Into the Abyss of Baghdad - Los Angeles Times

Into the abyss of Baghdad: by Patrick J McDonnell

"BAGHDAD -- I keep seeing his face. He appears to be in his mid-20s, bespectacled, slightly bearded, and somehow his smile conveys a sense of prosperity to come. Perhaps he is set to marry, or enroll in graduate school, or launch a business — all of these flights of ambition seem possible.

In the next few images he is encased in plastic: His face is frozen in a ghoulish grimace. Blackened lesions blemish his neck.

'Drill holes,' says Col. Khaled Rasheed, an Iraqi commander who is showing me the set of photographs."