CHAIN OF COMMAND
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040517fa_fact2
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
How the Department of Defense mishandled the disaster at Abu Ghraib.
Issue of 2004-05-17
Posted 2004-05-09

'Snarling dogs used against inmate'
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9519105%255E1702,00.html
From correspondents in Washington
May 10, 2004

US magazines today published graphic new reports of Iraqi prison abuses, including a photo showing a naked prisoner cowering under threat from two military dogs and witness accounts of beatings and rape.

The New Yorker magazine, which was among the first to publish photos that have caused an international scandal, showed the man cowering from the dogs and said other photos existed from the same scene, showing the prisoner on the floor with blood pouring from a wound.

The new picture was accompanied by an article which said Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and top military officers sought to keep the prison abuse scandal quiet for several months.

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh said the pictures of the now notorious Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, had been in the possession of a member of the 320th Military Police Battalion.

The published picture showed a naked Iraqi man leaning against a cell door with his hands clasped behind his neck, cowering in fear as two German Shepherd dogs bark at him.

Mr Hersh said that other photos showed the dogs "straining at their leashes and snarling at the prisoner".

"In another take a few minutes later, the Iraqi is lying on the ground, writhing in pain, with a soldier sitting on top of him, knee pressed to his back. Blood is streaming from the inmate's leg," Mr Hersh said in his article.

"Another photograph is a close-up of the naked prisoner, from his waist to his ankles, lying on the floor. On his right thigh is what appears to be a bite or a deep scratch. There is another larger wound on his left leg covered in blood."

Meanwhile, former prisoners who recognised themselves in earlier pictures broadcast internationally told Time magazine that inmates at Abu Ghraib suffered beatings, sexual abuse and rape.

Mohammed Unis Hassan told the magazine he was arrested for looting a bank in July. He said he spent seven months in the prison, and was beaten with a cable or riot stick when he failed to say if he knew who was setting bombs around Baghdad.

He also said he saw a US soldier having regular sex with a female inmate, and that guards drank beer and whiskey in the halls.

Another released inmate, Haider Sabbar Abed al-Abbadi, told the magazine that US guards forced his friend to have oral sex with him while he was hooded. He said he knew pictures were being taken because even through the hood he could see the flashes going off.

The New Yorker article quoted an unnamed senior Pentagon official as saying that many senior generals believed top civilian officials and General John Abizaid, the head of US Central Command, and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the head of US forces in Iraq, "had done their best to keep the issue quiet in the first months of the year".

"What is the motive for not being forthcoming? They foresaw major diplomatic problems," the Pentagon official was quoted as saying.

He added that the "secrecy and wishful thinking" that marked the Pentagon under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "shaped its response to the reports from Abu Ghraib".

Mr Rumsfeld has faced major criticism from Congress and has been scolded by President George W. Bush for not bringing the abuse investigation to their attention before photographs were published by US media.