It's fair to ask whether we will ever learn the full truth about what happened at Abu Ghraib. So far, military investigations have seemed little more than exercises in damage control, designed to place a ceiling on how far up the chain of command the responsibility will go. The Army has attempted to make Karpinski -- the first woman to command troops in combat in U.S. history -- the primary scapegoat for the sins of Abu Ghraib. She was reprimanded and relieved of her command for not preventing the abuses, even though her superiors had ensured that she couldn't have known about them. Over her objections, control of the interrogation facility at Abu Ghraib had been handed over to a military intelligence unit that didn't report to her.

Karpinski could be partially vindicated if rumors are correct about the forthcoming report by an independent panel appointed by the Department of Defense. The final report, scheduled to be released Aug. 18, is said to place at least some responsibility for the prison abuses on Pentagon officials, perhaps including Secretary Rumsfeld.

Torin Nelson doesn't have much confidence in another ongoing Army investigation -- this one examining the role military intelligence may have played in prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. "There are a lot of people who would like to see this just go away," he says. "Or at least the reporting on it."

Perhaps the best chance for a resolution lies in the courts. Two civil suits have already been filed in federal courts on behalf of detainees claiming they were tortured at Abu Ghraib. Defendants include Titan, CACI, Steven Stefanowicz, John Israel and Adel Nakhla.

A class action suit was brought in June by several lawyers affiliated with the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York human rights group. That suit seeks unspecified damages for prisoners who were abused at Abu Ghraib. But it goes much further, alleging an ongoing pattern of abuse at Abu Ghraib, which allows harsher sanctions under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. The suit asks the court to prohibit CACI and Titan from entering into any future contracts with the U.S. government -- a move that would likely put the companies out of business.

The most recent suit was brought by a smaller group of lawyers representing five plaintiffs and calling itself the Iraqi Torture Victim Group. In addition to seeking damages, that suit also asks the court to prevent Titan and CACI from doing business with the government. One of the plaintiffs is Saddam Saleh Aboud, who charges he was taken by U.S. military forces in a raid on his home in early November and wasn't released from Abu Ghraib until April 2. According to the suit, "Mr. Aboud is able to identify one of the individuals who was involved in his torture at Abu Ghraib as Adel Nakhla, also known as Abu Hamid."

Currently, the military has no ongoing investigations into the involvement of private-contractor employees in the horrors at Abu Ghraib.

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