It just keeps getting worse. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Red Cross delivered a devastating report of routine atrocities at Abu Ghraib to the administration in February. The report included summary executions that sound a great deal like the "sport-killing" by correctional officers at California's Corcoran State prison that shocked America a couple of years ago. The report below is from Reuters quoting the Wall Street Journal since the paper has a subscription only online edition. (You most certainly can go there with the link if you don't mind paying.) The fact that WSJ is releasing this scoop is significant in itself; after all, it is the most conservative of America's major dailies and has a lot riding on Bush's reelection.
The confidential report concluded that mistreatment in some cases was "tantamount to torture," the newspaper said. The findings were based on inspections and interviews in Iraq by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The February report shows the treatment of prisoners in Iraq differed with statements made by officials in the administration of President Bush that military higher-ups had not condoned the abuse, the newspaper said.
It quoted the report as saying information gathered by the Red Cross "suggested the use of ill-treatment against persons deprived of their liberty went beyond exceptional cases and might be considered a practice tolerated by" coalition forces.
In the report, the Red Cross said prisoners were held in empty cells naked at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and beaten by soldiers. Three former military policemen at the prison told Reuters on Thursday that abuse was commonplace.
The aid group also said coalition forces fired on unarmed prisoners from watchtowers and killed some of them, as well as committing "serious violations" of the Geneva Conventions governing treatment of war prisoners, the Journal said.
