Reliance on published photos let officials deny that written orders authorized the abuse.

Evidence

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpenski, who oversaw three Iraqi prisons, rarely checked what was going on in Abu Ghraib. She was suspended and demoted. Released memos, she maintains, show that she was following orders to use harsher interrogation methods approved by “top brass”. “The outrage was over the photographs, because the photographs were living color of what those top-secret memorandums authorized,” (Simone, 2009). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 606

Categorization

• QUESTION: Karpinski’s claim, if verified, inverts the official story that abuse was entirely unauthorized — worth chasing the released memos.
• CANDY: ‘The outrage was over the photographs, because the photographs were living color of what those top-secret memorandums authorized’ — a striking one-liner about how document-vs-image shapes scandal.
• SHARE: Serve this to anyone doing work on Abu Ghraib or institutional coverups; the ‘living color’ framing is memorable.