We're calling this A Document a Day, and for the most part it will be just that, but we begin with four short incident accounts by American servicewomen and men who stumbled on manifestations of much larger system of abuse: the one shown here, recorded by a military translator in Kandahar, Afghanistan, January 2002; this one from a US Army interrogator in Guantánamo; this one from an MP stationed in Iraq; and this one from an Iraq war veteran.

Serving in detention facilities across the globe, these soldiers weren't in a position to know whether what they were seeing was part of a pattern or the product of official policy. But they were certain what they were seeing was wrong.

• Sworn statement of military interrogator re abusive interrogation, Kandahar, Jan 2002

• DOD interrogator Memo for Record re GITMO incident, repeated hard takedown, 4/28/03 (document starts on page 87)

• Sworn statement reporting “what I think were war crimes,” Iraq, 11/14/08 (document starts on page 5)

• Urgent report from FBI field office Sacramento re individual's report of prisoner abuse in Iraq, 6/25/04