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We all know the theory of how vaccine works, right? You give a little tiny bit of the real disease, or else a watered-down version of it, and all yer little immune system cells whomp it up good. Then when you get exposed to a full dose of the real disease in all its awfulness, it doesn't bother you a bit. You're immune.

My guess is that the videos Sy Hersh talked about, the photos of Abu Graihb guards "having sex" with Iraqi women prisoners, should be coming out in the next few days. Here's the vaccine you're being given ahead of time. It's a two-stage dose:

(1) It's no big deal, the women were whores. Can't rape a whore, right?

(2) It's even less of a big deal because the guys were drunk. We've all done stupid things when we're drunk, right? Peered at the person next to us in the harsh early morning light and gnawed off our arms to escape? Wink wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean? Awful things happen in wartime. Boys will be boys. Frathouse pranks.

That's not what I was thinking when I first saw this story from the LATimes). I'm sure Greg Miller had no idea he was being set up to provide cover for worse things to come.

Greg Miller, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Weeks before U.S. military investigators began uncovering evidence of mistreatment of detainees, commanders at the Abu Ghraib prison launched a crackdown on alcohol abuse and told intelligence troops that guards were suspected of soliciting sex from Iraqi prostitutes, according to soldiers and officers who worked at the compound...

Five military intelligence soldiers who worked at the prison said they learned of the crackdown during an impromptu meeting with an irate Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, one of the senior officers at the prison and the leader of the interrogation operation. In telephone and e-mail interviews, the soldiers said that Jordan told them he had recently learned of an outbreak of alcohol abuse and that members of MP units on base had been seeking sex with Iraqi prostitutes. The soldiers said Jordan warned that he intended to put a stop to the illegal behavior.

Several members of military police units assigned to Abu Ghraib disputed the prostitution claims, saying they saw no evidence of such behavior during their time there. They acknowledged that alcohol use was a recurring problem.

Despite the denials, there are indications that prostitution may have been an issue at the prison. Among them is a cryptic note taken by a military investigator during an interview with an MP at Abu Ghraib, Cpl. Matthew Bolinger. A copy of the note was obtained by The Times.

In the note, the investigator wrote that Bolinger said he had seen computer images of one of the MPs having sex with an unidentified woman. The MP is identified as Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr., a guard who has been portrayed as a ringleader of the abuses and now faces a court-martial.

According to the note, Bolinger "observed Garner [sic] having sex with female in video." The next two lines read, "possible in cell" and "possible prostitute."

Other soldiers familiar with the photos have said that they include images of Graner having sex with Pfc. Lynndie England, another MP who has been charged in the abuse case. England is now pregnant with Graner's child, and is at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina.

Weeks later, when officers at the site were confronted with pictures showing abuse of prisoners, some wondered whether alcohol had played a part. A military intelligence lieutenant colonel from a National Guard unit who worked at the prison and asked not to be identified said that the MPs appeared to be drunk and that the atmosphere on the cellblock was "like a fraternity party."

Gee, wonder where he got THAT particular line? Armed Forces Radio perhaps?

Our second story suggests a possible reason why this stuff may be coming out right now. Via the Pittsburg Post-Gazette

By Cindi Lash and Michael A. Fuoco, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Defense attorneys preparing for Pfc. Lynndie England's upcoming hearing on charges she abused detainees at Abu Ghraib prison have compiled a list of 100 potential witnesses stretching from the halls of power in Washington, D.C., to the sand-swept vistas of Iraq.

The wished-for witness list, obtained by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, includes, in addition to Cheney, other high-ranking officials such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen Cambone; Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and other high-ranking Army officers; White House General Counsel Alberto Gonzales; and Justice Department officials.

Among the group are Spc. Joseph M. Darby, the Somerset County native who turned in the others and is not facing charges, and Spc. Jeremy Sivits of Hyndman, Bedford County, who pleaded guilty May 19 at a special court-martial in a plea bargain with prosecutors in which he promised to testify against England and the six other MPs charged thus far.

The five other charged MPs -- Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick II, Sgt. Javal S. Davis, Spc. Charles Graner Jr., Spc. Sabrina Harman and Spc. Megan Ambuhl -- remain in Iraq where they are performing tasks other than jail guard duty. They are not expected to be ordered to testify because they almost certainly would invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if ordered to do so.

Unlike the other charged MPs, England was transferred to the United States because she is pregnant. She told investigators that Graner is the father.

Also on the witness list are 12 Abu Ghraib detainees, although what assistance they could provide in England's defense is unclear, other than if they would say she wasn't involved in any incidents involving them.

One of them, Abdou Hussain Saad Faleh, is identified in CID documents obtained by the Post-Gazette as the inmate in the iconic photo of the abuse scandal -- hooded, standing on a box and with wires attached to his fingers, toes and penis -- after MPs told him he would be electrocuted if he stepped off.

The witness list also includes:

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, Maj Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, Maj. Gen. George Fay, Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski,Col. Thomas M. Pappas..and Other soldiers who were witnesses to abuse, according to CID documents obtained by the Post-Gazette.

We conclude this episode of As the Stomach Turns, brought to you by Fog Machine Media, with a rerun. A blast from the past. Because one of the essential components of fog generation is TIME. A story that was horrifying two weeks ago is old news now. A story from a month ago? Gee, we say, I remember hearing something about that, but what were the details again?

The ticking of the time bomb started here, in this item from the indispensible Guardian:

The scandal at Abu Ghraib prison was first exposed not by a digital photograph but by a letter. In December 2003, a woman prisoner inside the jail west of Baghdad managed to smuggle out a note. Its contents were so shocking that, at first, Amal Kadham Swadi and the other Iraqi women lawyers who had been trying to gain access to the US jail found them hard to believe.
The note claimed that US guards had been raping women detainees, who were, and are, in a small minority at Abu Ghraib. Several of the women were now pregnant, it added. The women had been forced to strip naked in front of men, it said. The note urged the Iraqi resistance to bomb the jail to spare the women further shame.

Late last year, Swadi, one of seven female lawyers now representing women detainees in Abu Ghraib, began to piece together a picture of systemic abuse and torture perpetrated by US guards against Iraqi women held in detention without charge. This was not only true of Abu Ghraib, she discovered, but was, as she put it, "happening all across Iraq".

In November last year, Swadi visited a woman detainee at a US military base at al-Kharkh, a former police compound in Baghdad. "She was the only woman who would talk about her case. She was crying. She told us she had been raped," Swadi says. "Several American soldiers had raped her. She had tried to fight them off and they had hurt her arm. She showed us the stitches. She told us, 'We have daughters and husbands. For God's sake don't tell anyone about this.'"

Astonishingly, the secret inquiry launched by the US military in January, headed by Major General Antonio Taguba, has confirmed that the letter smuggled out of Abu Ghraib by a woman known only as "Noor" was entirely and devastatingly accurate. While most of the focus since the scandal broke three weeks ago has been on the abuse of men, and on their sexual humilation in front of US women soldiers, there is now incontrovertible proof that women detainees - who form a small but unknown proportion of the 40,000 people in US custody since last year's invasion - have also been abused. Nobody appears to know how many. But among the 1,800 digital photographs taken by US guards inside Abu Ghraib there are, according to Taguba's report, images of a US military policeman "having sex" with an Iraqi woman.

In Iraq, the existence of photographs of women detainees being abused has provoked revulsion and outrage, but little surprise. Some of the women involved may since have disappeared, according to human rights activists. Professor Huda Shaker al-Nuaimi, a political scientist at Baghdad University who is researching the subject for Amnesty International, says she thinks "Noor" is now dead. "We believe she was raped and that she was pregnant by a US guard. After her release from Abu Ghraib, I went to her house. The neighbours said her family had moved away. I believe she has been killed."

UPDATE Children, too. From notes from a Hersh talk posted at Brad DeLong:

[Hersh] talked about how hard it is to get the truth out in Republican Washington: "If you agree with the neocons you're a genius. If you disagree you're a traitor." Bush, he said, was closing ranks, purging anyone who wasn't 100% with him. Said Tenet has a child in bad health, has heart problems, and seemed to find him generally a decent guy under unimaginable pressure, and that people told him that Tenet feared a heart attack if he had to take one more grilling from Cheney. "When these guys memoirs come out, it will shock all of us."...

He said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. [Hersh] said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, "You haven't begun to see evil..." then trailed off. He said, "horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run."

Eesh. The good guys aren't supposed to act this way. —Lambert