The photos we published linked to this morning from Sydney Australia IndyMedia, a site we warned readers seemed to be anti-semitic and non-neutral, apparently are phony. We are deleting them and apologize to readers who came here by accident to see them. We just logged on for the first time since noon (we are actually on the airplane flying home and this costs a fortune so we won't stay on long) and saw all the comments pointing out the pictures are not real and the source is a hate site. We didn't want to wait any longer to take them down.

Thanks to everyone for letting us know--obviously we did not know they were phony when we posted them.

by TChris

New photos of abuse inflicted on Iraqi prisoners have been acquired by Seymour Hersh at The New Yorker. The sequence of photographs, taken by two cameras over a twelve minute period, depict two German shepherds, restrained by their handlers, barking at a naked Iraqi prisoner. As the dogs pull at their leashes, the prisoner "is leaning against the door to a cell, contorted with terror."

In another, taken a few minutes later, the Iraqi is lying on the ground, writhing in pain, with a soldier sitting on top of him, knee pressed to his back. Blood is streaming from the inmate’s leg. Another photograph is a closeup of the naked prisoner, from his waist to his ankles, lying on the floor. On his right thigh is what appears to be a bite or a deep scratch. There is another, larger wound on his left leg, covered in blood.

Hersh reports on another incident in which dogs were used to attack Iraqi citizens during a sweep in Ramadi in November.

Hersh's sources say "that many senior generals believe that, along with the civilians in Rumsfeld’s office, General Sanchez and General John Abizaid, who is in charge of the Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, had done their best to keep the issue quiet in the first months of the year." Why? Because that's the way Rumsfeld's Pentagon does business.

Secrecy and wishful thinking, the Pentagon official said, are defining characteristics of Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, and shaped its response to the reports from Abu Ghraib. “They always want to delay the release of bad news—in the hope that something good will break,” he said.

No news can be good enough to offset the bad news that continues to pour in from Iraq. Investigators are looking into CIA involvement in the death of an Iraqi prisoner; according to Hersh, "an Army intelligence operative and a judge advocate general were seeking, through their lawyers, to negotiate immunity from prosecution in return for testimony." Rapid court martials of those farthest down the chain of command won't be sufficient to make this tragedy disappear from public view.

Details of the 24 page confidential Red Cross report on Iraqi prisoner abuse are leaking out. The report says most of the abuses occurred during military interrogation and were "tantamount to torture":

The Red Cross saw American officers mistreating Abu Ghraib prisoners by keeping them naked in total darkness in empty cells, and up to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested by mistake, according to a report disclosed Monday. The report by the International Committee of the Red Cross supports its allegations that abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers was broad and "not individual acts" - contrary to President Bush's contention that the mistreatment "was the wrongdoing of a few."

"ICRC delegates directly witnessed and documented a variety of methods used to secure the cooperation of the persons deprived of their liberty with their interrogators," according to the confidential report. The delegates saw in October how detainees at Abu Ghraib were kept "completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness," the report said. It said it found evidence supporting prisoners' allegations of other forms of abuse during arrest, initial detention and interrogation. Among the evidence were burns, bruises and other injuries consistent with the abuse that prisoners alleged, it said.

Among the acts considered to be torture are "brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of "imminent execution."

The ICRC has issued a press release on the premature release of its 24 page confidential report on the coalition forces’ treatment of persons held in Iraq:

Geneva (ICRC) – The Wall Street Journal of 7 May has published extensive excerpts from a confidential document entitled "Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on the Treatment by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and Other Protected Persons by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq During Arrest, Internment and Interrogation" of January 2004. "I am profoundly disturbed that the report was made available for publication without the consent of the ICRC." declared ICRC president Jakob Kellenberger. "The ICRC fulfils its mandate to protect persons detained in armed conflict by addressing problems and violations through private approaches to the detaining authorities and their superiors. This long-standing practice allows us to act in a decisive manner, while ensuring that our delegates have continued access to detainees around the world."

The ICRC has visited persons held by the coalition forces and submitted its confidential reports to the authorities responsible on the basis of its mandate under the Geneva Conventions. This report summarizes a series of working papers handed over to coalition forces. ICRC delegates’ findings were based on their observations and on private interviews with prisoners of war and civilian internees during the 29 visits the ICRC conducted in 14 places of detention throughout Iraq between 31 March and 24 October 2003.

Shades of the Roman Colliseum and gladiators? The first court martial trial of a U.S. soldier charged with abusing Iraqi prisoners will be that of Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits of Hyndman, Pa., who served as part of the now infamous 372nd Military Police Company. The trial will take place May 19 at the Baghdad Convention Center and will be open to the public and the media.

Has Sivits met with a lawyer yet? How can a lawyer prepare for such a complex trial involving the military, the intelligence agency and private contractors on ten days notice? Oh, we get it. That's enough time for the prosecution to parade the soldier's action before the world but not enough time to compel the Government to furnish the defense with sufficient detail about the chain of command to allow it to prepare a credible defense that the soldier's actions were condoned or initiated at the behest of higher-ups , whether they be intelligence officers by or private contractors.

Sounds to us like this young man is being fed to the lions. We're not in any sense condoning his actions, whatever they might have been...we assume the Government chose his case first because it was the easiest for them to prove....but we do object to him being held out as a sacrificial lamb to show the world the U.S. will punish these offenders to the fullest extent possible if at the same time it precludes an investigation and airing of the higher-ups along the chain of command.

[comments open again--our new close comments script seems to prevent old comments from being showed. Until it's fixed, we're re-opening the comments on this thread. But please try to stay on topic]

by TChris

More images of abusive treatment of Iraqi prisoners are coming. As disturbing as they will be to see, as damaging as they will be to the reputation of the United States, they can't be hidden.

Inside the White House, several of Mr. Bush's aides have argued that he has little choice but to make them public. Sooner or later, they say, the images will leak out, prolonging the pain, fueling Iraqi and Arab suspicions of a Pentagon-orchestrated cover-up, and giving new life to calls for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's removal.

Some Pentagon officials argue that releasing the pictures would jeopardize criminal prosecutions by giving defense lawyers the opportunity to argue that the publicity has made it impossible for their clients to have a fair trial. But crime scene pictures are splashed across newspapers and TV screens every day. Scott Peterson, Martha Stewart, O.J. Simpson, et al. demonstrate that pretrial publicity doesn't keep a case from going to trial.

Other military officials argue that the pictures will only make the Arab world, and the Iraqi public, angrier. True, but even if the pictures weren't likely to leak out, they shouldn't be hidden from public view. Suppressing the truth because we know that others won't like it isn't consistent with our core values.

Pretending that the pictures don't exist and hoping that it all blows over was the Rumsfeld strategy. It didn't work then, and it won't work now. The pictures should be made public.

by TChris

Nobody should need to hear a legal opinion in order to understand that it's wrong to degrade and humiliate prisoners, but some are asking whether Pentagon officials blew it by rejecting a plan to send Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IN) to help supervise the unit responsible for prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. Buyer, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves, volunteered for the assignment.

In a telephone interview Friday with The Associated Press, Buyer said military officials all the way up to the Joint Chiefs of Staff had approved his assignment to the 800th Military Police Brigade, which has handled Iraqi prisoners of war since the beginning of the conflict.

Buyer had experience, having served as a lawyer at a POW camp during the first Gulf War. Nonetheless, the Army decided that Buyer's "high-profile status could bring danger to the troops around him." In retrospect, the decision not to take advantage of Buyer's experience brought danger to prisoners who were at the mercy of poorly supervised troops.

Major General Geoffrey Miller is back as the new head of prisons in Iraq. Saturday, he defended his recommendation (made last summer during a visit to Abu Ghraib) that Iraqi prison guards be "actively engaged" in extracting information from Iraqi detainees. See also the transcript of his May 4 briefing conference here. Miller was sent to Iraq to replace Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski Miller who was relieved of her duty in March. Before then, Miller had been the Commander at Guantanamo:

Although the spotlight Friday was on Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld’s testimony before Congress, the focus of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal has started to shift onto Major General Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Miller left Guantanamo and was put in charge of Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, after Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski was quietly sacked at the end of March. Gen. Janis Karpinski has not been charged in connection with the investigation.

She has subtly implied that Miller encouraged questionable practices by introducing his "Gitmo" (Guantanamo) prison practices into Iraq. She is reported to have said that Miller "Gitmo-ized" the Iraq system....Miller’s recommendations for speeding up the interrogation process at Abu Ghraib were presented to the top commander in Iraq, Brigadier General Ricardo S. Sanchez. In part they stated, " … it is essential that the guard force be actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees." The phrase, "setting conditions for interrogations" is a euphemism.

Miller denies using torture. We're skeptical of his claim, to say the least.

First Amnesty International, now the Red Cross:

The international Red Cross says the abuse it found in Iraq's US-run prisons was systematic and amounted to torture, adding that it first raised concerns with the United States more than a year ago. At a quickly-arranged news conference, the International Committee of the Red Cross' director of operations, Pierre Kraehenbuehl, said US authorities had broken international laws and their transgressions had been documented in an ICRC report. "The elements we found were tantamount to torture... There were clearly incidents of degrading and inhuman treatment," he told reporters.

Democracy of One writes that the Bush Administration's culture is responsible for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners:

It is the contempt for due process and civil liberties by Bush and other administration officials that has led to the culture of impunity under which these abuses have occurred. The culture of any organization starts at the top, and lower ranking members take the lead from those above them. In the administration’s bluster to protect America by suspending civil liberties, they unwittingly fostered an environment where gross violations of international law and human decency were tacitly, though not explicitly condoned. While direct orders from top military brass surely were never given to rape, murder and sexually humilate prisoners, these acts are the result of administration policies that lack transparency and accountability

The Taguba report is curious in its failure to discuss Major General Barbara Fast who was the chief intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib prison.

...except for one brief mention, the 55-page report contains nothing about the role of the top military intelligence officer in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast. As head of intelligence for the U.S. command in Baghdad, Fast was in charge of interrogators at Abu Ghraib, where prisoners were beaten, sodomized and photographed in sexually degrading positions.

Experts contacted by the St. Petersburg Times say strict adherence to military protocol - and a possible reluctance to delve too far into intelligence operations - have kept Fast out of the spotlight....That the investigation into prisoner abuse was conducted by a major general may be one reason why Fast, an officer of equal rank, apparently has undergone little scrutiny, one expert says.

There's more in this long Sunday New York Times article, In Abuse, a Picture of G.I.'s Ill Prepared and Overwhelmed. The article also contains statements from the individual guards.

The New York Times says the father of Ivan Frederick, of one of the prison guards being investigated for abuse, fearful his son would be a scapegoat, contacted his brother-in law-, William Lawson, who contacted "retired Colonel and muckraker David Hackworth," who put the father in touch with the '60 Minutes II' producers.

Rumsfeld to Congress yesterday: "I wish I had been able to convey to them the gravity of this before we saw it in the media,"

The irony, Mr. Lawson said, is that the public spectacle might have been avoided if the military and the federal government had been responsive to his claims that his nephew was simply following orders. Mr. Lawson said he sent letters to 17 members of Congress about the case earlier this year, with virtually no response, and that he ultimately contacted Mr. Hackworth's Web site out of frustration, leading him to cooperate with a consultant for "60 Minutes II."

....He shared his frustration in his March 23 e-mail message to Mr. Hackworth's Web site, writing: "We have contacted the Red Cross, Congress both parties, Bill O'Reilly and many others. Nobody wants to touch this."

"The Army had the opportunity for this not to come out, not to be on 60 Minutes," he said. "But the Army decided to prosecute those six G.I.'s because they thought me and my family were a bunch of poor, dirt people who could not do anything about it. But unfortunately, that was not the case."

How did the photos get to Ivan Frederick's father?

This is just awful....in today's Guardian....showing the guards were taught how to commit the indecencies they perpetuated on Iraqi prisoners.

The sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment and degradation used by special forces soldiers that is now being disseminated among ordinary troops and contractors who do not know what they are doing, according to British military sources. The techniques devised in the system, called R2I - resistance to interrogation - match the crude exploitation and abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad.

One former British special forces officer who returned last week from Iraq, said: "It was clear from discussions with US private contractors in Iraq that the prison guards were using R2I techniques, but they didn't know what they were doing." He said British and US military intelligence soldiers were trained in these techniques, which were taught at the joint services interrogation centre in Ashford, Kent, now transferred to the former US base at Chicksands. "There is a reservoir of knowledge about these interrogation techniques which is retained by former special forces soldiers who are being rehired as private contractors in Iraq. Contractors are bringing in their old friends".