Two soldiers and an officer with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division have told a human rights organization of systemic detainee abuse and human rights violations at U.S. bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, recounting beatings, forced physical exertion and psychological torture of prisoners, the group said.
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And like soldiers accused at Abu Ghraib, these troops said that military intelligence interrogators encouraged their actions, telling them to make sure the detainees did not sleep or were physically exhausted so as to get them to talk.
"They were directed to get intel from them so we had to set the conditions by banging on their cages, crashing them into the cages, kicking them, kicking dirt, yelling," the soldier was quoted as saying. Later he described how he and others beat the detainees. "But you gotta understand, this was the norm. Everyone would just sweep it under the rug."
So, how many men, in how many locations, under how many commands, does it take for a few bad apples to become systemic?
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