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HARRISBURG — In May of 2003, Stacy Garrity was in Iraq with the U.S. Army Reserve when she had to make a difficult decision.
Garrity was a 38-year-old major tasked with helping to process incoming and outgoing prisoners of war at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, just a few months after the U.S. invasion had begun. A newly arrived detainee came through her line with a cracked nose and blood flowing down his face.
She asked him through a translator what had happened, and was told that en route to the camp, U.S. soldiers had brutally kicked and stepped on him and other prisoners.
After hearing similar accounts from two soldiers who witnessed the incident, Garrity spoke to a high-ranking sergeant in another unit about reporting the abuse. That person advised against an official report, according to Garrity. The next morning, she made one anyway.
Garrity wasn’t the only one — at least one other soldier, then-Major Al Garbarino, heard about the incident secondhand and reported it immediately, he told Spotlight PA.
The aftermath of that bus incident and those reports divided the camp, according to testimony Garrity gave in a 2004 military investigation into soldiers’ mistreatment of prisoners at an internment facility in Iraq. Garrity noted she felt...
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