MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Soldier charged in Iraqi abuse scandal strikes plea deal; absolves higher-ups

U.S. government lawyers have advised against the release of hundreds of even more gruesome pictures and videos, some depicting corpses and several forms of sexual abuse, taken by U.S. soldiers.
Ironically, one reason they give is they would violate a Geneva Convention rule against revealing images that degrade prisoners.
Two top Pentagon officials admitted Thursday that interrogation tactics approved for use at Abu Ghraib violated the convention, which prohibits physical and mental torture of detainees.

Abu Ghraib: the rule, not the exception

Americans are no novices to inflicting pain and humiliation, says torture expert MILES SCHUMAN. U.S.-sanctioned torment has a long and diverse pedigree.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has revealed over the past days that the gross human-rights abuses of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison were not confined to a few soldiers. Indeed, it appears they were well-known to U.S. government and military officials while they occurred. As a physician who has worked with many survivors of torture in Canada -- and has lived in Guatemala, Haiti and Mexico, working with survivors of state-sponsored violence -- the images of the detainees in Abu Ghraib represent a hauntingly familiar pattern of abuse.