When the infantry units from the Florida National Guard arrived at the Assad airbase north-west of Baghdad in early May last year, they discovered they were to run a makeshift prison camp where detainees were confined in a vast aircraft hangar, with cells marked off with concertina wire.
Prisoners wore hoods made out of sacking used for sandbags. The Guard units were ordered to keep those suspected of being combatants awake for future interrogation, and instructed in techniques of sleep deprivation by three interrogators.
The interrogators were not in regular army uniform, and the soldiers never learned their real names.
"We had a sledgehammer that we would bang against the wall, and that would create an echo that sounds like an explosion that scared the hell out of them," said Camilo Mejia, a member of the Florida National Guard who has applied to the Pentagon for status as a conscientious objector.
"If that didn't work we would load a 9mm pistol, and pretend to be charging it near their head, and make them think we were going to shoot them. Once you did that, they did whatever you wanted them to do basically."
In a statement, written to support his conscientious objector application, Sgt Mejia writes that a platoon leader objected to their new duties, only to be told that his stand could end his military career.
Love our non-chud troops
next look up "ramadi madness"