A huge mural just inside the gates of Abu Gharib Prison depicts a smiling Saddam Hussein and a row of black-hooded executioners. Bit redundant, that. The Iraqi president has been known to pull the trigger himself when in the mood for a spot of blood-letting or political avengement. But such was the frequency of formalized extermination under the Baath party regime that executioners were practically guaranteed tenure. Nowhere was the butchery more rife than Abu Gharib, a notorious penitentiary/gulag 40 kilometres west of the capital, and sprawling for miles behind thick stone walls along the main highway into town. It's...