[Kevin]

I listened to some former JAG who now teaches law at Georgetown on NPR this evening regarding this incident. It seems that these soldiers were given instructions by either military intelligence types or private contractors that were hired to interrogate the prisoners to "Soften the prisoners up for interrogation".

The crazy thing is that currently, the contractors don't fall under any legal jurisdiction except maybe a U.S. Attorney (who probably wouldn't want to deal with something that happened thousands of miles away).

Also, as far as the Geneva Convention, it only applies to prisoners taken during a war -- not to many of these insurgent types. They're just regular prisoners and not really protected by any law besides whatever Iraqi law there is. I'm sure the soldiers will face justice under military law. As for these contractors, I'm expecting them to get away with this one.

There are many problems that contributed to this. One major issue is that there is only one general to administrate about 17 prisons. There are far too few prison guards -- and at least according to one of the people accused of these acts, they received inadequate training.

I'm sure that the pictures really only tell one side of the story. It's going to be interesting and probably alarming to hear the rest (if we ever get to).