Photo by: Contributed
Col. Larry James, author of
"Fixing Hell: An Army Psychologist Confronts Abu Ghraib."
He graduated from University of Dubuque and got another degree from Loras College.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
'Fixing Hell' no easy trick
UD grad recalls the horrors that greeted him at Abu Ghraib prison
By MARY NEVANS-PEDERSON TH staff writer
Abu Ghraib was a hellhole beyond anything Col. Larry C. James had ever seen when he landed at the U.S. military prison in Iraq in June 2004, only weeks after the now-infamous images of prisoner abuse were broadcast to the world.
"Abu Ghraib was a wasteland ... with garbage and raw sewage everywhere you looked. This was a terrible place to be, for anyone," James wrote in his new book, "Fixing Hell: An Army Psychologist Confronts Abu Ghraib."
James, a University of Dubuque graduate now retired from the U.S. Army, was sent to "save this rapidly sinking ship," as he put it. As a top Army psychologist, he had been assigned to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the year before to institute policies that would prevent prisoner abuse at that detention facility and at all military prisons.
James' personal narrative is both a graphic account of the emotional and psychological horrors of war and an unflinching examination of U.S. policies toward prisoners-of-war (now often viewed as terrorists), torture and the mental disorders that plague many combatants...
"I was coming to understand that America was at war with an enemy like no other we have ever faced. This new enemy had as its goal the total destruction of all 'nonbelievers,'" said James, 52, who at one point in his deployment to Abu Ghraib had a $25,000 bounty on his head. These terrorists are so illogical and rigid that James suggests they are mentally ill. (more)
