His hair is cropped short. Half his teeth have been knocked out, his face is battered and the eyes sunken and haunted-looking. His chest is covered with 50 separate cuts from a knife, his back has even more marks, which he says are cigarette burns. Two of his fingers were broken and deliberately bent into a permanent, contorted position and there’s a hole in the middle of his palm where his torturers stabbed him and twisted the blade.

Today, though, Adnan was a happy man, so happy that he could barely restrain his excitement. He was finally freed from a prison in downtown Basra, after British troops entered the city and drove the remaining defenders away. And as he took a small group of American journalists on a tour of the hospital, he enthusiastically led a crowd of fellow ex-prisoners, their families, friends and passersby in the first rendition of a pro-American chant that any of us have so far heard: “Nam nam Bush , Sad-Dam No” (“Yes, yes, Bush, Saddam No”). They chanted and danced, filling one of their former cells in a spontaneous celebration.

For the five millionth time, THIS is what Ms. Cagan is so dedicated to defending.