According to the NY Times, "At least 26 prisoners have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 in what Army and Navy investigators have concluded or suspect were acts of criminal homicide, according to military officials."
So remember when folks use phrases like "It was kind of like Animal House on the nightshift," they mislead. As far as I remember, no one was killed at Animal House. Rush Limbaugh refers to our actions as "hazing" and "an out-of-control fraternity prank"--but most such pranks do not involve, for example, repeated blows aimed at the lower extremities so as not to be readily visible to others, resulting in death.
Twenty-six is a shocking number, and it's just the number given by Army and Navy investigators, who it seems have been willing to close the books on too many cases too quickly.
Yes, yes, I understand that whatever this number is, it's paltry compared to Saddam's decades of death. But we should never be asked to compare ourselves with Saddam--but rather with the kind of nation we want to be. Someone else's horrors are hardly an excuse for creating our own.