When I first learned of the Abu Graib prisoner abuse scandal and after I had registered the implications of it (I did not believe for a moment that a small handful of guards could get away with abuse of prisoners in isolation without either complicity or willful negligence on the part of their superiors or fellow guards), I was struck by the emergence of a familiar name: Gen. Janet Karpinsky, the commandant/warden of Abu Graib. I hasten to add that General Karpinsky has not been implicated directly in the prison abuse, but apparently because the abuse occurred on her watch, she was quickly forced out of her position. It was also significant�and possibly a reason, if not the real reason, for her reassignment�that she readily told the media that she had been aware for some time that non-military personnel�read CIA�were interrogating prisoners and directing her guards in the treatment of prisoners, and when Karpinsky had tried to find out what they were up to in her prison, she essentially was told that it was none of her business.

The reason that General Karpinsky�s name rang a bell was that several months before the Abu Graib scandal reached the public, CBS�s �60 Minutes� had paid a visit to Abu Graib and interviewed Karpinsky. Now, when �60 Minutes� knocks on your door, you should always expect to be ambushed. Indeed, the term �ambush� with its implicit element of surprise ought to be rendered meaningless after more than three decades of these CBS �ambushes�: how can anyone still be surprised? Nevertheless, reporter Ed Bradley blindsided Karpinsky, but good. He first asked her to explain how much more humane Abu Graib was under the U.S. military than it had been under Sadam Hussein�s regime. He questioned her particularly�since he evidently had no idea that torture was actually still being used in the prison�with respect to the formal rights of prisoners: were they allowed to see an attorney or at least a family member, and were they released within a fixed time if no evidence could be found against them? Karpinsky answered yes to all such questions, implying that, even if the prisoners of Abu Graib did not quite have the same rights as American citizens, there were at least some protections against arbitrary isolation and lengthy detention.

Having established that the prison claimed to uphold some degree of humane standards, Bradley then asked Karpinsky to look up the file of a particular prisoner whom he named. The general got on her computer and pulled up the prisoner�s records. One by one, the reporter demolished Karpinsky�s previous claims about fair treatment. Of course, Bradley knew ahead of time that this prisoner had been held longer than he was supposed to be even though no charges had been developed against him, that he had not been allowed to see his lawyer or his son even though they had asked permission to visit him, that he had been held in isolation from the outside world and at the mercy of people like Lynndie England, even though he was, as �60 Minutes� had also discovered, an opponent of Sadam Hussein who had been persecuted by the very regime that the U.S. had just overthrown. Indeed, although �60 Minutes� was unable to find out exactly who had turned the man in to the Americans, Bradley strongly suspected the smug police chief of the prisoner�s hometown�who had also been chief under Sadam Hussein and was a known member of Sadam�s Bathist Party. Bradley interviewed him, too, but all he got were evasions. Evidently, our intelligence people were in the dark as to whether their informants might belong behind bars more than the people they turn in.

The picture that emerges is a simple one: The U.S. military was given the mission of toppling the Hussein regime but, in the aftermath of conquest, our forces had neither the manpower nor the information required to tell the bad guys from the good guys. Consequently, when accusations were made that someone warranted locking up, our people erred on the side of caution and locked up the innocent along with (or, indeed, instead of) the guilty. The number of innocent people confined in Abu Graib is proportional to our forces� lack of resources and intelligence. That is, the necessity to err on the side of false arrests was created by the inability of our under-manned forces to police such a large, volatile, and almost completely unfamiliar society. (Vice-president Richard Cheney has neatly sidestepped the criticism that we needed more people than we sent at the outset of the occupation by pretending that the question is whether we should be sending more people now. Two different questions.)

In retrospect, the �60 Minutes� interview sheds light on the heinousness of the abuse in the prison and belies the easy assumptions of apologists for the abuse. I have heard people excuse the Abu Graib abuse on the grounds that the affected prisoners were �just a bunch of terrorists anyway.� As you now know, however, we cannot be sure of that. The criteria for the arrest and imprisonment of the abused prisoners was quick and dirty rather than judicious. We have no idea how many of those persecuted by our people had previously been abused by Sadam, too.

Some of the Iraqi people might be forgiven for a subjective impression that the more things have changed, the more they have remained the same, even if, in view of some progress in handing over control of Iraq to Iraqis, there just might be some hope that Iraq will come out of this occupation a better place to live. (I am not taking bets, however.) The extreme mishandling of the occupation�of which Abu Graib is the ominous tip of the proverbial iceberg�makes a positive outcome less likely and�if it comes about at all�due to great luck rather than competent design.