"US military policemen moved unregistered Iraqi prisoners, known as "ghost detainees", around an army-run jail at Abu Ghraib, in order to hide them from the Red Cross, according to a confidential military report.

The report on abuses at Abu Ghraib prison - a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian - described the practice of hiding prisoners as "deceptive, contrary to army doctrine, and in violation of international law".

The revelations surfaced at a time when the prison abuse scandal threatened to engulf the Pentagon and the military occupation of Iraq.

The US army yesterday admitted to the Senate there was evidence of widespread abuse of prisoners in military-run jails in both Iraq and Afghanistan. There have been a total of 25 recorded deaths in US military custody in both countries."

Full story in The Guardian: Jailed Iraqis hidden from Red Cross, says US army.

A 53-page Pentagon report obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, completed in late February. It listed some of the abuse:

"Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of 'sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses' at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community."

The story by Seymour M. Hersh came along with some nasty pictures . The US-military has hired corporate soldiers of fortune to help out their troops and they were just doing what they were trained to do. Torture seems to be quite normal for the US-military, but the president and his minister of defense blame it on bureaucracy. They just didn't know. They had other things to do. Can the US-gouvernment really get away with this that easy? Not accepting the world-court for war-criminals in Den Haag and treating other people like Untermenschen? Richard Nixon resigned for way less! It's about time for Mr.Rumsfeld to go home at least!

-A lot more links and references can be found in an article in zmag: Abuse at Abu Ghraib, the Psychodynamics of Occupation, and the Responsibility of Us All by Stephen Soldz, psychoanalyst and a faculty member at the Institute for the Study of Violence of the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He also hosts the Iraq Occupation and Resistance Report web page.

" If I, a single individual maintaining a web page in my spare time, was well aware of the abuses being reported in the US prisons in Iraq, the only way the top generals, Pentagon officials, senior Administration policy-makers such as the President and Vice-President, and U.S. reporters could be ignorant of them is if they willfully chose to be ignorant."

-The story that started it all: TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB - American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go? by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
-The infamous pictures
-The secret US Army Report on Torture of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib Prison -Al Jazeera English Edition -electroniciraq.net, " a news portal on the US-Iraq crisis published by respected Middle East alternative news publishers"

And remember Guantanamo Bay