*Ø* Blogmanac | Just "abuse" apparently

'NOT TORTURE, JUST ABUSE'

"Abuse, Donald Rumsfeld insisted yesterday, is 'technically different from torture'. The Times lists some of the abuses reportedly perpertrated by officers from the 800th Military Police Brigade in Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

"Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape ... sodomising a detainee with a chemical light ... forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them [word omitted] for several days at a time ..."

"One US soldier killed a prisoner by hitting him with a rock and was discharged from the army, according to the paper. A private contractor working for the CIA murdered another detainee. The Times's copy of an internal army report into the abuses, marked 'Secret, no foreign dissemination', accuses soldiers of committing 'egregious acts and grave breaches of international law'.

"The Independent goes further. It says the US military is now investigating the deaths of an additional 23 Iraqis in custody.

"Lawyers acting for the families of 14 Iraqis will go to the high court today to challenge the [British] MoD's refusal to accept any legal responsibility for their deaths, the Guardian reports."

Source: The Guardian 'Wrap'