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...

by TChris

Ahmad Chalabi (a man of doubtful credibility, as Talkleft discussed here and here) finally said something that's undeniably true:

"The Iraqi people will not accept limited, questionable sovereignty.... That means they should have complete control over their armed forces and over Iraqi revenues and be able to dispose of them according to the decisions of the provisional government."

Chalabi wants the Bush administration to give the interim Iraqi government control over its oil revenues and its military when power is transferred on June 30. Without that autonomy, Chalabi says that the notion of sovereignty will be meaningless. He's right, but that doesn't mean it's going to happen.

The revenues are now deposited in a Federal Reserve Bank of New York account, which is controlled by the United States. Iraqis are expected to have control of expenditures after June, but U.S. officials want a U.S.-authorized international board, which monitors the accounts, to remain in place.

While the Bush administration has long denied its intent to install a puppet government in Iraq, it wants to control Iraq's oil revenue through a puppet board. That isn't sovereignty.

Colin Powell says the U.S. military will leave if asked to do so on July 1 by the interim government. Maybe he's confident that the U.S. won't install an interim government that would make that request. Maybe he sees such a request as an exit strategy for the Bush administration.

Or maybe he's just not on the same page as others in the administration. Lt. Gen. Walter Sharp, testifying before Congress on Thursday, contradicted a state department official who advanced the Powell view. Sharp asserted that only an elected government could kick the U.S. military out of the country.

Chalabi points out that U.S. forces killed 1,500 Iraqis last month. While the U.S. may argue that its military presence is needed to assure security for the new Iraqi government, it's easy to see why Iraqis might think it's time to take care of their own business.

Even Wolfowitz disagrees with Rumsfeld on what constitutes excessive interrogation techniques:

Mr. Rumsfeld has said that the American military in Iraq was abiding by the Geneva Conventions, and that the mistreatment was the work of a terrible few. But at a Senate hearing on Thursday, Mr. Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, acknowledged that hooding prisoners or forcing them to crouch naked for 45 minutes — tactics available to interrogators with General Sanchez's approval under the old policy — was inhumane. The International Red Cross had warned American officials for months that Iraqi prisoners were being abused in American-run prisons.

Friday, changes were announced, likely the result of increased attention to the interrogation methods used by the U.S. against prisoners :

Under a barrage of international and domestic criticism, the top American commander in Iraq has barred virtually all coercive interrogation practices, like forcing prisoners to crouch for long periods or depriving them of sleep, the Pentagon said Friday. The commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, will still consider requests to hold prisoners in isolation for more than 30 days, according to a senior Central Command official who briefed reporters on Friday. The general has approved 25 such requests since October, the official said. But the official said that General Sanchez would deny requests to use other harsh methods. "Simply, we will not even entertain a request, so don't even send it up for a review," the Central Command official said.

....Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who clashed with Mr. Wolfowitz at Thursday's hearing, said in a telephone interview, "I'm glad they're changing them, but it's like closing the barn door after the herd is out. Why were these regulations promulgated in the first place?"

Unfortunately, the changes only apply to prisoners in Iraq, not Guantanamo or Afghanistan. Once again, here's the chart of interrogation techniques (pdf) currently being employed.

Juliusblog has photos of the demonstrators from the 'US Out' organization protesting at Donald Rumseld's house yesterday. The protestors reenacted the Abu Ghraib abuse photos. Go take a look. (link via Skippy)

The UK's Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan has been fired because the photos he published of British soldiers abusing Abu Ghraib prisoners turned out to be a hoax.

"The Daily Mirror published in good faith photographs which it absolutely believed were genuine images of British soldiers abusing an Iraqi prisoner," the newspaper said. "However there is now sufficient evidence to suggest that these pictures are fakes and that the Daily Mirror has been the subject of a calculated and malicious hoax. The Daily Mirror therefore apologises unreservedly for publishing the pictures and deeply regrets the reputational damage done to the QLR and the army in Iraq."

Morgan remained defiant:

"All I want to say is we published the truth," he told the ITV News Channel. "We have revealed a can of worms. If the government chooses to ignore that, it is entirely a matter for them."

Guy Womack, the lawyer for accused Iraqi prison guard Charles Graner, says this photo supports his defense that Graner and the other guards at Abu Ghraib were acting on orders from above. Womack says Graner will not plea bargain and that he plans to call several Generals in Graner's defense (WSJ, subscription only):

Spc. Charles Graner etched numbers into this photo in order to identify himself and others at Abu Ghraib prison. Spc. Graner is labeled No. 1 in the photo, which shows Iraqi prisoners bound together. According to Spc. Graner, No. 2 is a civilian contractor for military intelligence, Nos. 4, 5, 7 and 8 are military-intelligence soldiers, and Nos. 3 and 6 are military police. No. 9 is not identified.....If Spc. Graner's identifications are accurate, the photo is one of the few made public so far that depict intelligence personnel with naked Iraqis and not just military police. It could be key to determining who was in charge.

Charges against Graner were announced Friday.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said the seven charges against Graner included conspiracy to maltreat detainees, dereliction of duty for woefully failing to protect detainees from abuse, maltreatment of detainees, assaulting detainees, committing indecent acts, adultery and obstruction of justice.

We assume the adultery charge pertains to Spc. Lynndie England's pregnant condition.

As we reported earlier, SPC Jeremy Sivits is expected to plead guilty next week and provide evidence against the other guards. According to the Guardian, Sivits will claim:

This article in Al Jazeera says bloggers around the world are questioning the authenticity of the Nicholas Berg decapitation video. Conspiracy theorists take note - it raises many questions and points out several oddities in the video. Here's a few:

Net surfers point to the unlikely timing of the executioner's dubbed announcement that Berg was to die for "Iraqi prisoner abuse". Berg was last seen alive on 10 April, when his father Michael Berg believes he was killed - two weeks before the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal broke in the world's media.

The body is completely motionless even as the knife is brought to bear – not so much as an instinctive wriggle. More graphically, some claim that cutting the throat's artery would cause a significant amount of blood to gush out. But little emerges and when the head was raised – not a drop of blood is seen to fall.

His last email on 6 April to his family stated he wished to return home as soon as possible – yet the FBI claims he refused an offer of help to get home....Some claim the face in the video looks remarkably unlike Berg's...The Jordanian accused of the beheading Berg is himself believed to have been killed in March, according to two Islamist groups.

Was he killed first and beheaded later? Was it really Berg? Why was Berg detained by Iraqi police? Berg was last seen on April 9. His body was found May 8.

Update: The CIA maintains the beheader was Abu Musab Zarqawi. One question we have that goes against the conspiracy theorists: If Berg was not decapitated live, what were the blood-curdling screams on the tape we could all hear? Or, was the audio dubbed in later?

Damn Foreigner has a good idea:

I think that the US has to take one large step to clean up this mess...Get out of the business of incarcerating Arabs and Muslims. Any perceived benefit from taking certain people off the streets is easily negated by the pictures that we saw which will inflame those on the outside.

This includes a few things..first Gitmo has to go. Either charge people or release them. We are supposed to be a shining example of freedom and democracy, this doesn't help. The possibility that something like the photos of Abu Ghraib getting out of Gitmo also exists. And quite frankly, lets do this before the Supreme Court makes a decision on this case.

Next, we have to release people in Iraq who haven't been charged with a crime. Holding people because we think they might do something bad is simply wrong and un-American. It violates constitutionally protected freedoms that we should be spreading, not suppressing at every chance. Then for all of the people who should be incarcerated, we should hand over control of the prisons to other people. This can include the Iraqi's themselves, or re-assigning troops in the Coalition of the Willing to those duties. They should have independent oversight by the Red Crescent Society or other such groups.

From the Washington Post:

Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade who was in charge of running prisons in Iraq, told Army investigators earlier this year that she had resisted decisions by superior officers to hand over control of the prisons to military intelligence officials and to authorize the use of lethal force as a first step in keeping order -- command decisions that have come in for heavy criticism in the Iraq prison abuse scandal.

Karpinski spoke of her resistance to the decisions in a detailed account of her tenure furnished to Army investigators. It places two of the highest-ranking Army officers now in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, at the heart of decision-making on both matters. She has been formally admonished by the Army for her actions in Iraq. She said both men overruled her concerns about the military intelligence takeover and the use of deadly force.

Karpinski will be online Friday, May 14 at 11 a.m. ET, to discuss the prison abuse scandal. Submit your questions and comments before or during today's discussion.

As anticipated, Prison guard Spc. Jeremy Sivits, is cooperating with authorities in exchange for more lenient treatment in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. The Washington Post obtained copies of his statements, and the AP reports:

[Sivits] took photos of abuse at the Abu Ghraib detention center in Iraq, described soldiers laughing and joking as they beat, stripped and sexually humiliated detainees, according to newspaper reports....

He said the mistreatment was not authorized by higher-ups in the chain of command. "Our command would have slammed us," he said. "They believe in doing the right thing. If they saw what was going on, there would have been hell to pay."

The other charged guards tell a different story:

The other guards facing charges have said they acted on orders from superiors or from military intelligence, and all six have declared their innocence.

Sivits claims:

Sivits described Graner as one of the ringleaders. The former Pennsylvania prison guard was joking, laughing, angered and "acting like he was enjoying it," Sivits said. He said Graner once punched a detainee in the head so hard the man fell unconscious. Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II forced naked detainees to masturbate, showing them how to do it "right", and seemed to enjoy watching the prisoners beaten, Sivits said. Sivits said Sgt. Javal Davis threw himself on a pile of prisoners and "then stomped on either the fingers or toes of the detainees," as they screamed in pain.

Lawyers for the other charged guards say Sivits is not credible, lying and just saying what the investigators want to hear to get himself a sweeter deal.

Update: The Washington Post profiles Jeremy Sivits.