BENJAMIN THOMPSON: One of my prisoners at Abu Ghraib, a place where you saw all those photographs come out—you didn’t know the half of it. Most of our people didn’t live in those cell blocks. Most of the people lived outdoors. They’re killed by enemy insurgents, in our camps. This prisoner—this means God hopes for peace.

We had ten-year-old boys in my camps. We had an eighty-year-old blind man in my camp. They were killed by enemy fire, because we did not protect them when they were in our custody. They were not worth protecting. The generals that came to my base came with three helicopters apiece. And when they left, they took them with them.

%We were giving them food that made them sick. We were giving them water that gave them kidney stones. We weren’t supplying them with medical attention. They were dying from lack of heart medication that they had been on for twenty years. You never heard about this, ever, because of the expletive photographs. The Department of Defense focused all of the attention upon those atrocious acts committed by war criminals, my brother and sister military policemen. And then everything else that happened at that prison, to the other 95 percent of those prisoners, went unreported in the media. This is not OK.

Democracy Now!, 2 sept. 2008.