Taxi to the Dark Side Page #5

at the wrong time, in the wrong way. And this is what happened to him.

[SGT. Thomas Curtis, Mil-Pol, Bagram] I saw his picture in the New York Times article.

Before that picture, I couldn't have picked his face out, you know.

My memory of him was chained up, with the hood on, no sleeping.

Following questions raised by the New York Times,

And under scrutiny about the Abu Ghraib scandal,

The Army finally stepped up the Dilawar investigation,

And began charging soldiers with maltreatment, maiming and homicide.

[SGT. Thomas Curtis, Mil-Pol, Bagram] When you're working, you know, with an organization like the Military,

You know, they are going to hold somebody accountable.

You can sweep some things under the rug, but, you know, this was a death.

There was two deaths. And okay, fine, they are going to charge people.

[SGT. Anthony Morden, 377th Mil-Pol Unit, Bagram, Afgan] It seemed like the Military, now after they got a black eye from Abu Ghraib,

wanted to get a public opinion that they were policing their soldiers. And so they said,

And so they said, "We had this incident that happened a couple of years ago.

We could still prosecute some of them."

[PFC. Willie Brand, 377th Mil-Pol Unit, Bagram, Afgan] I had nothing to do with the Military for two years,

And all of a sudden I'm getting a call saying that I'm being court-martialed.

I mean that was a huge surprise for me.

[John Galligan, Willie Brand's attorney] From a defense perspective, I immediately said "This is a political show trial."

Willie Brand is a good soldier. Good soldiers tend to obey orders.

Good soldiers tend to be people who do what they are trained to do.

[Tim Golden, New York Times Reporter] The interrogators on the ground for the most part didn't know what the rules were.

They'd never been interrogators before.

[PFC. Damien Corsetti, 519th Mil-Intel Unit, Bagram, Afgan] My interrogation training consisted basically of,

They taught us some approaches...you know...how to get people to talk.

And then..."Here, go watch these guys interrogate"...

which were the people that we were replacing...

For about five or six hours before I did my first interrogation.

[William Cassara, Damien Corsetti's attorney] Damien was picked for this job because he's big,

He's loud, and he's scary. That was his qualification.

[PFC. Damien Corsetti, 519th Mil-Intel Unit, Bagram, Afgan] "Soldiers are dying. Get the information."

That's all you're told. "Get the information."

[Tim Golden, New York Times Reporter] Soldiers said that when prisoners like Dilawar came into Bagram,

They were immediately assaulted.

They blasted music at them. Often, they had dogs barking at them.

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