<font size="4">New Evidence : Bush Misleads on Prison Abuse Scandal</font>

<font size="1">The MisLeader / MoveOn.org
July 15th, 2004</font>

President Bush has claimed that the prison abuse scandal in Iraq was just "conduct by a few American troops."1 But with Congress investigating the scandal,2 a series of explosive new reports provides evidence that the tactics may have been approved at the highest levels of government. Even worse, one leading investigative journalist says the Administration is holding videotapes of soldiers sodomizing Iraqi children.

According to a newly released Pentagon memo from 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally authorized the use of controversial interrogation tactics,3 including using dogs to intimidate, stripping prisoners of their clothes and placing hoods on prisoners so they cannot see. Rumsfeld also ordered military officials to hold prisoners without listing them on prisoner rolls requested by the International Red Cross.4 And according to Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who was the head of detention operations at Abu Ghraib, Rumsfeld "approved tactics at the prison"5 directly. As reported by Newsweek, these memos and orders were signed off by Rumsfeld, President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft and were part of a "secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door to such methods"6 of abuse seen in Iraq.

Making matters worse, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker told the American Civil Liberties Union this week that videotapes were made of young boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib. "The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking," the reporter told the group's convention. Hersh reports there was "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher." See the video of Hersh's ACLU speech7 - the information about the prison comes at about 1 hour and 30 minutes in.

<font size="1">[b]Note: emphasis mine</font>
Sources:

1. "Bush Seeks to Reassure Nation on Iraq ," Washington Post, 5/25/04,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...004May24.html.
2. "House Panel Reviews Iraq Prison Reports," Washington Post, 7/15/04,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...004Jul14.html.
3. "Report: Former head of Iraqi prisons says Rumsfeld OK'd coercive
tactics," San Francisco Chronicle, 7/02/04,
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...53EDT0174.DTL.
4. "The Reach of War: Prison Abuse; Rumsfeld Issued an Order to Hide
Detainee in Iraq," New York Times, 6/17/04,
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstrac...F0894DC404482.
5. "Report: Former head of Iraqi prisons says Rumsfeld OK'd coercive
tactics," San Francisco Chronicle, 7/02/04,
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...53EDT0174.DTL.
6. "The Roots of Torture," Newsweek, 5/24/04,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4989422/site/newsweek/.
7. "America at a Crossroads," 2004 ACLU Members Conference,
http://stream.realimpact.net/?file=c...sroads_300.rm.

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