Artiga denied pressuring Madera to change her diagnosis and said he did not recall whether Marciello or anyone else was in the room during the meeting.

According to Marciello, "Madera was really shook up by the encounter with Artiga ... She was trembling." With that, Marciello said, "Me and Artiga just up and left Madera's office and headed back to the company area. Artiga went back to the office and I went to find Ford." Marciello found Ford in his tent and related what had just occurred. "I told him to stay put and that I would return in a little while." It was the last time Marciello saw Greg Ford.

The Geneva Conventions signed by the United States and 114 other countries in 1949 give prisoners of war strict protections. They cannot be assaulted, photographed (except for counterintelligence purposes), threatened with physical harm, denied medical care and medication, or deprived of food, water, clothing or sleep. They are also entitled to have mail access and regular visits from the Red Cross or other humanitarian groups.

The photographs from Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad that became public in the spring showed interrogators flagrantly violating those conventions. Seven low-level soldiers have since been charged, with one conviction, but no one up the ladder has been held accountable. Meanwhile, it has become increasingly clear that the mistreatment at Abu Ghraib was symptomatic of a wider problem. The Department of Defense is currently investigating more than a hundred allegations of prisoner abuse. So far, not a single officer or high-ranking enlisted soldier has been charged in any of them.

There are striking parallels between the conditions at Abu Ghraib when the abuses took place and those at Samarra when Greg Ford says he saw his colleagues torturing detainees. Both facilities were suffering heavy casualties as the result of daily mortar attacks from an invisible enemy. In both cases, the command became increasingly frustrated at its inability to identify, locate and stop the attackers and -- bolstered by directives from top military brass to "set the conditions" for information collection -- allowed combat troops and military intelligence operatives to use harsh tactics. Both facilities were populated mostly by young reservists with no combat experience. The majority of detainees, meanwhile, were adolescents or old men of little to no intelligence value.

The M.I. units at both centers also shared a commanding officer, Col. Thomas Pappas, who arrived in Iraq sometime in the middle of June 2003 and formally took charge of the 205th M.I. Brigade at an elaborate change-of-command ceremony at Anaconda on July 1. The 205th comprises Ford's 223rd M.I. Battalion and the 519th M.I. Battalion, which played a part in both the Abu Ghraib scandal and at least one detainee death in Afghanistan, resulting in criminal charges being filed. After Pappas ordered all members of the 205th to be present at his change-of-command ceremony, three soldiers from the 519th were killed in a vehicular accident while traveling through hostile territory from northern Iraq in order to attend.

The Army has already dealt with one case of abuse by soldiers stationed at Samarra. At a recent court-martial in Fort Hood, Texas, four enlisted soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division in Samarra were convicted of manslaughter for forcing two handcuffed Iraqi men to jump off a bridge over the Tigris River during an interrogation. One of the Iraqis drowned. The soldiers' commanding officer, a lieutenant colonel that regularly worked with agents of the 223rd, was administratively disciplined for helping to cover up the incident.

Not long after Marciello left him, Ford said, Madera, accompanied by an unknown male captain, entered Ford's tent and told him to get ready because he was going to be "medevac'd" to Germany immediately. "What the hell is going on here?" Ford remembered demanding, but Madera told him to "be quiet," that he "had to leave," and that she would explain once they were airborne. She escorted him to a waiting Humvee that took them to the base airstrip, where a C-130 was warming up on the tarmac.

"Madera ordered me to lie down on a gurney that had been in the rear of the Humvee so she could strap me down. I again asked what was going on, only this time a lot more pissed off. I said that I was perfectly able to walk." Ford said Madera insisted, telling him it was the order of "[Lt. Col. Timothy] Ryan and Artiga" that he be "bound and secured" when taken "out of country." "I saw that I had no choice and finally said OK, anything just to get the fuck out of there," Ford recalled. With the help of the male captain, who Ford said identified himself as a medical officer, Madera strapped him to the gurney.

Just then, Ford claimed, Ryan, Artiga's superior officer, pulled up in his Humvee and walked over to where Ford was lying on the gurney. "He looked down at me and said, 'Don't worry. We are going to get you the best treatment available.' I was enraged at that point, and it was a good thing I was strapped down. I just stared back at Ryan with looks that I hoped could kill, but I didn't say nothing. What was the point? He had won that round."

Ryan did not respond to interview requests for this story.

The propellers of the huge turboprop engines on the C-130 sent scorching blasts of superheated air back toward the group, almost hot enough to singe the skin on a face. (When I left Iraq from the same tarmac a few months later, I did get burned from the blasts.) As Ford's gurney sank into the steaming tarmac, Madera and the other medical officer wheeled him up the long ramp and into the aircraft's cavernous interior. Once they were airborne, Madera unstrapped Ford and motioned for him to sit next to her on one of the hard benches that run along the sides of the plane. "She told me that she was forced to get me out of Iraq ASAP by Ryan and Artiga, who she claimed were scared to death by what I might say. She also told me that she wanted me to get out of Iraq as soon as possible because she feared for my safety." Ford said Madera also told him, "These people are serious and very scary." She apologized for having orchestrated such an exit, but said there was no other way. "I told her that I understood, but felt as though I had just been kidnapped." According to Ford, Madera replied, "You were."

Madera did not respond to several requests to be interviewed for this story.

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