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Joshua E.S. Phillips, independent journalist and author of None of Us Were Like This Before: American Soldiers and Torture, discusses his article on the post-Abu Ghraib investigations of Iraqi prisoners abused in US custody, “Inside the Detainee Abuse Task Force;” attorney Susan Burke’s lawsuit against private military contractors, on behalf of 337 Iraqi torture victims; the sincere efforts of many DATF investigators, who were given insufficient guidelines and resources to do their jobs; suspicions that investigations were reopened in response to particular FOIA requests from the ACLU (an open investigation is immune from FOIA); and why all the evidence points to a systemic culture of abuse and torture, far beyond the “few bad apples” at Abu Ghraib.

MP3 here. (19:57)

Joshua E. S. Phillips is an independent journalist, producer and author of None of Us Were Like This Before: American Soldiers and Torture. He has reported from Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and South Asia. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Newsweek, Salon, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, among other publications. His radio features have been broadcast on NPR and the BBC. Phillips won a Heywood Broun Award and Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award for excellence in broadcast journalism for his American Radio Works documentary What Killed Sergeant Gray.