Word: prisoners
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Those scenes, caught in shocking candor by someone's digital camera, played over and over last week in the world's newspapers and magazines and across the airwaves. Jarring new examples emerged: the same female soldier, holding a leash wrapped around the neck of a naked prisoner cringing at her feet. Even when the shots were pixilated or cropped for modesty, nothing could hide the raw cruelty of U.S. soldiers ridiculing the manhood of Iraqi captives. Of all places, these atrocities occurred at Abu Ghraib prison, once the infamous home of Saddam Hussein's torture chambers...
...horror stories keep coming. An Army investigation of conditions at Abu Ghraib concluded that prison guards had carried out "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton abuse" for months. The Army is investigating reports of crimes committed at other detention facilities in Iraq. Testifying before the Senate last Friday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the Pentagon has obtained more photos and video footage that show U.S. troops engaged in even worse behavior. "We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience," Senator Lindsey Graham said. "We're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges...
...Rumsfeld responded, "That's possible." Evidence that further abuses took place under his watch could well raise the pressure on him to resign. To see if more probes should be initiated, Rumsfeld plans to appoint a blue-ribbon panel of retired officials to examine the slew of investigations into prison management and guard training now under way. The Army is studying the deaths of 25 detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, including two that have been ruled homicides, while the Justice Department is examining the role of the CIA and contract employees in the deaths of three other detainees...
...trouble at Abu Ghraib was a long time brewing. The 260-acre prison complex lies behind tall walls off a highway 20 miles west of Baghdad. In the days of Saddam it housed thousands of criminals and political prisoners who were subjected to unspeakable torture at the whim of the regime. The U.S. military decided to reopen the prison last August for all Iraqis being detained and renamed it the Baghdad Correctional Facility. But reminders of the prison's grim history were inescapable. From the ceiling of each 10-ft.-by-12-ft. cell still dangled a large hook, which...
...800th Military Police Brigade, which includes the reserve 372nd Military Police Company, and the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, which also operated there. A senior military official who lived at Abu Ghraib says soldiers were underequipped and undermanned. The reservists in particular had virtually no training for their prison-guard jobs. Discipline flagged. In November and December, around the time most of the abuse photos were taken, Abu Ghraib was under constant attack from nightly mortar raids. Basic sanitation for the troops consisted of overflowing portable toilets, and soldiers jerry-rigged showers from pumps they bought themselves. Six months after reopening...