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<p>John F. Kennedy in his presidential inauguration speech in January 1961 declared, "We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship" to assure the survival of liberty. Those were inspiring words, but they could not stand up to the harsh realities of the Cold War. Years after the Kennedy assassination, it would become evident to President Richard Nixon that Americans had no stomach for continuing to pay the price of Vietnam. South Vietnam would fall to communist tyranny.</p>

<p>What was the cause of the loss of unit cohesion and breakdown of discipline at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq?</p> <p>Dave Bischel, a National Guardsman with the 870th Military Police unit who returned home last month from duty at the prison, was quoted in last Friday's (5/14) New York Post: "There were lots of affairs. There was all kinds of adultery and alcoholism and all kinds of crap going on."</p>

In a sworn statement to investigators, Pfc. Lynndie England explained the mystery of why soldiers at Abu Ghraib took pictures of detainees masturbating and piled naked with plastic sandbags over their heads by saying, "We thought it looked funny so pictures were taken." [snip] "Picture 000015 was basically us fooling around," she said, pointing to a photograph of detainees stacked naked in different positions in 1A, the area of the prison where the soldiers now charged with abuse worked. "She wanted a picture because she wrote `I'm a rapist' on one of the detainees," Private England explained, pointing to two...

Days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist atacks, the major TV networks decided to stop airing images of the planes striking the World Trade Center towers and of the towers collapsing. On Sept. 11, 2001 itself, a decision was made not to broadcast images of the 200 or so people forced to jump to their deaths. These images, the networks judged, were too disturbing, the American psyche too fragile, the fear of retribution against innocent Muslim Americans and calls for revenge against the terrorists' enablers too great for us to see the visual evidence of that fateful day. Compare this...

EDITOR'S NOTE: The man behind many of the most provocative Abu Ghraib stories — Seymour M. Hersh of The New Yorker — is one of the best-known reporters in the business. But that doesn't mean he always gets his facts right. "If the standard for being fired was being wrong on a story, I would have been fired long ago," he once said. Hersh has admitted to lying to his sources and one former editor accused him of blackmailing them. Can he be trusted today? John J. Miller profiled Hersh in the December 3, 2001 issue of National Review. “At...

The nine men were arrested on flimsy charges and sent to Abu Ghraib prison, where they were tortured and filmed for their captors' sadistic amusement. The scars they bear will be with them for the rest of their lives — a term which turned out to be short for two of the captives. Their story is particularly shameful because it was the government that should have been protecting them that inflicted the injuries. Theirs is not a story ripped from the headlines, because their story made no headlines. These are just a few of the victims of Saddam Hussein's Abu...

<p>May 14, 2004 -- A MAN has his head cut off by al Qaeda in Iraq, and The New York Times aggressively markets the idea - on its front page yesterday - that his death is somehow the fault of the United States. "The family of Nicholas E. Berg challenged American military officials on Wednesday," according to lead paragraph in the Times' story, "insisting that the man beheaded by Islamic terrorists in Iraq had earlier been in the custody of federal officials who should have done more to protect him."</p>

HAGERSTOWN, Md. - Two months before pictures of Iraqi prisoner abuse became public, the family of one accused soldier wrote to 14 members of Congress that "something went wrong" involving "mistreatment of POWs" at Abu Ghraib prison. Separately, a suspended Army officer in Iraq (news - web sites) wrote to Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania that he was being unfairly punished after "pictures of naked prisoners" were discovered. He sent the letter six weeks before the CBS program "60 Minutes II" first broadcast photographs of the prisoners on April 28. The strongest reply any of them got was a...

MULLINGS ® An American Cyber-Column Imagine This. Imagine That. Rich Galen Monday May 17, 2004 Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass) said on the floor of the US Senate the other day, "Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management - U.S. management." Imagine This: Imagine the current President were a Democrat and a Republican US Senator compared - no, EQUATED - the Abu Ghraib experience to Saddam Hussein. There would not have been enough printer's ink in the country to publish all of the editorials demanding an apology from the Senator and demands for a censure by...

Grow Up! Prior to the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom last year, I wrote that we would not find easy allies among the Iraqi people. It had nothing to do with Muslim disdain for Westerners. It had nothing to do with Iraqi fears of Western colonization. It had nothing to do with oil. It had completely to do with the average Iraqi’s horrific fear of his own government and its vast network of informants and enforcers. The average Iraqi still possesses that fear. This cannot be emphasized enough. There remain very few Iraqi citizens willing to risk their lives in...

AgapePress) - A pro-family leader says the American treatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib may be deplorable, but that it doesn't offset the fact that America has the moral high ground in the war on terror. Meanwhile, a media watchdog group is calling several mainstream news outlets to task for reporting greater outrage over the prison-abuse scandal than for the execution-style murder of a U.S. citizen by Islamic terrorists. The grilling of Pentagon leaders, hearings featuring military leaders, and special congressional sessions to review picture of alleged prisoner abuse have dominated this past week in the nation's capital. Gary...

Pentagon Denies Report's Rumsfeld Claims Associated Press. NEW YORK (May 16) -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the expansion of a secret program that encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners to obtain intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq, The New Yorker reported Saturday. The Defense Department strongly denied the claims made in the report, which cited unnamed current and former intelligence officials and was published on the magazine's Web site. Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita issued a statement calling the claims "outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture.'' Rumsfeld tours with the commander of...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Some military interrogators say they never used, or even witnessed, the type of violence and sexual humiliation captured in photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Such tactics aren't necessary or even effective, they say. Sgt. Ken Weichert interrogated hundreds of Iraqis to gather wartime intelligence, but says only once did he raise his voice to extract information. "They would just tell us everything," said Weichert, 37, a counterintelligence officer for the California National Guard who returned from Iraq earlier this year. "I never, ever had a problem trying to...

<p>By now, some Americans may feel the need for respite from the images of Abu Ghraib and the five hooded barbarians standing behind Nick Berg. This week's column will try to provide some measure of respite.</p> <p>It is the story of Americans, in and out of the U.S. government, who moved mountains to help seven horribly maimed Iraqi men. It is not always pleasant reading, but there are rewards to staying with it, especially now.</p>

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a plan that brought unconventional interrogation methods to Iraq to gain intelligence about the growing insurgency, ultimately leading to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, the New Yorker magazine reported on Saturday. Rumsfeld, who has been under fire for the prisoner abuse scandal, gave the green light to methods previously used in Afghanistan for gathering intelligence on members of al Qaeda, which the United States blames for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the magazine reported on its Web site. Pentagon spokesman Jim Turner said he had not seen the story and could...

       The actions attributed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Tuesday should have afforded the liberals in our country an education as to what an atrocity really is.  They also should have served as a chilling wake-up call.         Zarqawi and his men beheaded an American hostage in Iraq by the name of Nicholas Berg.  This ''hostage'' had family and friends who loved him back here in the United States.  Berg went to Iraq to help rebuild that country.  He wanted to make a difference for the Iraqi people.  And from all accounts he was quite a guy.       As a film of...

On May 9, the Toronto Star newspaper published an editorial entitled, “Donald Rumsfeld should resign now.” The demand was of course based on the media-manufactured “atrocities” of Abu Ghraib. That’s odd, I thought. I couldn’t recall ever seeing an American newspaper demand that an official of a foreign country resign. “Bush has apologized for the abuse, which he called ‘abhorrent.’ He says the soldiers responsible will be punished. But his words are not enough. They will not erase the anger raging throughout the Arab world, as well as across the United States, for the indignities inflicted upon the prisoners. Nor...

May 15, 2004OP-ED CONTRIBUTORThe Rule of Law and the Rules of WarBy ALBERTO R. GONZALES ASHINGTON — With questions being raised regarding the treatment of detainees in both Guantánamo Bay and Iraq, it is important to revisit the origins of what has been a consistent and humane policy by the United States on this matter.Shortly after Al Qaeda killed 3,000 people on 9/11, President Bush stood before Congress and explained the nature of the war on terrorism. He described "a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen," with "dramatic strikes" and "covert operations." He also said that the...

May 15, 2004 Earlier Jail Seen as Incubator for Abuses in IraqBy DOUGLAS JEHL ASHINGTON, May 14 — An American-run detention center outside Baghdad known as Camp Cropper was reportedly the site of numerous abuses of Iraqi prisoners several months before the mistreatment of prisoners unfolded last fall at Abu Ghraib prison, according to documents and interviews.The detention facility, on the outskirts of Baghdad International Airport, appears to have served as an incubator for the acts of humiliation that were inflicted months later on Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. At both sites, the mistreatment has been linked to interrogations overseen...

ABU GHRAIB, Iraq -- More than 300 Iraqi detainees, some weeping and waving to friends, were released from the Abu Ghraib prison on Friday, a day after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made a surprise visit and insisted the Pentagon did not try to cover up abuses there. One bus carrying 40 prisoners left the jail and drove to an American military base in west Baghdad, where tribal leaders awaited some of them. One by one, prisoners got out, kneeled, and prayed beside the bus. Others left on the same bus, bound for other Baghdad neighborhoods.