Soldiers against torture
Their stories are too little told—the stories of U.S. servicemen and women of devout religious faith who, often at great cost, stood up to protest the use of torture in the American open-ended war on terror.
Sergeant Joseph Darby is an army reservist who served as a military policeman at the Abu Ghraib prison. During his free time in Iraq, Darby shot photographs of biblical sites. He was so enthusiastic in this pursuit that he asked friends to pass him their own pictures. It was on one such disk, shared by a fellow soldier, that he found not only photos of Nineveh and Babylon but some examples of shocking violence. The practice of torture violated Darby's faith and his honor as a soldier. Because of his conscientious persistence and despite opposition from his commanding officers, the photos were eventually released to the world.
Lieutenant Colonel Darrel Vandeveld is a lawyer and reservist who was a military prosecutor at Guantánamo Bay. He was distressed by evidence of torture tactics he found there, which went against his beliefs as a Catholic and his honor as a soldier. After consulting with Jesuit peace activist John Dear, Vandeveld resigned from his post and went public with his "grave misgivings."
