Amnesty International has written this open letter to President George W. Bush on the question of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of Iraqi prisoners. As to the Taguba report, the letter says:

The Taguba report emphasized that the findings were "amply" supported by confessions from suspected perpetrators, statements from detainees and witnesses, as well as "extremely graphic photographic evidence". The report found that there was a failure to establish clear training, procedures and oversight on interrogation and treatment of detainees, and "that very little instruction or training" was provided to military police personnel on the applicable rules of the Geneva Conventions.

....The Taguba report presents evidence that the abuse allegedly inflicted on the detainees in Iraq followed requests from military intelligence and other government interrogators that the military police (MP) guards in the prison "set physical and mental conditions for favourable interrogation of witnesses". Guards alleged that military intelligence personnel had given instructions including "loosen this guy up for us", "make sure he has a bad night"; "make sure he gets the treatment"; and "Good job, they're breaking down real fast. They answer every question. They're giving out good information, Finally, and Keep up the good work. Stuff like that."

Amnesty recounts the pattern of abuses it reported to the Administration over a long period of time.

The New York Times reports Saturday on the routine mistreatment of prisoners in America. After setting out numerous sickening examples, the article reverts back to Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and we learn that the man who was responsible for directing the re-opening of the Abu Ghraib prison after the U.S. invaded Iraq, and for training the guards, was Lane McCotter of Utah, who was selected for the job by none other than Attorney General John Ashcroft.

[McCotter] resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time.....McCotter later became an executive of a private prison company, one of whose jails was under investigation by the Justice Department when he was sent to Iraq as part of a team of prison officials, judges, prosecutors and police chiefs picked by Attorney General John Ashcroft to rebuild the country's criminal justice system....In Utah, in addition to the death of the mentally ill inmate, Mr. McCotter also came under criticism for hiring a prison psychiatrist whose medical license was on probation and who was accused of Medicaid fraud and writing prescriptions for drug addicts.

Mr. McCotter, 63, is director of business development for Management & Training Corporation, a Utah-based firm that says it is the third-largest private prison company, operating 13 prisons. In 2003, the company's operation of the Santa Fe jail was criticized by the Justice Department and the New Mexico Department of Corrections for unsafe conditions and lack of medical care for inmates. No further action was taken.

McCotter reports he left Abu Ghraib after training the guards and cutting the ribbon at the opening ceremony last September. As for Ashcroft, who picked McCotter,

When Mr. Ashcroft announced the appointment of the team to restore Iraq's criminal justice system last year, including Mr. McCotter, he said, "Now all Iraqis can taste liberty in their native land, and we will help make that freedom permanent by assisting them to establish an equitable criminal justice system based on the rule of law and standards of basic human rights."

Then there's this quote, which turns out to be quite prescient:

Sabrina Harman is one of the U.S. soldiers who have been charged with abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison and who will face court martial proceedings. Harman was interviewed by e-mail from Iraq this week.

[She] said she was assigned to break down prisoners for interrogation. "They would bring in one to several prisoners at a time already hooded and cuffed," Harman said in interviews by e-mail this week from Baghdad. "The job of the MP was to keep them awake, make it hell so they would talk." She said her military police unit took direction from the military intelligence officers in charge of the facility and from civilian contractors there who conducted interrogations.

Harman's face is now famous as belonging to one of the soldiers who posed in a widely published photograph showing naked Iraqi detainees stacked in a pyramid....She also is charged with striking several detainees by jumping on a pile of detainees, writing "rapeist" on a prisoner's leg and with attaching wires to a prisoner's hands while he stood on a box with his head covered, according to Army charging documents. She is accused of then telling him if he fell off the box he would be electrocuted.

During his testimony today, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned that more photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners would be released shortly--and that they were worse than those we've seen to date --depicting "sadistic, cruel and inhumane" acts.

NBC describes the as-yet unreleased photos:

U.S. military officials told NBC News that the unreleased images showed U.S. soldiers severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi prisoner and “acting inappropriately with a dead body.” The officials said there was also a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys.

Here's another column suggesting Bush is wrong to say prison abuse is inconsistent with the nature and temperment of Americans:

President Bush is entirely mistaken --180 degrees wrong -- when he says the abuse inflicted by U.S. soldiers on Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison doesn't "reflect the hearts of the American people.'' Of course it does.

This is not to slur Americans. It reflects our hearts because it reflects all human hearts, in general. The potential to be cruel, to take advantage of situations, to abuse power, is lodged deep within the souls of, if not everyone, then practically everyone, and those who deny it are either oblivious or hypocrites or self-proclaimed saints.

[hat tip to Ted from Chicago]

by TChris

President Bush reportedly chastised Donald Rumsfeld for not giving him a full briefing on the extent to which U.S. soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners. But Rumsfeld isn't the only person who knew about the scandal. Doesn't Paul Bremer also deserve a scolding for burying his head in the sand?

Interesting questions were posed today during a briefing in Iraq.

Q Yeah, Dan (last name inaudible), The Washington Post. For Dan. You said, if I understood you correctly, that in January Ambassador Bremer heard about the Abu Ghraib issue when it was made public. I'm not aware that it was made public then, and it certainly wasn't made public here in Iraq. Could you tell me why, between January and now, or the last week or so, neither you nor Ambassador Bremer stood up at this podium to expose this issue to the Iraqi public with whom you're working so closely with?

MR. SENOR: Well, first of all, it was. A press statement was issued in January on this particular issue -- General Kimmitt can speak to the details -- and has been public since then. And to your second point, Ambassador Bremer on multiple occasions in meetings with Iraqi people, including public events, he has expressed his outrage about this particular issue. In fact, even as recently as yesterday, Ambassador Bremer appeared on Al-Iraqiyah, in which he had an interview with several Iraqi journalists, and about half the program was dedicated to this subject, and he addressed many of the issues you raise.

Q ...When did Ambassador Bremer see those photos?

MR. SENOR: I do not know when he saw the photos. I just know that he was made aware of the issue in January of 2004.

Does everyone who should be talking to the President follow the same rule? "Don't tell him anything that might upset him."

American Progress has this Viewing Guide to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's testimony today. Here's an open thread to discuss what the embattled military chief has to say.

Rumsfeld: "These events occurred on my watch, I am responsible, I take full responsibilty." He says, paraphrasing, "We were wrong, I apologize, the treatment is inconsistent with the values of our nations and teaching of our military. It is fundamentally Un-American." He will find a way to financially compensate the abused prisoners.

He praises military personnel who brought the pix to light. Now he is addressing corrective measures.

Shouting protest by demonstrators in the gallery. They are being physically ejected. Yelling "Fire Rumsfeld." Rumsfeld keeps his cool, nervous laughter erupts.

We're going back to work. You can take it from here.

The New York Times reports on the life and current status of Lynndie England, the female national guardsman featured so prominently in the Iraqi abuse photos:

While in Iraq, members of the 372nd say, Private England became romantically involved with another man implicated in the abuse scandal, Specialist Charles A. Graner. Military officials say she is pregnant and has been sent to Fort Bragg, N.C. She has not been charged, as Specialist Graner and five other members of the 372nd have. But military investigators have called her a suspect in the abuse inquiry and continue to question her.

Her mother says the military has not provided her with a lawyer.

Update: Lynndie England officially has been charged with abusing prisoners and may face a court-martial proceeding.

Must read...Baghdad blogger Riverbend's Just Go.

People are seething with anger- the pictures of Abu Ghraib and the Brits in Basrah are everywhere. Every newspaper you pick up in Baghdad has pictures of some American or British atrocity or another. It's like a nightmare that has come to life. Everyone knew this was happening in Abu Ghraib and other places… seeing the pictures simply made it all more real and tangible somehow. American and British politicians have the audacity to come on television with words like, "True the people in Abu Ghraib are criminals, but…" Everyone here in Iraq knows that there are thousands of innocent people detained. Some were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, while others were detained 'under suspicion'. In the New Iraq, it's "guilty until proven innocent by some miracle of God".

People are so angry. There’s no way to explain the reactions- even pro-occupation Iraqis find themselves silenced by this latest horror. I can’t explain how people feel- or even how I personally feel. Somehow, pictures of dead Iraqis are easier to bear than this grotesque show of American military technique. People would rather be dead than sexually abused and degraded by the animals running Abu Ghraib prison.

...Today's lesson: don't rape, don't torture, don't kill and get out while you can- while it still looks like you have a choice... Chaos? Civil war? Bloodshed? We’ll take our chances- just take your Puppets, your tanks, your smart weapons, your dumb politicians, your lies, your empty promises, your rapists, your sadistic torturers and go.

Go read the whole thing.

From Yale Law Prof Jack Balkin at Balkanization:

The Administration, and particularly Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, have been cavalier about American obligations under international law, including the Geneva Convention. International law and transparency, we are told, are unnecessary because, unlike all of the other countries in the world, we are Americans, and we naturally believe in human rights and the rule of law. We need no special incentives to be good. But if history teaches us anything, it is that when governments, no matter how well they think of themselves, decide to free themselves from constraints, they become unconstrained, and when they refuse to make themselves accountable, they abuse their power.

The only thing that has been lacking until now has been the proof of what everyone should already have known: that unchecked power leads to hubris, hubris leads to corruption, and corruption leads to violations of human rights.

Americans are proud of their devotion to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. But these cannot exist without institutional preconditions: they cannot exist if government officials insist on complete secrecy, mock international covenants, and refuse to allow their actions to be tested and constrained by law. This Administration wanted secrecy. It wanted to be free of legal constraint. It wanted to do whatever it wanted whenever it wanted without ever having to be called to account for it. Now it is reaping what it has sown.

[link via Atrios]

Wonkette makes us laugh every day.

You can ask the White House anything, and sometimes they answer:

Q: Tom from Camano Island, WA:
How could this Country who is supposed to represent all that is right in the World allow the treatment of prisoners to happen as reported in our newspapers today? Swift and sure action must be taken to correct this situation (if true).

A: Dr. Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor:
. . . Those pictures were awful because America -- American men and women in uniform, active and reserve, are serving in Iraq at great sacrifice. People are losing their lives. We came there to help to liberate the people of Iraq. We came there to build schools, and to build clinics, and we want very much that the images of Americans should be the images of helping the Iraqi people.

You hear that? Someone screwed up and released the wrong images. It's like during the civil rights movement. The protesters kept emphasizing the lynchings and the angry mobs; they never showed photos of the terrific restrooms and water fountains the white folks so thoughtfully provided. You can see how people got the wrong idea.

White House Interactive [WhiteHouse.gov]

Wonkette rules DC.

Via Media Matters, this comes from the she-pundit with long blond hair (really, who else could have said it?)

I think the other point that no one is making about the abuse photos is just the disproportionate number of women involved, including a girl general running the entire operation.I mean, this is lesson, you know, one million and 47 on why women shouldn't be in the military. In addition to not being able to carry even a medium-sized backpack, women are too vicious. [FOX News Channel, Hannity & Colmes, May 5]

[For newer TL readers, we try not to use her name so as not to contribute to a rise in her google popularity. Please just use her initials in comments]