This Newsweek web exclusive has very powerful comments about the Iraq prison scandal and then more about the impulses that drive all of us, for good or bad, including those that have driven President Bush. Here's some quotes:

NEWSWEEK: What are the politics of denial?
Michael Milburn: We found that, particularly for males who had never had any psychotherapy, when they reported a high level of childhood punishment, they were significantly more likely to endorse a range of punitive public policies like support for the death penalty, opposition to abortion, support for the use of military force. We used a notion of therapy as a general indicator of denial or lack of denial. Well, the extent to which emotion connected to childhood punishment was driving their political attitudes, when they had an opportunity to sort of reflect on that and [have a] short-term catharsis experience, that sort of energy disappears.

What we have found, really broadly, is the higher level of punitiveness among political conservatives is really strongly associated with experiences, generally, of harsh punishment from childhood. It’s not just going to be that they were spanked; there’s a whole family climate, and punishment is just going to be one of those indicators of that. We have a whole chapter on the religious right. In our research we also found that when we gave people the statement “the amount of physical and sexual abuse in this country is greatly exaggerated by the mass media,” conservatives were significantly more likely to agree with that.

As to President Bush's formative experiences:

What does Bush’s upbringing and conservativism tell you about the way he sees the world?
Bush is really fascinating. There was a televised interview with Barbara Bush during the [2000] campaign. She was talking about her son and relating this one incident where he had come home drunk and his father was walking out to talk to him. W was saying, “OK Dad, right now, let’s do it.” Clearly there’s a tremendous amount of anger there. Not that this explains everything that’s going on, but it’s clearly, to me, a factor in his I’m-gonna-get-the-guy-who-threatened-my-dad-but-I’m-also-going-to-show-my-dad-that- I-can-do-stuff-that-he-couldn’t-do [attitude].

The Los Angeles Times has conducted an investigation into the deaths of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Times has identified at least 18 cases of deaths of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan beginning in 2002 from apparent mistreatment or shootings during prison unrest and other incidents. At least 14 occurred in Iraq and four in Afghanistan. The CIA has been connected by investigators, witnesses or other sources to as many as five of the deaths.

Independent human rights groups insist that more have died than the military has disclosed. They say that the military has refused to release sufficient information and that the investigations so far have provided too little accountability. Apparently, only one low-ranking soldier has been tried and convicted for shooting an unarmed prisoner. He was demoted to private and discharged from the Army.

Where do the numbers come from?

by TChris

According to Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, the thirty year effort to build and fill U.S. prisons has been great for the rural areas where prisons are generally located, but not so good for urban areas that lose representation in the census when urban dwellers are counted in the rural prisons that house them.

[B]ecause the Census Bureau counts prison inmates as residents of the legislative districts in which they're incarcerated, the relocation of inmates -- who are not allowed to vote in 48 states -- skews both the distribution of government funds and the apportionment of legislative representation.

The distortion in representation caused by enumeration of prisoners tends to favor rural residents, whites, and Republicans, at the expense of urban residents, blacks, and Democrats. ... [T]he presence of disenfranchised blacks in rural prisons increases the representation of white, rural, Republican voters both in the House and in state legislatures.

Politicians shouldn't be given an incentive to incarcerate more people for the sake of boosting populations in particular political districts. Stinebrickner-Kauffman makes a strong argument that the Census Bureau should correct this problem by counting inmates as living in their "homes of record."

The New York Times reports that in her sworn statement to investigators, PFC Lynndie England said of the abuse heaped on Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib:

Pfc. Lynndie England explained the mystery of why soldiers at Abu Ghraib took pictures of detainees masturbating and piled naked with plastic sandbags over their heads by saying, "We thought it looked funny so pictures were taken." Private England's statement, made May 5, narrates the graphic photographs now at the center of the prison abuse scandal in specific detail and a matter-of-fact tone, describing the abuse as routine and sometimes amusing, but almost never, to her mind, out of bounds. [our emphasis]

Remember this picture of her leading the prisoner by the leash? That was no momentary encounter.

She explains how she put a strap around a detainee's neck and forced him and others to run and crawl down a hallway for "approximately four to six hours;" how one soldier would regularly throw a Nerf football at detainees with bags over their heads "to scare them;" how one soldier would kick detainees and cause open wounds, then "would personally stitch detainees if the wound weren't too bad," according to a copy of her statement given to The New York Times. [our emphasis]

As to her conduct and that of her co-guards:

Asked if she ever physically abused a detainee, Private England said, "Yes, I stepped on some of them, push them or pull them, but nothing extreme." She described how Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick II punched detainees, "and the normal stuff as far as lean on them or push them." "He also played some mind games with some of them with chemical lights," she added. "He would tell them to lift their legs and place the chemical light under their feet and tell them it was a knife. The chemical light would then be broken and spilled on the ground, the detainee would then be forced to crawl through it and then placed in a dark cell, this would freak out the detainee because they would glow."

More about the guards' amusement:

Open thread: It's Sunday. Enough of us, let's hear from you. Can Bush survive the prison and torture scandals? Will Rumsfeld go first? Will Kerry figure out how to take the ball and run with it? If Bush is down in the polls, why isn't Kerry up?

[Comments now closed, over 100 of them, thanks to all for your thoughts.]

Update: Pentagon denies that Rumsfeld or other officials approved operations that led to the interrogation methods used on Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison, the Defense Department said.

Update: The Iraqi detainees released Friday from the Abu Ghraib prison are urging the issuance of an international arrest warrant for U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his trial over their abuse.

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Original Post:

Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker, who wrote this ground-breaking article on the Iraqi prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, does it again with his new article on a secret program approved by the Pentagon that encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners.

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld's decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America's prospects in the war on terror.

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon's operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld's long-standing desire to wrest control of America's clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

[link via Atrios]

Update: Here's a Reuters article discussing the New Yorker article. And Memeorandum has a compilation of blog coverage on it.

Update: The Hersh article is the story of the day--Associated Press; CNN; over 1400 articles on Google already.

Seriously Though recaps 12 inconsistences in the Nicholas Berg decapitation video which we began chronicling here. One of our readers writes in another one:

I have been reading the inconsistenicies with the video and I have yet to come across one that relates to the man with the white hood. Throughout the whole beheading the man that is cutting Berg's throat has a black hood on and the one holding him down has the white hood on. Yet, right when the man completely severes the head, he grabs his hair and raises it in front of the camera and he has the knife in his right hand. THe funny thing is, he's wearing a white hood now. What happened to his black hood?

If you read no other articles today, you must read these: A third recently released British detainee at Guantanamo has accused the prison camp of having a brutal punishment squad, called "The Extreme Reaction Force" and says the abuse was videotaped. The Pengtagon acknowledges that there is such a force and that everything it does is videotaped. Sen. Patrick Leahy has said he will demand Rumsfeld produce the videos for Congress:

Dozens of videotapes of American guards allegedly engaged in brutal attacks on Guantanamo Bay detainees have been stored and catalogued at the camp, an investigation by The Observer has revealed. The disclosures, made in an interview with Tarek Dergoul, the fifth British prisoner freed last March, who has been too traumatised to speak until now, prompted demands last night by senior politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to make the videos available immediately. They say that if the contents are as shocking as Dergoul claims, they will provide final proof that brutality against detainees has become an institutionalised feature of America's war on terror.

Here's Mr. Dergoul's description of his treatment, as told to the Observer:

Via Rocky Mountain Progressive Network:

Remember the Army Times' editorial castigating Rumsfeld and the rest of the civilian leadership at the Pentagon? Now the Air Force Times' publishes it, too;

This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential — even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war.

The Navy Times joins the chorus with the same editorial.

And here are the Navy Times' poll results;

----58% say Rumsfeld, Myers, or both should go...

Take a guess where the following true scenario takes place daily:

The bullhorn blares across the yard. Young Latinos and African Americans quickly scan their surroundings, noticing the many faces that watch them. A chain-link fence, 20 feet high, surrounds them on three sides. Dutifully, they fall into place in line. Heads up, hands clasped behind their backs, shoulders straight. Most know better than to talk. A few test the rules and murmur among themselves. "You're wasting my time!" barks the attendant. Rumpled play dollars are doled out to the well behaved; order is maintained through this token economy. Thus begins their day.

You're thinking boot camp? A juvenile detention facility? Wrong. It's an elementary school.

This is elementary school. First grade. Our inmates are 6 years old. They are not criminals. Small and wiry, these are children whose usual offenses are pulling braids or not sharing Hot Cheetos. The children must walk in straight lines. Hands must remain behind their backs, as though in handcuffs. The high fences separate them from the outside, physically and symbolically. What does it mean when you are 6 and your school is run like a prison?

For the first time in his Presidency, a Newsweek poll says, a majority of Americans disapprove of President Bush. Only 42% approve of the job he's doing, down seven points in the last month:

Bush's overall job approval rating in the survey conducted May 13 and 14 fell from 49 percent in the last Newsweek poll almost a month ago, while the number of respondents who say they approve of his handling of Iraq also dropped to 35 percent from 44 percent. Forty-one percent of registered voters say they want Bush reelected, down from 46 percent.

A feminist, a Laker fan and a teacher struggles with determining where consent ends and rape begins.

Is it rape, a criminal act of violation, when you have willingly joined someone late at night? He hasn't drugged you or strong-armed you, as far as anybody knows. But sometime between entering the door and rushing out of that same door, you became uncomfortable with the sex and wanted it to stop. He didn't, and you're furious. You feel violated, and rightfully so. But is it rape? Did Kobe Bryant force this woman to have sex? Or to finish what they both had started?

Our view has been that "no" means "no"--provided the "no" has been effectively and clearly communicated in a way that any reasonable partner would have understood.