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all states. Hi

0:23

everyone, I'm Nicole Hammer, and

0:25

this is This Day, a history

0:27

show from Radio Topia. As

0:29

regular listeners know, each week during

0:31

the first year of the second

0:33

Trump administration, we are offering

0:35

some Sunday context. Today,

0:38

we are revisiting our episode on

0:40

Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi prison where

0:42

U .S. soldiers tortured prisoners in

0:44

the early months of the Iraq

0:46

invasion. I've been thinking about

0:48

Abu Ghraib a lot lately, particularly

0:51

after the release of the dehumanizing photos

0:53

coming out of El Salvador. The

0:55

Trump administration has cut a deal with

0:57

the Salvadoran government to hold deported

0:59

and renditioned residents of the U .S.

1:01

in a place called Secot. Secot

1:04

is a notorious prison, rife with

1:06

human rights violations. The

1:08

Salvadoran government intends everyone who

1:11

enters to be detained for life.

1:13

Kristi Noem, the new Homeland Security

1:15

Secretary, visited Seacot to film what

1:17

can only be described as an

1:20

influencer video, with dozens of detained

1:22

men crowded in a cell behind

1:24

her. Since then, at

1:26

least seven Republican members of Congress have

1:28

traveled to Seacot for photo shoots of

1:30

their own. They're giving thumbs

1:32

up and they have these big,

1:34

wide smiles. The photos are

1:37

eerily similar to those of Lindy England, the

1:39

Army Reserve soldier who posed for grinning

1:41

photos with the Abu Ghraib detainees in

1:43

the midst of their abuse and torture.

1:46

These are some of the most

1:48

violently offensive photos I have

1:50

ever seen. When I teach

1:53

9 -11 and it's aftermath to my students, I

1:55

don't even show these photos, though

1:57

I let my students know they exist. I

2:00

don't share the CCOT photos online either. These

2:03

men are being put on display as

2:05

part of their dehumanization. To

2:07

spread their photos across the

2:09

internet feels like participating, however

2:11

passively, in that crime. And

2:14

yet, the photographs, like the

2:16

ones from Abu Ghraib, exist. And it's

2:18

actually really important that people know

2:20

that they do. For people

2:22

still able to access their

2:24

humanity, these images shock the

2:26

conscience. And hopefully they'll mobilize

2:28

Americans to resist these acts that

2:30

our government is not only funding, but

2:33

celebrating. In contravention

2:35

of US law, human rights

2:38

law, and our shared

2:40

humanity. With that, let's

2:42

revisit Abu Ghraib, which would eventually

2:44

come to define the corruption

2:46

and immorality that fueled the invasion

2:48

of Iraq and the war

2:50

on terror. Hello

2:54

and welcome to this day in

2:56

esoteric political history from Radiotopia. My

2:59

name is Jody Avergan. This

3:02

day, April 28, 2004, a

3:04

CBS 60 Minutes 2 story

3:06

aired here in the United

3:08

States, reporting on the abuse

3:10

of prisoners at the Abu

3:12

Ghraib prison in Iraq. I

3:15

think most people listening have some

3:17

sense of what was taking place

3:19

at Abu Ghraib, particularly since this

3:22

report included those searing images of

3:24

prisoners being tortured and humiliated, photos

3:26

of American soldiers smiling alongside hooded

3:28

Iraqi prisoners, The 60 -minute

3:30

report caused a sensation in the

3:32

United States, a cascade of further

3:34

reports about what was taking place

3:36

inside the prison. The same day

3:38

that the report aired, Defense Secretary

3:40

Donald H. Rumsfeld briefed Congress on

3:43

an internal government report about the

3:45

abuse. Over the coming

3:47

months, Amnesty International would issue a

3:49

report of their own criticizing

3:51

the quote, cruel, inhumane, or degrading

3:53

acts at the prison. Further

3:55

reporting would make it clear that

3:57

Americans were involved in human rights violations

3:59

and that American leadership knew about

4:01

what was taking place inside that prison.

4:04

So let's talk about this key moment

4:06

in the Iraq war. And honestly, I

4:08

have some bigger things to say about

4:10

this moment and how it relates, I

4:12

don't know, to American empire and American

4:14

standing and morality in the world, but

4:16

we'll For now, let's welcome, as always,

4:18

Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter

4:20

Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello, Jody. Hey

4:23

there. Tough topic,

4:25

really tough moment.

4:28

I think we all remember it. I

4:30

want to start with Timeline, because

4:32

one of the striking things to

4:34

me looking back at this story,

4:36

I don't know if you have

4:39

the same sort of... but

4:41

is, you know, this is April

4:43

2004. The invasion of Iraq was

4:45

May 2003. I mean, I

4:47

don't know, to put it crudely,

4:49

like we got to torturing really fast,

4:51

you know? I mean, it's just,

4:53

I was stunned by this. Not that like

4:55

it would excuse it if it was five years

4:57

into a grinding war or whatever, but gosh,

5:00

I didn't, I don't think I really understood how

5:02

quickly this kind of dark stuff was happening. Basically

5:04

immediately. I think it

5:07

underscores the, centrality

5:09

of that terrorism framework or mindset

5:11

to the approach that was taken

5:13

for this war, that the people

5:15

that end up being in Abu

5:17

Ghraib must be people who in

5:19

some way are responsible for the

5:21

attacks on September 11th or the

5:23

death of American soldiers and therefore

5:25

need to be treated in that

5:27

kind of, you know, the television

5:29

show 24 in that 24 style

5:31

way. And cultural products

5:33

like 24 are feeding into this idea

5:35

that this is the way that you

5:37

treat quote unquote dangerous people.

5:40

To me, I think what's most telling

5:42

is the fact that so Abu

5:45

Ghraib was a prison before the United

5:47

States gets there and it was

5:49

notorious prison in which Saddam Hussein was

5:51

known for torturing Iraqi citizens and

5:53

it was a place that no one

5:55

wanted to go. And when

5:57

the United States gets there,

5:59

they essentially take the prison and

6:02

they refurbish it. they make

6:04

it their own military prison to

6:06

house anyone that they sort

6:08

of suspect or know of doing

6:10

you know terrorist acts but

6:12

it very quickly as you said

6:14

like the the holding of

6:16

these prisoners becomes abusive it becomes

6:19

barbaric it becomes sadistic and

6:21

I don't know how I don't

6:23

know how you could one

6:25

participate in these acts but to

6:27

the fact that it became

6:29

also performative that people were taking

6:31

pictures next to bodies and

6:33

people were smiling taking pictures next

6:36

to those bodies that this

6:38

was not just an act of

6:40

aggression but it was also

6:42

an act that was fraught with

6:44

pleasure that just did not

6:46

sit right either. I'm curious

6:48

Kelly I mean does it remind

6:50

you of those lynching photos from the

6:52

late 19th and early 20th century? Absolutely.

6:56

I mean, when you think about

6:58

the mob mentality and when you

7:00

have a person that is being

7:02

harmed or violated or murdered and

7:04

people are taking pictures to send

7:06

back home, using them as postcards,

7:09

using them as tallies, counting up how

7:11

many, you know, their body counts

7:13

that they have. I mean, it is

7:15

atrocious and yet somehow within that

7:18

space, it is sanctioned. It is, it

7:20

is deemed appropriate behavior. And sanctioned

7:22

in more than just that space, right?

7:24

I mean, this is an era

7:26

in which you have the torture memos

7:28

being drafted where you have a

7:31

sort of sanctioned for extensive use of

7:33

torture and other abuses of power,

7:35

but also CIA black sites across

7:37

Europe and the Middle East. So this

7:39

wasn't just kind of spontaneous torture.

7:41

It was institutionalized in a lot

7:43

of ways. Yeah, absolutely. And not only

7:45

just institutionalized and sanctioned, but, you

7:48

know, I would say planned and kind

7:50

of... intended, right? I mean, that's

7:52

the thing that I think catches

7:54

me about the timeline here and just

7:56

an understanding the more and more

7:58

we sort of think about the Iraq

8:00

war was that the torture memos

8:03

were written in 2002, right, before the

8:05

war. Dick Cheney was thinking about

8:07

how to bend the rules of war

8:09

crimes and torture before the war,

8:11

not as a response to the war

8:13

going badly. And so, you know,

8:16

going into the war, it was already

8:18

expected that the U .S. would engage

8:20

in and have to engage in

8:22

behavior like this. Again, not to say

8:24

that, like, had it been done

8:26

in sort of reaction to the

8:28

war going badly, it would have been

8:31

any less horrific. But I do

8:33

think this is kind of the US

8:35

doing what it intended to do,

8:37

I think, is one of the big

8:39

things that you realize in this

8:41

story. I want to get

8:43

back to the TikTok of how these images came out and

8:46

the impact they had. But I do think, Nick,

8:48

I'm so glad you asked about the

8:50

photos in particular because a

8:52

big part of this story was

8:54

obviously the impact of photos

8:56

and it's a reminder how much

8:58

kind of like visual evidence

9:00

makes a story break through. But

9:03

then also these individual US soldiers

9:05

who were put in, you know, who

9:07

were prison guards, they became

9:09

household names. They were the ones who were

9:11

kind of often the controversy was about. you

9:13

know this woman who is smiling or giving

9:15

a thumbs up or whatever and Kelly you

9:17

know how do you think about if we

9:19

want to talk about some of those lynching

9:21

photos or whatever how do you think about

9:23

the individuals who are in those photos who

9:25

are often smiling or part of a spectacle

9:28

versus the larger context of you know how

9:30

they ended up there I mean you know

9:32

should we feel like these are awful individuals

9:34

and look at how they're behaving yes and

9:36

I think that these are also state sanctioned.

9:38

I mean, when you look at the lynchings

9:40

that took place, it wasn't just a community

9:42

that went awry. The policing forces

9:44

did nothing to stop this kind

9:46

of heinous act. And oftentimes elected officials

9:48

and cops are there and ministers

9:50

are there. People in the community that

9:52

are highly respected are there at

9:55

the lynching too. So what do you

9:57

do when all the way from

9:59

the top down, the people who are

10:01

supposed to be sort of enforcing

10:03

this either are complicit in it or

10:05

sort of wash their hands of

10:07

it and say, okay, I'm not going

10:09

to take part. I'm not going

10:11

to watch, but they're still in some

10:13

ways approving this behavior. And I

10:15

feel like that's what happened at Abigail

10:18

as well. I'm sure there were

10:20

people there who did not endorse it,

10:22

who did not want to be

10:24

a part of it, but the culture,

10:26

I think, and the command and

10:28

the leadership supported directly or indirectly that

10:30

kind of behavior, or at least

10:32

did not shut it down the moment

10:34

that they saw it. Yeah,

10:37

it's interesting, right, that people

10:39

like... England became household names in

10:41

this period because yes, they

10:43

were the people in the images

10:45

that we saw. It was

10:47

so easy to individualize it once we

10:49

made them household names, right? Like once

10:51

we had like two or three people

10:53

who we could attach these crimes to,

10:55

then all a sudden it was about

10:57

them and it was a lot less

10:59

about... Vice President Dick Cheney, who, you

11:01

know, obviously had a big hand in

11:03

this as well. And so if you

11:05

can find those, they're not scapegoats because

11:07

they were actually doing the torture, but

11:09

they were sacrificed so that the people

11:11

up the chain could. They became the

11:13

face, they became the literal poster or

11:15

the face of the person who is

11:17

the number one, you know, abuser or

11:19

the number one person who's at fault.

11:22

But this was a massive failure

11:24

at all. levels. And I think

11:26

that's what's so astonishing, not just

11:28

that it happened, but for how

11:30

long it happened, the fact that,

11:32

you know, multiple people had died,

11:35

women were being sexually assaulted, children

11:37

were being sexually assaulted. And

11:39

there was no stop put

11:41

to this until, you

11:43

know, you get this 60 minutes expose. Right.

11:45

And it still takes a bit after

11:48

that. But coming back to this, you

11:50

know, this timeline, I suppose, the 60

11:52

minutes expose is, I think, two things.

11:54

One, it is a report on an

11:56

internal report that was circulating among the

11:58

US government that had been written up

12:00

in, I think, November of 2003. So

12:02

even sooner after the invasion, right? There

12:04

were already reports saying, look. There's some

12:07

stuff going on at Abu Ghraib that

12:09

really is, you know, needs some attention.

12:11

And then, of course, the images in

12:13

that report were the thing that pushed

12:15

it through. And so I guess it's

12:17

important to point out that there were

12:19

parts of the U .S. government, at

12:21

least, that were objecting or writing a

12:24

pretty serious report. You know, this a

12:26

50 -some page document that was circulating that

12:28

was calling out what was happening there.

12:30

But clearly, I don't think until the

12:32

images leaked, the U .S.

12:34

government wasn't going to actually act on

12:36

it. And somebody is leaking those

12:38

images. They understand that the report

12:40

itself isn't going to move the

12:42

needle enough, I think. It's actually

12:44

really interesting. If we fast

12:46

forward a few years later, when

12:49

Barack Obama becomes president, you know,

12:51

he declassifies the torture memos, but

12:53

he, the next month, refuses to

12:55

declassify more photos from Abigail, because

12:57

he knows that that is going

12:59

to inflame so many people and

13:01

it's so much more powerful than

13:04

a document saying that the U .S.

13:06

OK torture. Yeah. That

13:20

report, by the way, was was

13:23

written by. General Antonio Taguba

13:25

and he you know said he

13:27

catalogs sadistic blatant and wanton

13:29

criminal abuses of Iraqis by American

13:31

soldiers It's a secret report

13:34

and you know it seems to

13:36

have reached the highest levels

13:38

and then on the day that

13:40

this story breaks on 60

13:42

minutes to it is that report

13:44

that Rumsfeld briefs Congress on

13:47

and you know launches this big

13:49

conversation Isn't

13:51

it wild that it's on 60 Minutes 2? I

13:53

kind of feel like it deserves to be on

13:55

the main show. I know, was just thinking that.

13:57

And I should have gone back and looked. I

13:59

have the sense that 60 Minutes 2 aired mid -week

14:01

and it may have been just that they wanted

14:03

to run it. You know, they couldn't wait until

14:05

Sunday to run it or something. And also was

14:07

just like, at that time, you know,

14:09

network TV was still huge enough that like, if it's

14:11

on network, but I think it was something like

14:13

that because there was a big, you know, there's a

14:15

media element here too and a media TikTok. The

14:17

New Yorker was getting ready to write up a big

14:20

piece. Sy Hirsch was gonna write

14:22

up a big piece about the Tabuba memo, and

14:24

so I think that's where 60 minutes rushed up, but

14:26

then they got these photos, and you know, yada,

14:28

yada, yada. And 60 Minutes

14:30

had been holding the story at the

14:32

request of the Defense Department, which

14:34

often happens in cases of, if it's

14:36

seen as part of national security

14:38

or national defense, that sometimes media organizations

14:41

will hold things for a while. And

14:43

we should also say that like,

14:46

60 minutes does kind of catch

14:48

fire for this. I mean, people

14:50

are upset that they have... undermined

14:52

the war effort by exposing these

14:54

kind of images that people are

14:57

afraid that well will we somehow

14:59

lose our morale or lose momentum

15:01

or lose hearts and minds as

15:03

it was sort of the language

15:05

of the day but I mean

15:07

my goodness you weren't certainly winning

15:10

hearts and minds over in Iraq like

15:12

a lot of the anger and the

15:14

resentment and the backlash. from

15:16

those torturous conditions at the prison

15:18

were a lot of the reasons

15:20

why you continue to see unrest.

15:22

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Senator Jim

15:24

Inhofe was the way that he responds

15:26

to this. I'm probably not the only

15:29

one at the table that is more

15:31

outraged by the outrage than we are

15:33

by the treatment. And

15:35

that's pretty big

15:37

statement. He went on to

15:39

explain that he felt, you know, these

15:41

are bad people who deserve to be

15:43

treated badly. So why is everyone so

15:45

upset? Yeah. Well, Jim Inhofe,

15:47

I think, he's a piece of work.

15:50

Let's just put it that way. Yeah, that guy. There's

15:52

a lot to be said about him. Don't

15:54

you have to ask real

15:56

questions about, like, how

15:58

you see your opposition or

16:01

how you see other human

16:03

beings? Like, how you

16:05

see children of any ethnic

16:07

background, of any socioeconomic status,

16:09

like, how you treat a

16:11

person? Even you know an

16:13

animal we've talked about this cruelty

16:15

animals on the show like the very

16:17

basic Decency of how you interact

16:19

regardless of all that's going on. It's

16:21

just none of this met that

16:23

bar I mean prison as awful as

16:25

it is but to be in

16:27

prison and then to be you

16:31

know, tortured, sexually

16:33

humiliated, violated in all and all kinds

16:35

of ways, just it does not

16:37

bode well. It does not bode well

16:39

for when you think about what

16:41

happens when the war is over, because

16:43

it can't go on forever. Like

16:45

what kind of relationships do you want

16:47

to have with these other countries? And

16:50

well, and that, you know, that goes

16:52

back to the original sin of the

16:54

war, which was, you know, it was,

16:56

it was thought of at the highest

16:58

levels as a just war and a

17:00

holy war in many senses. And that

17:02

we would be greeted as liberators and

17:04

the ends would justify the means. And

17:06

there was just no foresight and no

17:08

humanity in the thinking and this dark

17:10

irony that the very thing that people

17:12

were kind of trying, I mean, there's,

17:15

you know, former CIA chief is quoted

17:17

as saying, what Saddam Hussein

17:19

was doing under Abu Ghraib justified us

17:21

getting rid of him. all the abuses that

17:23

he was doing at Abu Ghraib, you

17:25

know, were the reason that we need to

17:27

get rid of people like Saddam Hussein.

17:29

And then of course, the dark irony of

17:31

the fact that we go in there

17:34

and basically just, you know, continue the project

17:36

of that prison. And also like... Inhofe

17:38

quote is so fascinating because he says you

17:40

know I'm not the only one who

17:42

has to be more outraged by the outrage

17:44

than by the treatment and just like

17:46

that kind of language The other thing that

17:49

Rumsfeld says on the day that this

17:51

breaks as he's talking to the Senate Armed

17:53

Services community and he says what has

17:55

been charged so far is abuse which I

17:57

believe is technically different from torture and

17:59

I'm not going to address the torture word

18:01

and I just you know what I

18:03

want I want to remind people of the

18:06

Orwellian language, right? And especially from Rumsfeld,

18:08

right? Who would do the whole, like, what

18:10

was Rumsfeld's thing? Uh, no non

18:13

-nones and unknown non -nones. But just

18:15

like taking people back to this

18:17

time period where people were playing

18:19

these rhetorical games and just not

18:21

seeing the sort of baseline, you

18:23

know, the baseline morality as a

18:25

part of us. is okay,

18:27

but torture is not. And what's the

18:30

line? Do you know what I mean

18:32

between abuse and torture? There was a

18:34

memo just that. I'm

18:36

sure there's one of those

18:38

little memos. But yet I

18:40

think that the difference is abuse is

18:42

something that happens outside of the rules

18:44

and torture is something that was happening

18:46

inside of the rules. So whether it's sanctioned

18:48

or not, I think is how it

18:50

gets perceived. And Jodi,

18:52

you mentioned at the very beginning this

18:54

kind of broader conversation about American empire, but

18:57

it's fascinating how quickly

18:59

the US went from

19:01

having international

19:03

support after 2001, even with

19:05

sometimes foes, right? Countries that were

19:07

willing to work with the

19:09

United States, both because they understood

19:11

the pain that had been

19:14

inflicted on the US, but they

19:16

also feared, you know, how

19:18

the US might respond. So thinking

19:20

about the ways that the

19:22

US and Iran had opportunities to

19:24

work together in 2001 and

19:26

2002, but that's squandered in so

19:28

many ways, so much so

19:30

that the US is That's

19:32

probably too much to call it a pariah state by

19:34

2008. But it loses any sort

19:37

of moral authority that it might

19:39

have gained after the attack. And this

19:41

is one of those places where

19:43

they just drained it all away. Yeah.

19:45

I mean, I would be willing

19:47

to argue that this is possibly the

19:49

key moment. You know, I mean,

19:51

I think obviously there's a big story

19:54

you could write about kind of.

19:56

the decline of U .S. empire and

19:58

certainly the erosion of the U .S.

20:00

as the moral arbiter of the world.

20:02

You could write that story probably

20:04

starting in the 70s, right? But,

20:07

yeah, maybe earlier. But

20:09

I certainly think the Iraq war

20:11

and then Abu Ghraib specifically is a

20:13

huge, huge, I think it's hard

20:15

to overstate how much. That may have

20:17

been the sort of final nail

20:19

in the coffin for a lot of

20:21

the world and for a lot

20:23

of Americans in terms of this, baseline

20:27

expectation that we are moral and just

20:29

you know and I mean I think

20:31

you know not to get too big

20:33

think here but you know you look

20:35

at a lot of surveys and you

20:37

look at a lot of the ways

20:39

that you know Americans under 40 think

20:41

about institutions and I think one of

20:43

the big stories is that that kind

20:45

of fundamental faith is eroding and possibly

20:47

gone. And I think that's one of

20:49

the defining features of our age. And

20:52

this has a huge part in

20:54

it. One other thing worth pointing out,

20:56

though, is that this happens in

20:58

April and May of 2004 in the

21:00

middle of a presidential election. And

21:03

George W. Bush does better in

21:05

2004 than he did in 2000. It

21:07

really takes a while for there

21:09

to be an erosion of support for

21:11

George W. you Bush and this

21:13

does not move the needle domestically in

21:15

the way that one might hope

21:17

that despite you know that that's terrifying

21:19

yeah right like what else do

21:21

you need in order to be convinced

21:23

well I think part of it

21:25

is and this is the way that

21:27

those photos cut both ways is

21:29

those photos are the thing that helps

21:32

it break through but those photos

21:34

are also the thing that everyone gloms

21:36

on to and who's in those

21:38

photos it's individuals right and it's not

21:40

it's not It doesn't initially read

21:42

as systemic, right? And to be clear,

21:44

there are calls to Clean House,

21:46

you know, Al Gore gives this huge

21:48

speech in May of 2004 where

21:50

he basically asks, he says

21:52

that the entire national security apparatus should resign.

21:54

He says that Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice

21:56

intended and willful hits and fights and all

21:58

names that people are, you know, are

22:00

flooding back to people as I say them.

22:03

you know, that they should all resign. But

22:05

yeah, I think to many Americans and

22:08

clearly to many voters come the fall

22:10

election. This was about those

22:12

soldiers in those photos and about

22:14

a bunch of rogue individuals, which certainly

22:16

was one of the ways in

22:18

which the U .S. government tried to

22:20

frame this, you know, it's like, I

22:22

don't think they use the phrase

22:24

bad apples, but it was certainly there

22:26

was that vibe in there, even

22:28

as more and more. reports came out

22:30

of more and more horrific abuses. Caught

22:33

all the way to 2010, the

22:35

prison actually gets turned back

22:37

over to the Iraqi government, and

22:39

then 2014 is closed indefinitely.

22:41

But in those years in between,

22:43

what is your sense of

22:46

resolution, justice,

22:48

recompense, anything of that nature?

22:50

I mean, there isn't any

22:53

justice. I mean, for... honest

22:55

I mean for the soldiers

22:57

who were held accountable um

22:59

you know the penalty is

23:01

somewhat minor no one's charged

23:03

for murder no one is

23:05

held accountable for sexual assault

23:07

or some of the major

23:09

grievances pretty much about it

23:11

it's it's like a few

23:13

hands get slapped on the

23:15

wrist and then that's it

23:17

and it's completely unsatisfactory given

23:19

the atrocities that took place. And

23:22

there is a shift that

23:24

happens politically kind of. In

23:26

the 2008 election, both presidential

23:28

candidates will call this torture,

23:30

will oppose the use of

23:33

torture, and that matters. But

23:35

it's not justice. It's not recompense

23:37

for what happened. It is a moment

23:40

of recognition, and it is a

23:42

moment that passes. And in the

23:44

2008 election, I mean, I think Obama

23:46

is the one who's able to distinguish

23:48

himself by pointing out the Hillary Clinton

23:50

voted for the war and he voted

23:52

against it. And that's probably one of

23:54

the key factors in that election and

23:56

that primary. So yes, this plays into

23:58

that story for sure. All

24:01

right. The one other

24:03

little tidbit here, I didn't bother to

24:05

go look it up because I didn't want

24:07

to but apparently there was an SNL

24:09

cold open about Abu Ghraib in like 2004

24:11

-2005 and I'm just like, oh god. You

24:14

know, no thank you. But you

24:16

know, I think more than

24:18

anything that shows kind of how

24:20

I lived through that era, you

24:22

know, how comfortable we were just

24:24

living in this. Um,

24:26

ambience of awful, you know,

24:28

dark behavior, I think. I just

24:31

feel like, um, gladiator,

24:33

you know, like, are you not entertained?

24:35

Like that. The feeling of

24:37

just like, I cannot

24:39

get over the blood thirst.

24:42

It just makes no

24:44

sense. Like, and that's

24:46

sort of what this moment was. And

24:48

just a reminder that the cruelty is

24:50

the point is not an innovation of the

24:52

last five years. Totally. And I

24:54

mean, Kelly, you know, your work is

24:56

evidence of that going back many, many,

24:58

many decades. But all right, we will

25:01

leave it there. Thank you, as always,

25:03

Nicole Hammer. Thanks, Dirty. And

25:05

Kelly Carter Jackson, thanks to you. My pleasure.

25:12

When Darby looked at the photos, he

25:14

first saw shots of life in Iraq,

25:16

but then came upon the pictures that

25:18

launched the scandal, starting with this pyramid

25:20

of naked Iraqis. I didn't realize it

25:22

was Iraqis at first, because we lived

25:24

in prison cells too. And you thought

25:26

this was maybe Americans, you thought it

25:28

soldiers? I had no idea. I laughed.

25:30

I looked at it and I laughed.

25:32

And then the next photo was of

25:34

Grainer and England standing behind them. And

25:36

I was like, wait a minute, this

25:38

is the prison. These are prisoners. Then

25:40

it kind of sunk in that they were

25:42

doing this to prisoners. This was people being

25:44

forced to do this. Radio

26:15

Tapia

26:17

from PLRX.