The storm over images of Iraqi prisoners tortured by US occupying forces engulfed the Egyptian press, writes Gamal Nkrumah Smirks affixed, images of American soldiers subjugating Iraqi prisoners -- beaten, sexually humiliated and hog-tied -- were splashed on the covers and front pages of every Egyptian magazine and newspaper this week. The inside pages, too, were sardine-packed with horror images of the orgy of shame and disgrace. The unanimous conclusion of the publications: the damage done to America's credibility was irreparable. Caught in scandalous candour, the sickening images of American troops torturing, sexually abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners held at Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad sent shock waves throughout Egypt. The ordeal of the Iraqi inmates, commentators unanimously concurred, could not be dismissed as an isolated anomaly. Pundits were outraged, as was reflected in a prolific outpouring of commentary and analyses in the press about the disgraceful subject. Reports that told tales of horror abounded in Egypt's publications. The raw cruelty of American troops was captured in photograph, cartoon and print. Publications representing a wide spectrum of political opinion and ideological orientation graphically described the gruesome details of the abuses inflicted on the detainees by their American captors. The ripple effects of the full-blown political crisis it created in the United States was debated. Nothing the Bush administration could now do, save withdrawing US troops from Iraq, could contain the public's anger and indignation, agreed commentators. The weekly October, like Egypt's other publications, devoted several pages to commentary on the shocking images. Editor-in-Chief Ragab El-Banna wrote a scathing critique of the American occupation of Iraq entitled, "When will Judgment Day come?" in which he derided America for relinquishing its moral authority. "The superpower has no credibility left whatsoever." El-Banna went on to denounce the entire US value system. "One cannot speak about American values and culture now without making reference to the dehumanising and humiliating torture inflicted on Iraqi prisoners by the American captors," El-Banna mused. "What is happening in the American concentration camps in Iraq is by far worse than what was taking place in the prisons of Saddam Hussein." The tone of the weekly Akher Sa'a was equally incriminating. "Who is ultimately responsible for the torture and other atrocities?" was splashed in bold letters on the magazine's cover, with a photograph of a scowling George Bush standing behind Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld raising his hand as if under oath. "If the US is the home of freedom, democracy and human rights as it claims, as it wishes us to believe, it must stand before the world and acknowledge its crime against humanity," wrote Mohamed Barakat, editor-in-chief of Akher Sa'a. The national daily Al-Ahram published an exclusive interview conducted by Editor-in-Chief Ibrahim Nafie with President Bush on Saturday. Al-Ahram was one of only two Arab media establishments that Bush spoke to, the other being the Abu-Dhabi based Al-Arabiya satellite television channel. "The real problem with US policy in the Middle East is its brazen bias in favour of Israel," Nafie wrote. He said he was baffled by US foreign policy, and pleaded for a better understanding between Arabs and Americans. Al-Ahram 's commentators, like those of other Egyptian publications, were acerbic in their criticism of the US. In a thought- provoking column, "The West shall remain the West until further notice," Mohieddin Amimour put the prisoner scandal down to racism. "With the end of World War II and Hitler's suicide, the victorious allied forces brought the Nazis to book. The city chosen for the Nazi trial was Nuremberg, a city with significant symbolism for the Nazis," wrote Amimour in his Monday column. "The German officers were tried but they were led to the bench with the utmost respect. They were allowed to wear their own Nazi uniforms and were never subjected to harm or humiliation. "Sixty years after the Nuremberg Trials, the photographs of Iraqi prisoners explicitly demonstrate the contempt with which the Iraqi inmates were regarded by their Anglo-Saxon jailers," he explained. "Westerners only commit such brutal atrocities against non-Europeans whom they consider sub-human." Amimour's argument soon reached a logical conclusion. "The allies did not mistreat the Germans because the Germans were European, like the allies themselves. Even the Serbian leader was respected, for the same reason." Pundits unanimously agreed that making amends would not be enough, that Arab public opinion can neither be placated nor appeased. "Despite the apologies of US President George Bush and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld for the misconduct of the US forces in Iraq, measures are needed to bring the perpetrators of such crimes to justice," Al- Ahram wrote. "The Bush administration must take action and punish those responsible." Other columnists in Al-Ahram went straight to the heart of the matter. "In spite of the gruesome images which we saw -- the despicable goings on inside Abu Ghraib prison -- the scandalous images remain small in comparison with the far bigger crime of denigrating the entire nation of Iraq with the humiliation of occupation, its complete destruction and the rape of its resources," wrote Fahmi Howeidy in the opinion piece, "The real scandal." "We have become the punching bag, the guinea pigs in laboratories for the bastards to push around," wrote a furious Mustafa Bakri in the independent weekly Al-Osbou ', One writer, Amr Mabrouk, dew parallels between the British occupation of Egypt and the American occupation of Iraq. He compared Paul Bremer, the chief US civil administrator in Iraq, with Lord Cromer, the effective ruler of Egypt after the country was occupied by the British . Not to be outdone, the national daily Al-Akhbar was equally forthright about the gross human rights violations. "Washington tries to contain the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal", ran a headline in Al- Akhbar. "Abu Ghraib violations compromises US honour" was another. Racism, it was written elsewhere, runs deep in America's veins. "Has the American president forgotten that his country exterminated the native Americans? Has he also forgotten that the White House was built on the mass graves of the indigenous people of the US," Soheir Gabr pointed out in Al-Akhbar. Gabr ominously warned, "President Bush should understand that the American people, who have been brainwashed ever since 11 September 2001, have started to wake up and will force the extremist gangsters in the Bush administration to pay a high price for the crimes that sowed the seeds of hatred and enmity among millions of oppressed people around the world and the US." Makram Mohamed Ahmed, editor-in- chief of the weekly national magazine Al- Musawwar presented a four-page caustic critique of US policy in Iraq. "America lost all credibility with the exposure of the scandals of Abu Ghraib prison. The US is no longer the faithful guardian of human rights. Its plans to make Iraq a free and democratic country has become something of a giant sick joke," Mohamed Ahmed wrote. The opposition weekly Al-Ahali, issued by the left-wing Al-Tagammu Party, covered the scandalous events in much the same vein. In his column on Wednesday, "Arab indignities", Editor-in-Chief Nabil Zaki decried the Arab leadership's "cowardice" and "impotence". "Those Arab leaders," he wrote, "are deceiving themselves and their people. They have no shame." The opposition daily Al-Wafd described the abusive treatment as abhorrent. "You occupiers, you rapists, get out of Iraq immediately. Why did you come in the first place?" an angry front page headline screamed. The paper also ran, "Scandal uncovered by a famous British writer" in which it warned that the abominable acts go far beyond the appalling acts of a few miscreants. The paper quoted Robert Fisk in the British Independent as saying that the Israelis were behind the torture of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib. According to Al-Wafd 's "An illegal and immoral war betrayed by images that reveal our racism", Fisk pointed an accusing finger at the Israelis for instigating the torture and other atrocities in Abu Ghraib. "First our enemies created the suicide bomber. Now we have our own digital suicide bomber, the camera," the paper quoted Fisk as saying. In an open letter to Arab kings and presidents in Wednesday's Al-Wafd front page, the paper beseeched Arab leaders to calm Arab people down. "Ask the Americans to evacuate their forces from Iraq; let Arab troops keep the peace in Iraq; American bases in the Arab Gulf must also be evacuated; they desecrate Arab land; let the Iraqi people choose their own president and government and parliament." Al-Arabi Al-Nasseri ran a full page interview with director Youssef Chahine. "Bush is a terrorist, a crusader (an appellate with negative connotations in this part of the world), a liar and an ass," Chahine was quoted as saying. "How could those resistance fighters who defend the freedom of Iraq and Palestine be called terrorists? "The Greater Middle East Initiative is a crusader plan to exterminate Muslims," Chahine, one of Egypt's most distinguished film directors, said. "Bush killed 20,000 Iraqis and ruined Iraq's economy and infrastructure." He went on to predict America's demise. "I expect America to become a second rate or even third rate country." In "Witnesses from Hell", Mahmoud Aboud quotes extensively from a recently-released report by the London- based human rights organisation Amnesty International, saying US authorities had long known that Iraqi inmates were systematically beaten into a pulp, beaten to death and strangled with bare hands. Some space was given to the indefinitely postponed Arab summit. The Arab League foreign ministers meeting in Cairo was treated with derision. "The summit of Arab failure", ran the front- page headline of Al-Wafd on Tuesday.
