Looking at Sabrina

Hers is a face I recognize and know intimately.

Sabrina is almost always smiling. She is every smiling white female I see in ads, mail order catalogs, Facebook photos, and family albums. I know her, her image convinces me.

The truth is that I know very little about the woman behind the photograph, the 25-year-old army reservist from Lorton, Virginia, who served at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003. Along with eleven other soldiers, Sabrina Harman was convicted for her participation in the infamous torture scandal, in which Iraqi men and women were brutally attacked by dogs, raped, beaten, and forced to masturbate in elaborate scenes staged for and documented by the camera.