The release of photographs showing the torture of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers dealt a severe blow to the Bush administration. Khaled Dawoud reports from Washington During an unprecedently bad week for President George W Bush, horrific pictures were released showing United States' troops torturing and humiliating Iraqi detainees. The pictures bear witness to the crisis that the Bush administration is undergoing ahead of upcoming presidential elections in November. One year on since Bush announced the end of "major military operations" in Iraq, one of the country's most respected political television shows devoted its entire programme on Friday to airing the pictures and reading out the names of the 721 American soldiers who had been killed in Iraq. By Tuesday, the figure had risen to 756, maintaining the daily average of nearly 10 American soldiers losing their lives in Iraq since the beginning of April. The right-wing and conservative media close to the Bush administration lashed out at Ted Koppel, presenter of the Nightline programme on NBC, viewing it as an expression of his opposition to the war in Iraq. However, this did not silence influential newspapers that have been increasingly critical of the way Bush and his team have been handling the occupation. On 1 May, The Washington Post and the US News and World Report published several pages showing the pictures and the names of all the US soldiers killed in Iraq. The New York Times, critical of the invasion even before it was launched, was the only influential national daily that has published a box each day bearing the names of the American soldiers killed in Iraq. The move to publish the pictures and the names of dead soldiers at the end of a month that has witnessed the highest number of American losses since the war started last year was clearly aimed at questioning whether the occupation of Iraq was a worth-while venture. According to recent opinion polls, at least 60 per cent of Americans do not think so -- constituting the highest rate of opposition to the war since it was launched. Two days earlier, another respected political television show on CBS had aired the first shocking pictures of the Iraqi detainees being tortured at Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad. Surprisingly, the US media -- both television and print -- were slow to pick up the story, probably in apprehension over the shockwaves that it would send throughout the world. The report was an inside story in nearly all major dailies on Friday, and television networks barely mentioned it. Only when Arab television networks and the world media had picked up the story did US officials start reacting to the shocking news which belied the administration's only remaining claim to try and justify the occupation: that of the spread of democracy and human rights in the Middle East. Another shock came when US Joint Chief of Staff General Richard Myers announced that he had personally asked CBS to delay the release of the horrific pictures of Abu Ghraib for two weeks, fearing their effect in Iraq and the Arab world at a time when the US army and airforce were massacring the town of Falluja with 500-ton laser guided bombs. Significantly, the admission by Myers confirmed that officials at the Pentagon were in fact aware of what they described as "abuses" that took place inside the infamous prison, also known as a centre for torture under ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. On Sunday, the New Yorker magazine published a lengthy article by Samuel Hirsh, citing a highly classified report written by a senior army official on "alleged abuses at US military prisons in Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca, Iraq" in late February. The report was requested by the commander of US forces in Iraq, General Ricardo Sanchez, and written by Maj Gen M Taguba. Myers and US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld later admitted that they did not read the report until after the pictures were leaked to the CBS programme "60 Minutes". What is now known as the "Taguba report" listed the following acts that reflected "the intentional abuse of detainees by military police personnel": "Punching, slapping and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet; videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees; forcibly arranging detainees in various explicit positions for photographing; forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time; forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear; forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate while being photographed and videotaped; arranging naked male detainees in piles and then jumping on them; positioning a naked detainee on a [rations] box with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes and penis to simulate electric torture; writing 'I am a Rapest' [sic] on the leg of a detainee alleged to have raped a 15-year-old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked; placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee's neck and having a female soldier pose for a picture; a male MP having sex with a female detainee; using military working dogs [without muzzles] to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severing injuring a detainee; taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees." The report also went on to describe "the following acts of abuse, which under the circumstances, I find credible based on the clarity of [the] statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses: Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; threatening detainees with a 9mm pistol; pouring cold water on naked detainees; threatening male detainees with rape; sodomising a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broomstick." In a failed attempt to contain the scandal, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice summoned nearly all popular Arab satellite television channels on Tuesday to air the US administration's public reaction to the torture pictures. Bush is also planning to carry out a number of interviews, promising to severely punish those responsible for torturing Iraqi prisoners, and to say they were a minority out of more than 135,000 soldiers now occupying Iraq. But no major shakeups are expected, informed sources said, and the investigation will at best expand to a number of army commanders who were overseeing the forces at Abu Ghraib prison and other detention facilities in which more than 10,000 Iraqis are reportedly held. US army commanders in Iraq also announced on Tuesday that they will review the conditions of prisoners at the densely populated facility and would likely reduce its capacity by half. Among the pictures that hit the US media this week was that of former Iraqi army commander, Jasim Mohamed Saleh, shaking hands with a US army commander before entering Falluja with his own forces to control the volatile city. The photograph clearly reflected yet another 180 degree reversal in the way the Bush team has been running the occupation, allowing members of the Iraqi army known for their loyalty to the former regime to regain control of the country. Until Tuesday, there had been conflicting reports on the fate of Saleh, and whether he would remain the commander of the Iraqi force that has been in control in Falluja since the heavy fighting was calmed at the beginning of this week. Myers conceded in statements that Saleh was a senior officer of the Republican Guard, and said that he would continue to play a role, but not as commander of the new Iraqi force. The sudden switch allowed many Iraqis to claim victory in Falluja, bringing only bad publicity to Bush back home. However, administration officials claim that they were mainly looking for any possible means to restore stability in the war- torn country ahead of the 30 June deadline to hand over limited sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government. But what is also quite obvious is that the Bush administration will definitely not be able to bear the same level of losses of US soldiers, or withstand new embarrassments similar to that of the release of the pictures from Abu Ghraib, and still realistically hope to win a second term in the White House.
