ABSTRACT
When the scandal over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison broke out in early 2004, Seymour Hersh, one of the key figures behind the revelations, pointed to the irony that Abu Ghraib had been a notorious torture centre under the Saddam Hussein regime that was thoroughly looted and stripped even of windows and doors after the fall of the regime. The United States military took over the deserted building, gave it a thorough face lift, with ‘the floors tiled, cells cleaned and repaired, and toilets, showers, and a new medical center added’ (Hersh, 2004a). Then they proceeded to do exactly what the Saddam regime had done there before, only this time they took pictures to amuse themselves.
