Prisoner of war camps: lack of a revolution.

DISCLAIMER

The definition and use of the term prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war after 1949 are specifically outlined in the Geneva Conventions of 1949, Convention (III) Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (1): Art 4. A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:

(1) Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict, as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.

(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfill the following conditions:

(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

(b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;

(c) that of carrying arms openly;

(d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

(3) Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power.

(4) Persons who accompany the armed forces without actually being members thereof, such as civilian members of military aircraft crews, war correspondents, supply contractors, members of labour units or of services responsible for the welfare of the armed forces, provided that they have received authorization, from the armed forces which they accompany, who shall provide them for that purpose with an identity card similar to the annexed model.

(5) Members of crews, including masters, pilots and apprentices, of the merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft of the Parties to the conflict, who do not benefit by more favourable treatment under any other provisions of international law.

(6) Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.

Terrorists do not meet the requirements above and are thus referred to as "unlawful enemy combatants/ detainees." Those captured in Iraq after the official cessation of war are referred to as "civilian internees/ detainees."

Throughout the history of modern warfare, accounts of prison atrocities have repeatedly surfaced which depict active and passive aggression towards prisoners of war (POWs). Yet, with each conflict, new accounts are born and an undeniable reality of warfare inflicts fresh scars for aggressors to bear. It is understandable, based on human nature and the goals of war that a government (or its representatives) will feel malice toward enemy prisoners captured during a conflict. It is unquestionably a challenge to overcome that human nature, despite the statutes which outline lawful treatment of POWs. (2) While most aspects of warfare have been revolutionized throughout history, the means by which a military deals with its POWs remains somewhat mired in the reluctance of leaders to acknowledge that it will factor such into every conflict. The management of POWs will, in fact, become a source of controversy as long as it is handled as an afterthought. As evidenced throughout history, this article presents examples, dating back to the Revolutionary War, of how law can only influence human nature to a point, especially when resources are limited, secrecy is paramount, ignorance is a reality, and accountability is questionable.

During the American Revolutionary War, it was obvious the British failed to plan for handling thousands of POWs on foreign soil. With limited facilities in New York City and funds not available to build, the British decided to convert a dozen or so un-seaworthy Royal Navy ships harbored in the area into POW facilities. (3) The most infamous of these was the HMS Jersey, a former British hospital ship in Wallabout Bay near Brooklyn, New York. The ship was originally built as a destroyer in 1736, but was converted by removing the masts and nailing up the gun ports. (4) The Jersey was decrepit and conditions harsh, with overcrowding an immediate and ongoing problem. Normally, the HMS Jersey was manned by a crew of about 350 sailors, yet as a prison ship it housed over a thousand POWs. (3) Overcrowding only worsened as the war progressed, due in large part to issues with prisoner exchange (the British captured thousands of prisoners and George Washington did not favor exchanging veteran British Soldiers for sick, untrained Americans who were often Privateers). (5)

The Department of Defense currently lists 4,435 US battle deaths during the Revolutionary War. Another 20,000 died in captivity from disease or for other reasons. (5) Historians estimate the total number of prison ship deaths between 8,000 and 11,644. (6,7) An estimated 4 of every 5 prisoners on the HMS Jersey died and as many as 8 corpses a day were "buried in Wallabout Bay." (7) The atrocious sanitary conditions were ultimately responsible for a great majority of the deaths: communal buckets for defecating resulted in widespread dysentery and cholera; thousands of men crammed below decks without light or fresh air aided transmission of diseases such as tuberculosis, smallpox, and yellow fever; and lack of fruit and vegetables guaranteed scurvy among many prisoners. What sparse food was provided to the prisoners was normally maggot-infested, moldy, or simply rotten beyond consumption. The political situation only worsened the prisoners' fate as British tensions led to increased mistreatment. With no threat of retribution, guards imposed inhumane and degrading treatment on prisoners, often leading to injury and/or accidental death. (6) The Revolutionary War provided firsthand experience for American Soldiers and leaders on the ramifications of poor planning and mismanagement of prisoners captured in combat. However, Americans would repeat the mistakes of the British. In less than 100 years 2 Civil War POW camps would enter the realm of infamy.

Andersonville, the infamous POW camp established by the Confederacy in a small village of the same name in Sumter County, Georgia, was one of the largest Confederate military prisons established during the Civil War. (8) Although originally established to move prisoners from the Richmond area to a more secure location where food was abundant, the 26. (5) acre stockade with its minimal staffing could not adequately support the more than 45,000 Union Soldiers confined inside its walls. (9) Originally built to house only 10,000, it was obvious why conditions at Andersonville are described as worse than any other prison camp, north or south. (10) Severe overcrowding, lack of shelter, diminishing resources, and the inevitable contamination of the stream providing the only water to the camp led to a 30% mortality rate. (10) By the end of Andersonville's 14-month life, nearly 13,000 men were dead from malnutrition and the diseases associated with the deplorable conditions. (11) As the former prison grounds appear now, one would find it difficult to imagine the conditions and challenges of running the camp in 1864, however, the history of Andersonville tells the story of an army unprepared for vast numbers of prisoners, a lack of understanding or guidance of how to take care of them, and an unfortunate officer, CPT Henry Wirz, who "wore the blood of all prisoners on his hands." (11)

CPT Wirz was not the first officer to take charge of the Andersonville prison, nor was he solely responsible for the lack of funds, resources, or personnel to run the facility. However, when people in the north learned of the horrors there, he became the most convenient target. Although testimony from his trial indicates that CPT Wirz did make an effort to improve conditions after his arrival at Andersonville, the reality was that prisoners were dying every day (one every 11 minutes on one particularly bad day) of typhoid, gangrenous infection, and communicable disease. (12) To make matters worse, the War Department stopped the prisoner exchange program, further stressing local families and contributing to the demand for vengeance. Since there was no plan for how to handle the situation at Andersonville or northern prison camps, creating a spectacle out of the Wirz trial deflected attention away from the north and the US government. Ironically, CPT Wirz's trial and subsequent hanging appeased the population which had been so appalled by the conditions at Andersonville--conditions which were in part a result of the War Department's termination of the exchange program. (11) There were, in fact, plenty of reasons for the government's attempts to deflect attention away from the Union prison camps, which harbored their share of squalor and death.

Conditions at the Union POW facilities at Camp Douglas in Chicago and the lesser known prison at Elmira, NY, (frequently referred to as "Helmira") rivaled those at Andersonville, although history less willingly tells their story, and no Union commander would ever die for the atrocities committed there. (13) The Union Army did no better than the Confederates in handling the challenge of managing POWs when, in early 1862, Camp Douglas was hastily converted from a training camp into a POW camp, eventually earning the title, "eighty acres of hell." (14) Although the prisoner population at the camp never rivaled the 45,000 housed at Andersonville, Camp Douglas was known as the northern prison camp with the highest mortality rate of all Union Civil War prisons, equaling and sometimes exceeding the highest death rates at Andersonville. (13)

The hasty placement of a POW camp in Chicago was a tactical error on the part of the Union Army, considering the city was filled with spies and southern sympathizers who made efforts to arm the prisoners. Initially, the location may not have seemed ill conceived as the city residents regularly visited Camp Douglas to gawk at the Confederate prisoners, and an observation platform was even constructed to aid the citizens' viewing. (13) Conditions inside the camp were so deplorable that Henry Whitney Bellows, president of the US Sanitary Commission, wrote to Colonel Hoffman, his superior, after visiting the camp:

   Sir, the amount of standing water, unpoliced grounds,
   of foul sinks, of unventilated and crowded barracks, of
   general disorder, or soil reeking miasmatic accretions,
   of rotten bones and emptying of camp kettles, is enough
   to drive a sanitarian to despair. I hope no thought will
   be entertained of mending matters. The absolute
   abandonment of the spot seems to be the only judicious
   course. I do not believe that any amount of drainage
   would purge that soil loaded with accumulated filth or
   those barracks fetid with two stories of vermin and
   animal exhalations. Nothing but fire can cleanse them. (15)

Inside the prison, multiple methods of torture, such as reduced food rations, prisoner executions, isolation in the "white oak" dungeon, hanging by thumbs, or being forced to ride on Morgan's wooden mule (with weight hung on their feet to make it more painful) were regularly utilized to keep the prisoner population down, to maintain order, and to extract information. (13,15) In 1863, 75 prisoners made a timely escape and managed to avoid the fate of over 11,000 prisoners who died the following year. Camp Douglas was closed in 1865 when the remaining prisoners were asked to take a loyalty oath to the US and then set free. (11) Despite fewer pages in the history books, the Union prison camps are nonetheless evidence that during the Civil War, neither side was prepared to handle POWs and neither figured out how to successfully remedy the situation once it presented itself. Repeating the same mistakes as others, from the atrocious depravities to establishing inadequate facilities, Americans had failed miserably at their first test as guardians of POWs.

In 1899, the term "prisoner of war" was originated at the Hague Conference, which set forth the basic principles governing the definition of a POW and the treatment afforded them. (16) The Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907, and the subsequent Geneva Conventions of 1929, established ground-rules for managing POWs, but there was no guarantee that every country would follow them. While it is not unreasonable for a nation to expect fair treatment of its Soldiers if they are taken prisoner by the enemy, the expectation is flawed because it presupposes that the enemy can understand the principle of surrender. As was observed in World War II, this is not always the case. While there are many examples of mistreatment of POWs by our enemies (ie, the Germans at Berga and the Japanese at Cabanatuan), few examples compare to conditions at Camp O'Donnell, the transient camp in the Philippines situated at the end of the Bataan Death March route.

Camp O'Donnell has been referred to as "Andersonville Revisited" for good reason. (17) Despite the passage of 80 years and multiple documents outlining acceptable treatment of POWs, many of the Filipino and American prisoners held at Camp O'Donnell faced the same horrors of those interned at Andersonville. One difference between the situations was that during the Civil War, ignorance, lack of resources, and malice were often the reasons for the conditions, while at Camp O'Donnell, the primary issue behind the maltreatment of prisoners was the inability of the Japanese to understand or accept that honorable men were capable of surrender. To the Japanese, the troops who survived the Bataan Death March to reach Camp O'Donnell were not POWs, they were nothing. (18)

Camp O'Donnell was originally a Filipino Constabulary Post, partially constructed and with little infrastructure. Like Andersonville, Camp O'Donnell contained only one water spigot for approximately 50,000 prisoners and it was not unusual for a prisoner to die in line after waiting all day and night for his turn. (18) In the first 2 months at Camp O'Donnell, more than 1,500 American and 20,000 Filipino Soldiers died, an average of 358 per day. (19) The sanitary conditions in the camp were so deplorable that the meager servings of rice received by the prisoners were inevitably consumed while covered with blue and green bottle flies. (18) Gravedigger detail was a common requirement for prisoners strong enough to dig, and dig they did, sometimes burying 400 bodies a day. The graves were large shallow holes, which were dug up by dogs each night creating festering pools of disease. There was, surprisingly, a hospital at Camp O'Donnell, although among the prisoners it was basically considered a place where one went to die. It is difficult to fathom that a group of civilized people could allow and even condone the conditions at Camp O'Donnell, but the Japanese government had not signed nor approved of the Geneva Convention, and therefore did not believe American and Filipino prisoners were entitled to any safeguards. (18) Ultimately, even the Japanese recognized the potential backlash resulting from Camp O'Donnell and moved the prisoners to Cabanatuan in June 1942, where many more would die before the Rangers executed a successful raid on the camp. Unfortunately, POW camps in WWII would not be the last time in the 20th century that the Geneva Conventions were ignored and an enemy significantly misunderstood.

During the Korean War, a lack of planning for and management of Korean and Chinese POWs taken by US and United Nations (UN) forces was an unsurprising shortfall in the disjointed and limited preparation for that conflict. While food, clothing, and housing were listed as adequate by the International Red Cross, the large number of captives, at one time over 80,000, made close supervision difficult. (20) Maintaining good order was nearly impossible, with bloody clashes a common event inside the camps. UN POWs held by North Koreans and the Chinese, however, did not fare as well. It is alleged that North Korean forces subjected UN POWs to forced labor, beatings, starvation, and summary executions/ massacres such as those at Hills 312 and 303.21 American POWs were further subjected to physical abuse and torture at the hands of the Chinese. US Army POWs died in large numbers during the first part of the war with a mortality rate of 40% while confined, generally due to unchecked diseases, untended wounds, malnutrition, and extreme cold. (20) Alarmed at the extremely high death rate, the Chinese eventually started to improve conditions at POW camps and supplied food and medicine. (20)

Unlike Korea, in Vietnam there was plenty of time prior to major hostilities when both sides could have planned for the inevitable POW situation that would arise. In the case of the North Vietnamese, it was not a lack of planning, rather a pure disdain for the enemy and disregard for the provisions of the Geneva Convention which were updated in 1949. In a show of somewhat poetic justice, the Hoa Lo, a prison built by the French to hold Vietnamese prisoners captured fighting for their independence from French Indochina, was used by the North Vietnamese to imprison Soldiers, Department of State personnel, and supporters of the US effort. The Hoa Lo became one of the most famous POW camps in history, heretofore known as the "Hanoi Hilton." (22)

As is the case with the majority of the POW camps immortalized in historical records, the conditions at the Hanoi Hilton were deplorable. Not only were more than 300 prisoners subjected to miserable sanitary conditions and regular bouts of tropical disease, there is significant evidence that the prisoners at the Hanoi Hilton were systematically abused, both physically and psychologically. This is seemingly a fact, although the Vietnamese government still denies it and the US government failed to ever take any action on it. None of the Vietnamese officials implicated in the abuse have ever been formally charged by the US or its allies nor has extradition ever been demanded. (23) The information regarding abuse was first revealed in the late 1960s when release of prisoners began, but was not made available to the general public for fear that retaliation would be inflicted on those still in captivity. It is widely known by the American public and much of the world that American prisoners were tortured in North Vietnamese prison camps, however, the fact that little if any action was taken or even threatened against the government responsible for that torture left the status of POWs in future wars potentially uncertain.

After the shock of September 11, 2001, the US government vowed that the victims of that day did not die in vain. Over the next 18 months, 2 very different fights were initiated in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). While many problems in the GWOT have been excruciatingly dissected by armchair quarterbacks around the globe, there is no argument with the fact that the incidents which took place at the Bagram and Abu Ghraib prison facilities (although realistically not comparable to stories of prison camps past) put an indelible black mark on US efforts in both countries, and that a lack of planning for handling prisoners of war was in part responsible.

In Afghanistan, it was obvious from the beginning of the conflict that US military leaders failed to appropriately plan for housing detainees (unlawful enemy combatants) as the selected Bagram Theater Internment Facility (BTIF) was not an ideal location. Originally built by the Soviets in the 1980s as an aircraft machine shop, the facility was retrofitted with wire cages and wooden segregation cells (later upgraded to concrete segregation rooms with latrine and sink). (24) Initially intended to serve as a temporary facility, the BTIF has now housed detainees longer than Guantanamo Bay. (25) In the early days of the conflict, conditions inside the BTIF mirrored those of US Soldiers (except for the wire cages) to include burn out latrines and makeshift wooden flooring. (25) Over the next several years, numerous upgrades and expansion projects ensued. Nevertheless, even today, guard force personnel remain extremely limited in the number and quality of improvements they can make due to the physical location of the facility and land space allocation. With limited planning, little to no formal training in handling detainees or managing detainee camps, shortfalls in military reference material, and the issuing of confusing, often conflicting, higher headquarters' guidance, it did not take long for allegations of abuse, torture, and maltreatment to surface, even though most were unsubstantiated. One such event involved the deaths of 2 Afghan detainees in December 2002, while in the custody of US forces at the BTIF. Allegations of beatings, blunt force trauma, and degrading treatment, as well as the alleged cover-up of the circumstances surrounding their deaths quickly reached several news outlets. The US Criminal Investigation Command initiated an investigation and in October 2004, determined there was probable cause to charge 27 Soldiers with criminal offenses. (26) During this investigation it was also discovered that some of these indicted Soldiers had deployed and helped establish the interrogation and debriefing center in Abu Ghraib, Iraq. (26)

In late 2002, LTG Richard Cody directed a bottom-up review of the Military Police Corps (MPC) structure; largely as a means of making it better suited to handle the internment/resettlement (I/R) mission, and potentially as a result of the incident at the BTIF. (27) This indicates the likelihood that someone, somewhere recognized the potential for a POW situation to develop in the pending war in Iraq, and the need for a means of dealing with it. Unfortunately, that foresight did not change the fact that, although significantly limited at the time, the existing I/R assets of the Military Police Corps may have had a positive impact on the detainee situation in Iraq and could have lessened the likelihood of a detainee-related scandal had they been deployed. Instead, the potential for a significant POW situation was underestimated, the power of human nature was once again denied or at best misunderstood, and military policemen and women whose fellow Soldiers were simultaneously threatened on the streets around Baghdad daily were expected to deny their instinctive desire for vengeance and guard enemy prisoners without incident. Not only was this a task they were not properly trained to execute, but also a task that their nonhabitual higher chain of command was not trained to supervise. While we do not by any means condone the actions of the Soldiers involved, it was likely inevitable that a scandal of this nature would occur, considering the circumstances and the power of human nature.

The Baghdad Central Confinement Facility (BCCF) was established at the Abu Ghraib prison compound, 32 km west of Baghdad. Internationally known as Saddam's "torture house," the facility was used by the Ba'ath government to torture and execute presumed dissidents. (28) It was renamed BCCF after US forces expelled the former Iraqi government. The decision to use this facility as a POW (detainee) camp, already tainted internationally due to the thousands executed by the Saddam regime, was presumably a tactical error. Difficult to resupply due to its close proximity to Fallujah and major combat operations early in the war, Abu Ghraib also stood among heaps of trash and, allegedly, the bones of previous occupants. Soldiers were housed in former prison structures, complete with torture hooks and the ghosts of the past. Ironically, in close proximity to the hard site (now infamous as the site where US forces abused detainees), several tent camps were constructed to hold the ever-increasing number of detainees, a necessary action reminiscent of conflicts past. A number of factors contributed to the overall situation and mindset of both guards and prisoners: harsh environmental conditions, lack of adequate infrastructure to provide basic sanitation and hygiene conveniences, and a shortage of overhead protection from combat operations within these tent camps. These were problems that only exacerbated the challenges at Abu Ghraib. In addition, the sheer craftiness of detainees to continually circumvent and negate any attempt by the guard force to improve conditions for them set the stage for a battle of human will and nature.

A window into this darker side of human nature was illuminated over 30 years ago during the Stanford Prison Experiment led by Professor Philip Zimbardo. (29) The study selected college-aged men with positive attitudes and apparent good mental health and then studied the situational forces and psychological effects of them becoming either a prisoner or prison guard. Zimbardo writes: "My guards repeatedly stripped their prisoners naked, hooded them, chained them, denied them food or bedding privileges, put them into solitary confinement, and made them clean toilet bowls with their bare hands." (2) The study was halted after only 6 days due to the severe treatment of prisoners and the resulting psychological trauma. Zimbardo concludes:

   In a situation that implicitly gives permission for
   suspending moral values, many of us can be morphed
   into creatures alien to our own nature. (2)

Parallels exist between this study and the actions of the Soldiers indicted in the Abu Ghraib scandal. The situational forces present at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 certainly set the stage for the suspension of moral values. Undoubtedly there were multiple human factors existing at the facility, including inadequate training, lack of proficiency in basic Soldiering skills, under-manning, friction between different chains of command, poor morale, staff inefficiencies, and various psychological factors such as the differences in cultures, Soldier quality of life, real pressures of mortal danger over extended periods of time, and a failure by the command to recognize and mitigate these factors. (27) Ultimately, these factors culminated in the now infamous actions of those involved in the scandal at Abu Ghraib.

While direct parallels between the detention camps of today and the POW camps of the past do exist, it would be inaccurate to conclude that no improvements have been made in how the US handles POWs (and other detainees). Typical trends and problems from the past do not exist today in US held camps, such as malnutrition, poor medical care, and high mortality rates. Accountability for individual actions violating the Geneva Conventions or humane treatment policies is enforced as is evident by the legal action taken against those involved with the cases discussed above. Furthermore, prisoners today are provided medical care far superior to that received by most other local nationals. Yet with all the valuable insight gained from our rich historical past, we remain a predominantly reactive rather than proactive organization. Department of Defense and governmental oversight of facilities (Red Cross, combatant command assessment teams, congressional hearings, etc) increased as a reaction to Abu Ghraib, as did the number of internment/resettlement units, policies, regulations, and guidance. Yet none of these correct the lack of planning for future wars, nor the need to better train leaders in the site selection and organization of POW camps, management strategies, and legal recourse, functions ancillary to the basic housing of prisoners, and cultural sensitivity/diversity (ie, Afghanistan is not Iraq). These lessons must be learned to overcome our reactive nature.

Enemy POWs are an inextricable facet of warfare. Acknowledgement of this fact is critical if ever a conflict is to be engaged with the hope of avoiding a legacy of accounts comparable to those from the HMS Jersey to Abu Ghraib. In 2005, Senator John McCain proposed an amendment to ban the military and government agencies from engaging in "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment" of detainees because apparently the Geneva Convention does not do that already. (30) While we support Senator McCain's efforts to ensure that what happened to him should never happen to anyone else, especially at the hands of Americans, we submit that if proper planning for the handling of POWs in wartime is executed and the mission tasked to those who are properly trained to fulfill it, the horrific stories of POW camps past may truly be history.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Our thanks to Dr Jerold Brown at the Army Command and General Staff College for his positive initial review of the base document for this article. Without his confident endorsement in 2006, it would have most certainly remained unpublished.

REFERENCES

(1.) Diplomatic Conference of Geneva of 1949: Convention (III) Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. [International Committee of the Red Cross web site]. August 12, 1949. Available at: http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/7c4d08d9b287 a42141256739003e636b/6fef854a3517b75ac125641e004a9e68. Accessed May 12, 2009.

(2.) Zimbardo PG. Power turns good Soldiers into "bad apples". The Boston Globe. May 9, 2004;Opinion section. Available at: http://www.boston.com/news/ globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/05/09/ power_turns_good_soldiers_into_bad_apples/.

(3.) The American Revolutionary War web site. Revolutionary War Prisoners of War. Available at: http://www.myrevolutionarywar.com/pow/. Accessed January 11, 2009.

(4.) POWs of the American Revolution [DVD]. The History Channel; 2006. Available at: http://shop.history.com/detail.php? p=69115&v=history_subject_war-and-warfare_revolutionary-war. Accessed May 1, 2009.

(5.) Wikipedia.com web site. HMS Jersey (1736). Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Jersey_(1736). Accessed January 11, 2009.

(6.) DeWan G. The wretched prison ships. Newsday.com. Available at: www.newsday.com/community/guide/ lihistory/ny-history-hs425a,0,6698945.story?coll=nylihistorynavigation. Accessed January 11, 2009.

(7.) Boatner MM III.. Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. New York: McKay Publishers; 1974.

(8.) Wikipedia.com web site. Andersonville National Historic Site. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/andersonville_prison. Accessed January 12, 2009.

(9.) Catton B. The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War. New York: American Heritage Publishing Company Inc; 1960.

(10.) The War of the Rebellion web site. Andersonville (Camp Sumter) Prisoner of War Camp. Available at: http://www.mycivilwar.com/pow/gaandersonville.htm. Accessed January 12, 2009.

(11.) Eicher D. The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War. New York: Simon & Schuster; 2001.

(12.) The Horrors at Andersonville Prison [DVD]. The History Channel; 2006. Part of The Unknown Civil War Collection [DVD]. The History Channel. Available at: http://shop.history.com/detail.php?p=77698&v=.

(13.) Burnham P. The Andersonvilles of the north. In: Cowley R, ed. With My Face to the Enemy: Perspectives on the Civil War. New York, NY: G P Putnam's Sons; 2001:367.

(14.) Eighty Acres of Hell [DVD]. The History Channel; 2006. Available at: http://shop.history.com/detail.php?p=69494& v=history_subject_war-andwarfare_civil-war&pagemax=all.

(15.) Wikipedia.com web site. Camp Douglas (Chicago). Available at: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Douglas_(Chicago). Accessed 11 January 2009.

(16.) Laws and Customs of War on Land. Hague Conference of 1899: Hague II. New Haven, Connecticut; Yale University Lillian Goldman Law Library, The Avalon Project. Available at: http:// avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/hague02.asp#art1. Accessed May 12, 2009.

(17.) Sides H. Ghost Soldiers. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons Inc; 2002.

(18.) Chalek W. Guest of the Emperor. San Jose, CA: Writers Club Press; 2002.

(19.) The Bataan Survivor Association. 2006. http:// www.bataansurvivor.com.

(20.) Fact Sheet: Prisoners of War in the Korean War. United States of America Korean War Commemoration web site. Available at: http:// korea50.army.mil/history/factsheets/pow.shtml. Accessed January 12, 2009.

(21.) Wikipedia.com web site. Korean War. Available at: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_war#crimes_against_pows. Accessed January 13, 2009.

(22.) Wikipedia.com web site. Hanoi Hilton. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanoi_Hilton. Accessed May 12, 2009.

(23.) Lander M. McCain, in Vietnam, Finds the Past Isn't Really Past. [Hanoiparis.com web site]. April 27, 2000. Available at: http://www.hanoiparis.com/con struct.php?page=actutxt&idfam=26&idactu=305. Accessed May 12, 2009.

(24.) Wikipedia.com web site. Bagram Torture and Prisoner Abuse. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Bagram_torture_and_prisoner_abuse. Accessed January 13, 2009.

(25.) Wikipedia.com web site. Bagram Theater Internment Facility. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Bagram_theater_internment_facility. Accessed January 13, 2009.

(26.) Jehl D. Army details scale of abuse in Afghan jail. New York Times. March 12, 2005;World section. Available at: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/ fullpage.html?res=9F01EFD9143CF931A25750 C0A9639C8B63&scp=80&sq=&st=nyt. Accessed May 12, 2009.

(27.) Article 15-6: Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade [In: The Taguba Report on the Treatment of Abu Ghraib Prisoners in Iraq]. Available at: http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/ iraq/tagubarpt.html. Accessed January 15, 2009.

(28.) Wikipedia.com web site. Abu Ghraib Prison. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ abu_ghraib_prison. Accessed January 15, 2009.

(29.) Zimbardo PG. Stanford Prison Experiment [web site]. Available at: http://www.prisonexp.org. Accessed January 15, 2009.

(30.) Cohen R. We don't want a Hanoi Hilton. Washington Post. October 27, 2005; Editorial section:A27.

LTC Jennifer Caci, MS, USA

LTC Joanne M. Cline, MS, USA

LTC Caci is the Environmental Science Officer, US Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

LTC Cline is Chief, Preventive Medicine Plans and Operations, Office of the Command Surgeon, US Army Central, Fort McPherson, Georgia.