FOR three days, American tanks have been shelling a military intelligence building in the posh Al-Khathamia area in west Baghdad. The dozen or so tanks are not here to pound intransigent fighters but to break down concrete beams and steel, to reach bunkers deep underground at the Al-Istikhbarat Al-'Askariya facility. The Marines found 123 prisoners, including five women, barely alive in an underground warren of cells and torture chambers. Being trapped underground probably kept them safe from the bombing of Baghdad by the coalition. Severely emaciated, some had survived by eating the scabs off their sores. All the men had...
