Torture. "Former Iraqi human rights minister Abdel Basset Turki said US overseer Paul Bremer knew in November that Iraqi prisoners were being abused in US detention centres. "I told him the news. He didn't take care about the information I gave him." ... Guardian: "For the families standing in the dusty car park of Abu Ghraib prison yesterday, the revelations of torture and abuse came as no surprise."

NYT: "An internal Army investigation has found a virtual collapse of the command structure" ... Sunday Mail: "Thirty cases of torture and murder by British and American troops against Iraqi POWs are being investigated ... [including] urinating on a terrified Iraq captive." ... AP: "Amnesty International said it has uncovered a 'pattern of torture' of Iraqi prisoners by coalition troops, and called for an independent investigation into the claims of abuse." ... And in Brooklyn: "[T]he men were repeatedly slammed into walls and dragged across the floor while shackled and manacled, kicked and punched until they bled ... and subjected to multiple unnecessary body-cavity searches, including one during which correction officers inserted a flashlight into Mr. Elmaghraby's rectum ..."

Xymphora: "[T]his abuse was a systematic and official act by the CIA and military intelligence to 'soften up' prisoners before they were interrogated. Seymour Hersh has seen the secret internal military report which confirms that the torture was an official and sanctioned action of the American government, known to Army leadership at the highest levels. ... Anecdotal evidence reported in the Arab press indicates that we have only seen the tip of the iceberg ... In particular, we have not heard all the stories of sexual abuse of male prisoners, and have not heard anything about what they did to women prisoners. ... No weapons of mass destruction, no Saddam connection to al Qaeda, no prospect of democracy, and the Iraqi people worse off than under Saddam and headed for worse things yet. The last thing the Americans had was that at least the brutality had stopped. The massacre at Falluja and the torture have finished all possible arguments for this illegal and immoral attack on the people of Iraq." (On the Falluja massacres.)