Packed for the Wrong Trip: A New Look Inside Abu Ghraib and the Citizen-Soldiers Who Redeemed America’s Honor

Using one of the darkest incidents in recent American military history, Griffith, a former U.S. Marine combat correspondent, recasts the atrocity of torture and torment at Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib as a moment of redemption. In February of 2004, a ragtag unit of the Maine National Guard’s 152nd Field Artillery Battalion was deployed to the detention facility as a replacement for the disgraced soldiers whose photos of the cruelty they inflicted upon Iraqi prisoners shocked the world and served as a recruitment tool for insurgents. The prison, filled to capacity with “die-hard Saddam loyalists, native religious fanatics, or specimens of the Syrian, Yemeni, or Saudi Jihadists who had come over the unsecured borders,” was guarded by the 152nd’s “ill-trained, poorly equipped” citizen soldiers under harsh conditions that featured car bombs, snipers, and constant rocket and mortar fire. To quell the ongoing insurgency, military commanders changed tactics, granting hearings to detainees as well as providing better food, education, and counseling by moderate imams. The facility is now shuttered. Griffith’s account of these compassionate Mainers offers a new perspective on what happened at Abu Ghraib in the wake of the torture scandal. (Apr.)