Snips from print version, p.A8,
Pentagon probers are trying to determine whether the photos were one of the tools used to wrest confessions from detainees at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison or a more innocent action-a macabre part of some war diary being compiled by individual soldiers. How that inquiry turns out will determine whether the Pentagon needs to revamp the way the military gathers intelligence-or needs to focus on counseling and training aimed at maintaining the mental health of U. S. soldiers...
A report in the Washington Post about 1,000 photos it reviewed says the images of the abused Iraqi prisoners and their guards were interspersed with benign shots of U. S. soldiers riding camels-suggesting the photos may have been a bizarre personal collection... "These photographs, they’re very obviously staged. They include simulated sex acts and they’re clearly intended for internal use," says Gary Womack, a Houston attorney who is representing Army Specialist Charles A. Graner... Mr. Womack says he has been told that Specialist Graner and his reserve cohorts didn’t make a move in the Iraqi prison without the approval of military inteligence officers. Those intelligence officers, he says, were under intense presure from superiors in Iraq and in Washington to find evidence of weapons of mass destruction and to identify insurgents. The photographs were a tool being used to harass prisoners psychologically, Mr. Womack says. "The guards were smiling in these pictures even though they aren’t jokes," Mr. Womack says, suggesting that they are pretending to be enjoying themselves as part of the psychological pressure, thather than really enjoying themselves. |