Two prison guards at Guantamo have been disciplined for abuse . The offenses don't sound as bad as those committed by the soldiers in Iraq, but then again, we have no pictures from Guantanamo, only information the military decides to release.

Manish of Damn Foreigner: May 2004 Archives discusses what the U.S. should do to clean itself up after the Iraqi prisoner abuse --after the obvious steps of cleaning up the prisons and investigating and prosecuting the wrongdoers:

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.

Stakeholder, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's weblog, is circulating this petition to bloggers for the removal of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Help us spread the word and garner a response that will overwhelm the administration and knock them on their heels. With your reach and capability for rapid response, you are in an invaluable position to help us achieve this. It is also an opportunity to demonstrate the power of the blogosphere as an active and engaged community to the Democratic establishment both here and throughout the Hill, and to help cement a strong relationship of mutual respect.

Move-On adds:

Please call President Bush now, and urge him to fire Rumsfeld. Bush has already taken the unusual step of publicly disclosing a reprimand of Rumsfeld. But he's got to go further, and dismiss him.

White House comment line 202-456-1111 or 202-456-1112

Please also call your Senators and Representative and let them know it's time for Rumsfeld to go. Then go here and let MoveOn know you've done so.

Go spread the word.

Reuters reports the Arab media reacts to Bush's statements on Arab tv yesterday by saying " too little, too late."

How do you think this man will be treated, after the abuses U.S. soldiers inflicted on Iraqi detainees in their control?

Dubai-based Al Arabiya television aired on Thursday what it said was a videotape showing an American engineer working for the Pentagon held hostage in Iraq. The network said it had received the tape from a group calling itself The Islamic Rage Squadrons which said it had kidnapped the man on May 3. He was shown blindfolded with a checkered Arab scarf and wearing a jacket.

"My name is Aban Elias from Denver, Colorado," an Arabiya transcript quoted the man as saying. "I am a civil engineer working in Baghdad...and we are working with the Pentagon... I was kidnapped and I call upon Muslim organizations to interfere to release me."

The network said a copy of the man's U.S. passport showed he had been born in Iraq. Arabiya said the kidnappers had not made any demands. Dozens of Westerners have been kidnapped in Iraq recently. Some have been released and others killed by their captors.

Angry Democrats in Congress are calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's ouster:

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters she believes Rumsfeld must go. And Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, issued a statement saying, "For the good of our country, the safety of our troops, and our image around the globe Secretary Rumsfeld should resign. If he does not resign forthwith, the president should fire him."

We agree. There can be no confidence in our military under his continued leadership.

In related news, the Red Cross says it repeatedly warned the U.S. of abuses at the Abu Ghraid prison.

Tim at Road to Surfdom has both versions of a military news article reporting Rumsfeld's reaction to the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. The first is titled "Rumsfeld Apologizes to Iraqi Victims of Prison Abuse". That was pulled, and replaced with an article titled, "Prison Abuse 'Unacceptable, Un-American', Rumsfeld Says." One difference between the articles is that this sentence in the first article was removed from the second:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld apologized today to Iraqis abused by American prison guards in Abu Ghraib.

As Tim says, "I guess they really don't want us to get the impression that the Secretary would apologise. So noted."

A new poll released last night shows that an increasing number of voters believe that removing Saddam Hussein from power was not worth the cost, either in dollars or casualties.

The NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll found that 42 percent of registered voters say it was worth the cost to get rid of Saddam and 47 percent felt it was not worth it. An NBC-WSJ poll as recently as March found 50 percent of adults felt it was worth the cost to remove the Iraqi leader....More than half, 55 percent, said they favor withdrawing U.S. troops within 18 months. The number willing to say troops should stay as long as necessary has fallen to 44 percent from 56 percent in January.

[link via Buzzflash]

George Hunsinger, who teaches at the Princeton Theological Seminary, writes about the Meltdown in Iraq:

One year after "Mission Accomplished" was proclaimed by President Bush,
America may have lost the war in Iraq. Insurgency, instability and social
chaos, the familiar problems dogging the occupation, were exacerbated in
April by mutiny, collapsing authority and military deadlock. Then came the
devastating revelations of atrocity - first in the brutal siege of Fallujah,
then in the unspeakable photographs of torture from the Abu Ghraib prison.
The occupation has reached the point of meltdown.

"We have failed," stated retired Gen. William E. Odom, currently director of the Hudson Institute, a pro-administration think-tank. In an interview which rocked the foreign policy establishment, Odom told the Wall Street Journal he had abandoned all hope for success in Iraq. Predicting a radical Islamist regime hostile to the West, one prepared to fund terrorist organizations, he called for the swift withdrawal of U.S. forces. Otherwise Iraqis will be radicalized even further, he warned, risking the destabilization of the entire region.

We wrote about Odom and his advice here.

It's not just Bush that is mad at Rumsfeld. So is Congress. And Rumsfeld will testify on Friday before "a hornet's nest of angry lawmakers."

Republican and Democratic lawmakers said Wednesday they were angry at lax oversight at the prison, a failure of the Pentagon to be more aggressive in dealing with the charges and that fact that the issue was not brought to their attention before the damning pictures were shown on TV.

"I think we ought to raze that prison. I think we ought to take it down. I think it has become a symbol of Saddam Hussein but also of U.S. mistakes and a very deplorable situation," said U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Reminds us of We Can Be Together from Volunteers by the Jefferson Airplane: ("Up against the wall motherf**er, tear down the walls."

In a first for his Administration, President Bush let it be known that he was upset with Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the release of the Iraqi prisoner photos. Bush claims he learned about them on 60 Minutes II, just like the rest of us.

Another White House official said, "The president was not satisfied or happy about the way he was informed about the pictures, and he did talk to Secretary Rumsfeld about it." The disclosure of the dressing-down of the combative Mr. Rumsfeld was the first time that Mr. Bush has allowed his displeasure with a senior member of his administration to be made public. It also exposed the fault lines in Mr. Bush's inner circle that have deepened with the violence and political chaos in American-occupied Iraq.

Will Rumsfeld resign? Doubtful.

Despite the behind-the-scenes criticism of Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Bush insisted that the defense secretary still had his full support. "Of course I've got confidence in the secretary of defense," Mr. Bush said in an interview with Al Hurra, an Arab television network.

So the "dressing-down" was just a cheap soundbite.

On a related note, apparently many of the soldiers responsible for the abuse are from Appalachia. Their unit is the 372nd Military Police Company.

Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr. is a guard at one of Pennsylvania's most heavily secured death row prisons, accused by his former wife of violent behavior. Pfc. Lynndie R. England was married and divorced before she was 21, worked at a chicken-processing plant in West Virginia and wanted to attend college to become a storm-chasing meteorologist. And Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick, another prison guard, planned to quit the Army Reserve this year to spend more time fishing near his rural home in central Virginia. But he did not get out soon enough.

Here's what court records show about the man entrusted with guarding death row and Iraqi prisoners:

Specialist Graner was involved in a bitter divorce. In court papers, his wife, Staci, accused him of beating her, threatening her with guns, stalking her after they separated in 1997 and breaking into her home. Since 1997, local judges have issued at least three orders of protection against him, records show.

U.S. soldiers have been accused of abusing an elderly Iraqi woman:

U.S. soldiers who detained an elderly Iraqi woman last year placed a harness on her, made her crawl on all fours and rode her like a donkey, Prime Minister Tony Blair 's personal human rights envoy to Iraq said Wednesday.

Drudge says he is developing another story alleging that the CIA is being probed in the suspicious deaths of three detainees.