frontline" piece was reported earlier in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Yorker, as well as other publications. The infamous photographs of guards torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib were first shown by CBS News. But PBS provides a thoughtful, unflinching look at a situation so horrible it drives most people to avert their eyes.

"The Torture Question" puts prisoner abuse in a broader context of fear and rage, both in Washington and on the ground in Iraq.

The documentary winds the clock back to the shock of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Government lawyers are interviewed at some length. John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer who helped Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who was then White House counsel, formulate new rules of engagement, explains how he and others sought to adapt the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners to "a much different kind of enemy, a nonstate actor that doesn't wear uniforms, doesn't operate in normal units, blends into civilian populations and conducts surprise attacks against civilians."

A PBS crew accompanies military convoys from Baghdad to Abu Ghraib, 15 miles west of the capital, and captures the anxiety of that perilous trip, as well as the siege mentality there: the prison guards are themselves prisoners of the fear of attacks by insurgents, car bombers and snipers.

But the film also explores the bitter infighting between the C.I.A. and F.B.I. over interrogation techniques first developed at Guantánamo Bay and later exported to Iraq. It also looks high up the chain of command, to Mr. Rumsfeld and Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who was commander of American forces in Iraq at the time the prisoner abuse scandal broke.

Janis Karpinski, the former commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, is among the officials interviewed on camera, and she describes vividly the pressure put on her bosses to get results. It is a little startling to see her on camera. She was the only general punished for participation in the prisoner-abuse scandal, demoted from brigadier general to colonel, and one of the charges against her was shoplifting. (The documentary does not address that charge, or reports that the Pentagon is considering a promotion for General Sanchez.)

As the war continues, so do the other, less detectable, acts of brutality.

"Around Iraq, in the back of a Humvee or in a shipping container, there's no camera," says an active-duty Army interrogator whose identity is hidden in the documentary. "And there's no one looking over your shoulder, so you can do anything you want."