Is this horrible puzzle starting to fill itself in? From a two year old article:

Back in Houston, the Taliban was learning how the “other half lives,” and according to The Telegraph, “stayed in a five-star hotel and were chauffeured in a company minibus.” The Taliban representatives ”…were amazed by the luxurious homes of Texan oil barons. Invited to dinner at the palatial home of Martin Miller, a vice-president of Unocal, they marveled at his swimming pool, views of the golf course and six bathrooms.” Mr. Miller, said he hoped that UNOCAL had clinched the deal.

Dick Cheney was then CEO of Haliburton Corporation, a pipeline services vendor based in Texas. Gushed Cheney in 1998, “I can’t think of a time when we’ve had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It’s almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight. The good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But we go where the business is.” Would Cheney bargain with the harborers of U.S. troop killers if that’s where the business was?

Read the article in its entirety here.

From the New York Times:

“That is Joiner,” he said, pointing to one male soldier in glasses, a black hat and blue rubber gloves. His arms were crossed over a stack of naked and hooded Iraqi prisoners.

“That is Miss Maya,” he said, pointing to a young woman’s fresh face poking up over the same pile.

He gazed down at another picture. In it, a second female soldier flashed a “thumbs up” and pointed with her other hand at the genitals of a man wearing nothing but a black hood, his fingers laced on top of his head. He did not know her name. But the small scars on the torso left little doubt about the identity of the naked prisoner.

“That is me,” he said, and he tapped his own hooded, slightly hunched image.

Mr. Abd, 34, is at the center of an explosive scandal over American mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners, but he remained calm in a detailed, two-hour account of his time at the fearsome Abu Ghraib prison. He claimed that he was never interrogated, and never charged with a crime. Officials at the prison said Tuesday that they could not comment on his case.

Read the article in its entirety here.

As a follow-up, I would recommend Adam Greenfield’s On responsibility and hope. Then there is always this piece in The New Yorker.