More good news on our job so far "winning hearts and minds"...
How is it again that Rummy, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rice and Bush still have jobs?

By PAISLEY DODDS
Associated Press Writer
December 15, 2004, 6:09 PM EST

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Newly released U.S. Navy documents portray a series of abuse cases stretching beyond Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison where photos surfaced this year of U.S. troops forcing prisoners -- often naked -- to pose in humiliating positions.

The files released Tuesday document a crush of abuse allegations, most from the early months of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, including U.S. Marines forcing Iraqi juveniles to kneel while troops discharge a weapon in a mock execution and the use of an electric shock on a prisoner.

more below the fold

As Seymour Hersh said in his articles on Abu Ghraib this has to go up to the highest levels of the military and civilian leadership. It is deplorable to our democracy that we are treating other human beings this way. Where is the outrage from the so-called "morale" majority when it comes to the decimation of Iraq and many of its civilians? (yeah, I know, it's only the one's who haven't been born yet who are worthy of saving...)

More from the AP article:

The approximately 10,000 files include investigation reports from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and witness interviews.

All names have been blacked out in the documents, which were released after a federal court ordered the government to comply with a Freedom of Information Act petition filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights and other organizations.

"This kind of widespread abuse could not have taken place without a leadership failure of the highest order," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.

The Pentagon says cases of abuse are taken seriously and investigated.

....

In one of the reports, a Marine said he and two others were ordered to kill three Iraqis.

"The executions allegedly took place in early April 2003 while the unit was temporarily based at an abandoned Iraqi pharmaceutical factory south of Baghdad," according to the NCIS document, dated June 26, 2003.

....

Several Marines have been charged in connection with the treatment of a member of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party who died of strangulation after a Marine grabbed him by the neck at a holding facility. Investigators ruled that the death was accidental, but other investigations are pending.

In another of the documents, a Navy corpsman is quoted as saying, "there was a lot of peer pressure to keep one's mouth shut."

In yet another, a Navy investigator describes his Iraq caseload as "exploding" with "high visibility cases."

This kind of news is just gonna keep coming, but Bush won't care, he has his "mandate".

UPDATE from Fisk @ The Independent today on similar allegations in the UK. Hopefully Britan's will be a bit more outraged than we have been to this point.