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Arabs Say Bush Interviews Are Too Little Too Late By Jonathan Wright CAIRO (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) did too little too late when he told two Arabic-language television stations that he condemned the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners, Arab commentators and pundits said on Thursday. Reuters Photo While the White House portrayed the interviews with al-Hurra and Al Arabiya on Wednesday as a special effort to address Arab public opinion, the commentators said Arabs saw Bush on television often and were unlikely to change their minds about him on the basis of a single appearance. Some said...

Inmate freed from Baghdad jail denies tales of torture COLIN FREEMAN AT ABU GHRAIB PRISON WHEN Ahmed Jassim was released from Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison yesterday, he expected nothing more than a hug from his family and a chance to shave the straggly beard he grew inside. Instead, he walked into a blaze of publicity as journalists and local people quizzed him about the allegations of torture by United States troops. Was it all true, demanded a scrum of faces around him. Had he too been beaten, hooded, stripped naked and humiliated? Mr Jassim, blinking in bemusement as the cameras...

To judge from the endless expressions of American penitence, one might think we'd finally seen evil and it is us. The incidents at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have, as one might expect, provided grist for the left's endless America-bashing mill. Thus, for instance, the Los Angeles Times' Robert Scheer concluded that "Americans too can be 'evildoers'" and argued further that the non-lethal humiliation of a few terrorists compares with Saddam's decades of "torture chambers and rape rooms." Likewise, self-described "human rights" activist Leonard S. Rubenstein in the Washington Post said that the incident "shamed every American," and then...

As President Bush and everyone else in America has said, any abuse of Iraqi prisoners is "abhorrent" and should be punished. Yet it seems to us that an overlooked story here, and ultimately the most telling, is the degree to which the U.S. military is investigating itself and holding people accountable. This isn't a popular thought just now, with the media and politicians in one of their bonfire phases. Every accusation against U.S. troops is now getting front-page treatment. Like reporters at a free buffet, Members of Congress are swarming to the TV cameras to declare their outrage and demand...

Image accomplished. The mission may be awaiting final resolution, but the Iraq War has now delivered what could become its signature image, a Kodak Moment of creepiness that shows a hooded Iraqi seemingly wired for electro-torture by American military guards at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. President George W. Bush has done Arab-television interviews, and his administration has issued multiple apologies. But the visual impression has already been stamped on the world's collective consciousness.

The Abu Ghraib prison story could almost be told as one of exorcism. The horrible death chambers of Saddam, Uday, and Qusay Hussein saw the mutilation, dismemberment, and utterly soulless treatment of thousands of prisoners of politics, power, and whim during the days of the Hussein klan. Whatever horrible spirit controlled that dungeon must be akin to some of those witnessed in biblical apocalyptic literature. Then the Americans enter and the perversion does not cease. Any young, female American towering over a leashed, dominated, and naked Iraqi prisoner cries out the truth than something horrible and awfully evil has affected...

Are reports of abuse by Americans at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison hyped and sensationalized? Probably. The world media are in the sensation-making business and it's a world-wide story. Did the abuses occur? Obviously. There are pictures, testimony, an apology Wednesday from the U.S. general who now runs the prisons and denunciations of the abuse as "un-American," (Donald Rumsfeld) and "not the America I know" (George W. Bush). Is the scandal an inspiration to our enemies? Most assuredly. Were the acts acceptable? Of course not. Must they be investigated and justice meted out? Yes, and surely will be.

<p>Nearly all 8,080 prisoners being held by U.S. authorities in Iraq are considered security threats: insurgents linked to attacks on coalition forces, and terrorists and former officials of Saddam Hussein's regime suspected of having useful intelligence, military officials say.</p> <p>"The goal is to gain intelligence," said a coalition spokesman in Iraq. "Under the rules of the Geneva Convention, those in detention can be exploited for intelligence."</p>

Army Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the lone female commander in Iraq, runs the prison system that once was an apparatus of terror. BAGHDAD - A few weeks ago, Janis Karpinski was in the middle of a briefing when a man suddenly reached out and grabbed her. Crass? No, just a nervous soldier trying to protect the commanding officer as an Iraqi mortar exploded a few dozen yards away. "A mortar will get your attention real fast," Karpinski says, "and it can be an indication of other things to come." Such are the daily distractions for Karpinski, a brigadier general and...

Much information on the Iraq prison torture story is making it's way into the major media. Most of it is confusing, if not deliberately misleading. Given the amount of information available to the average news reader, a better understanding of the situation could likely result from reviewing the events of the story in chronological order.

Escape from Chelmby Daniel Sargis05 May 2004Appointing a former member of the Republican Guard to a command position in Fallujah is like smothering a fire with more logs.    The good news is that Thomas Hamill, the American civilian held hostage in Iraq since April 9, has escaped.  In spite of the best efforts of terrorists and liberals alike, Hamill did something very American...with faith in God, he took responsibility for himself.  Hamill saw his opportunity; kicked open a door; and ran into the open arms of an American patrol.  The bad news?  The town of Chelm still flourishes...

ABU GHRAIB, Iraq (AP) - The commander of U.S.-run prisons in Iraq apologized Wednesday for the "illegal or unauthorized acts" committed by soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison, where photographs showed Iraqi prisoners being abused by smiling American guards. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller also said some interrogation techniques would be halted while others would be limited. He also invited the Red Cross to open an office at the prison. "I would like to apologize for our nation and for our military for the small number of soldiers who committed illegal or unauthorized acts here at Abu Ghraib," Miller told Arab...

On the last day of April, a federal appeals court in Cincinnati provided what we must hope is the final word on John Demjanjuk. After a series of court actions spanning 29 years, a three-member panel decided he was indeed the Ukrainian-born prison guard known as "Ivan the Terrible"; at the Nazis' Treblinka death camp, in Poland. The judgment leaves Demjanjuk, now 84, certain to be stripped of his fraudulently obtained U.S. citizenship. By cruel coincidence, the court's ruling came the same day we learned that fellow Americans are capable of conduct as reprehensible as many Nazis, that war itself...

Wife: Soldiers in Iraqi Abuse Case Are Scapegoats Tue May 4, 2004 10:45 AM ET By Sue Pleming WASHINGTON (Reuters) &#8211; U.S. soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners were following orders and are being used as scapegoats to protect their superiors, the wife of one of the soldiers and the lawyer for another said Tuesday. Martha Frederick defended her husband, a soldier who faces prosecution for the abuse of Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. " He was told to do these things and when he did them he thought that he was doing them in the sense...

Some of the worst abuse in the Al Ghraib prison scandal was reportedly perpetrated by Iraqi guards recruited by the U.S. military and brought into to the jail to help maintain control of the growing population of Iraqi detainees. And while most of the allegations against U.S. military police involve harassment and intimidation tactics that did not cause physical harm, the Iraqi recruits allegedly raped several detainees. "The Iraqi guards apparently engaged in rape of female prisoners and perhaps some young boys," reported NBC Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski on Tuesday.

Frankly, one of the main reasons for the present troubles in Iraq is the fact that the initial offensive into that country was overly quick and insufficiently destructive. Irregular resistance is almost always contemplated (and often planned for) at the end of a major war. At the end of the Civil War some Confederate hotheads wished to fight on, but were discouraged from doing so by General Lee. Various factions in Germany and Japan pondered continued resistance after the Second World War but, ultimately that resistance failed to materialize in any meaningful way. Too many were already dead and the...

<p>May 4, 2004 -- FOR many of us, the words "Vietnam War" evoke only a sense of loss and a painful acknowledgement that this country suffered a dreadful defeat, with tens of thousands of lives snuffed out and tens of millions of Vietnamese consigned to life under the Stalinist jackboot.</p>

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Seven more U.S. soldiers have been reprimanded in the alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners, and the U.S. officer who oversaw Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison suggested Monday that more may be involved. On the orders of Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, six of the soldiers — all officers and noncommissioned officers — have received the most severe level of administrative reprimand in the U.S. military, a military official said on condition of anonymity. A seventh officer was given a more lenient admonishment. The official said he believed investigations of the officers were...

(CBS) Last month, the U.S. Army announced 17 soldiers in Iraq, including a brigadier general, had been removed from duty after charges of mistreating Iraqi prisoners. But the details of what happened have been kept secret, until now. It turns out photographs surfaced showing American soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqis being held at a prison near Baghdad. The Army investigated, and issued a scathing report. Now, an Army general and her command staff may face the end of long military careers. And six soldiers are facing court martial in Iraq -- and possible prison time. Correspondent Dan Rather talks to...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraqi prisoners faced numerous "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" by U.S. soldiers, including sodomy and beatings, according to a U.S. Army report quoted by the New Yorker magazine. The New Yorker said it had obtained a 53-page, internal U.S. military report into alleged abuses at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. In an article posted on its Web site on Saturday, the magazine said the report had been authorized by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. officer in Iraq, and was completed in February. The May 10 issue of the magazine goes on sale...