The Army's position that no "direct order 'smoking gun'" can be found, is the proposition that the brass are testing to see if it will stick, and let the public's fury fall upon the narrower shoulders at the bottom.
Yet from a variety of paperwork and even Army news stories, the command climate that gave some officers and contractors the impression that what they were doing, was following orders --- that is the higher-ups' responsibility at all times to monitor and correct.
The brass who populate these particular chains of command, for the most part, were neither listening, nor attending to the wheel.
Several interviewees insisted that the MP and MI Soldiers at Abu Ghraib (BCCF) received regular training on the basics of detainee operations; however, they have been unable to produce any verifying documentation, sign-in rosters, or soldiers who can recall the content of this training. (Annexes 59, 80, and the Absence of any Training Records)