Tricycle | Awake in the World

In February 2004, Army Specialist Benjamin Thompson's unit was rushed into Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. They were assigned to replace the unit that would soon find itself at the center of a worldwide media scandal with the release of photographs documenting the assault and sexual humiliation of prisoners under their guard. But what Thompson, who was recently given his honorable discharge, wants people to know is that the crimes exposed by the Abu Ghraib photos were not isolated incidents but symptoms of the system-wide inhumane policies of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq.

While stationed for a year at Abu Ghraib, Thompson—equipped with his Buddhist training to recognize suffering and to act with compassion—forged an unlikely friendship with a prisoner named Yunis Abbas, an Iraqi journalist who had been falsely accused of plotting to assassinate Tony Blair. A new documentary film, The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair, featuring interviews with Thompson and Abbas, recounts the untold story of prisoner abuse and neglect at Abu Ghraib. I spoke with Thompson in late March at the Tricycle office while he was in town for the New York premier of The Prisoner.

–Ian Collins, Managing Editor

How did you first become interested in Buddhism? Before I went to Iraq, I was just kind of a book Buddhist. When I got my mobilization orders, I knew that year of my life was gone, that I wasn't going to be in school or working or moving forward in any way. So what could I do? I could commit myself to actually exploring the spiritual path. The first person I ever told that I was a Buddhist was some Army person while I was processing onto active duty. We were going through the records review—height, weight, age, religion—and the form listed "no preference" under religion. She asked if it was still no preference, and then I said, "Well, I'm a Buddhist."

So I got my dog tags with "Buddhist" on them and went over to Iraq. It's an environment where suffering is very apparent. A lot of the things that the Buddha talked about are not veiled at all. I wouldn't say my sitting practice in Iraq was very rigorous, but what I found helpful were the very basic practices: trying to be mindful in your daily life; doing basic mantras when you need to calm down or when you have a moment; trying to direct your focus in some way rather than just spacing out; and learning to actively experience compassion—not just feel sorry for somebody, but actively feel their suffering, recognize and verify it. It was just a completely transformative experience, and about a month after I got home from Iraq, I sat my first retreat at Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. It was a massively healing experience, and I went back again last summer. I've also become active in the Buddhist community in Columbus. Buddhism has become a real support in my life, and I view it as a powerful force.

What were the circumstances for your unit's deployment at Abu Ghraib? When we were mobilized, it was with a quickness. The story hadn't broken yet, but the military was aware of the scandal and was pretty sure that it was going to become a media issue. Other units trained for over two months before going to Iraq, but we were sent out in just over three weeks. When we got to Abu Ghraib, we spent twelve hours training with the off-going shift, and then they were done. They wanted them out right away.

What did your unit know of the impending scandal? We knew that people were being relieved of duty, that people were being charged with crimes, and that we were supposed to be the unit that was solving this problem. We didn't know about the pictures. We got there in February, and the pictures didn't come out until the middle of March. That's when we found out what happened there, like everyone else.

You were assigned to a section of Abu Ghraib known as Camp Ganci. Can you break down the basic organization of the prison? There were three sections to the prison. Camp Ganci was the lowest security level, and it held the vast majority of the prisoners. They were deemed to be potential security threats but to have no intelligence value. There was another section that was kind of like an in-between area—higher security, more aggressive interrogation. And then there was the "hard site," which was indoors, in cell blocks. The hard site was what you saw in the Abu Ghraib photos.

What were the conditions at Camp Ganci when you arrived? Camp Ganci was actually eight open-air enclosures fenced in with razor wire. Each enclosure was maybe 150 meters square. There were canvas tents pitched on the dirt and port-a-johns for bathrooms. Prisoners were given unclean water and unsanitary food—food that was spoiled rotten, often with rat feces in it. There was a near-total lack of medical care and no security despite the fact that this prison was very vulnerable to attacks. Mortars would land inside the prison where these people lived. During my time there, these enclosures were massively overcrowded, each holding up to seven hundred individuals. There was about a 100-to-1 ratio of prisoner to guard, so the guards were basically there as a threat of violence. It was basically: We have guns, you don't, and this is how it's going to go down if you do something wrong.

Were these conditions surprising to you? Was this normal? I was trained to operate in a much more controlled environment. There's a basic assumption that when you're running a detention operation you won't be attacked. There are requirements in our laws—in the Geneva Convention and the Law of Land Warfare—that you must maintain the health, welfare, and living conditions of the detainees at least at the level of the guard force that monitors them. Instead, we had these detainees drinking dirty water that's giving them kidney stones while the guards were only allowed to drink bottled water shipped up from Kuwait. Living in open-air enclosures, the detainees were subject to attack while we were required to wear body armor and had bunkers to go to. The fact is, these people were considered less human than we were. They weren't getting any of the consideration that they were due.

And your unit was there to help improve the living conditions and operations at Abu Ghraib? We knew that there had been problems and that our role was to correct that. Also, the unit we relieved, not to give them a pass, but they had a very difficult tour. We were new and we had our minds about us, so there was an understanding that things were going to be different when we took over. We didn't do everything perfect, but as the year went on we did what we could to change conditions and to be more humane. Abu Ghraib really did change under our command.

Specifically, what kinds of policy and protocol changes did you implement? Well, first off we brought it out of chaos. When we got there, there were no operating procedures; each area was run however the guards for that area saw fit. Our unit brought order to the place. I can't speak for the other camps, but in Ganci 6, our interest was negotiating with these people and trying to find a way where we could live in some kind of peace. It was very difficult to find those avenues, but fortunately there were people inside the camps who were like-minded and willing to come forward and recognize that none of us were in control and that we could work together to try to make this not so bad.