A 'clear ... system failure'

Also an investigation by Newsweek shows how widespread that abuse is across the US military prison system – and not just in Iraq – and that many in the US military are trying to pass the buck when it comes to who was responsible for the abuse.

"What is our policy? What are we doing? What is the possibility of us winning? That's all still in question," said Mr. Hagel, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "I think it's still in question whether Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and, quite frankly, General [Richard] Myers, [the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,] can command the respect and the trust and the confidence of the military of the American people to lead this country."

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The Washington Post reports that deep divisions have arisen at the top of the US military over the Iraq issue, with many top generals now believing that while the US is winning battles in Iraq, it is losing the war.

A senior general at the Pentagon said he believes the United States is already on the road to defeat. "It is doubtful we can go on much longer like this," he said. "The American people may not stand for it -- and they should not." Asked who was to blame, this general pointed directly at Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. "I do not believe we had a clearly defined war strategy, end state and exit strategy before we commenced our invasion," he said. "Had someone like Colin Powell been the chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff], he would not have agreed to send troops without a clear exit strategy. The current OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] refused to listen or adhere to military advice."

The prison scandal also threatens to engulf the US General Geoffrey Miller, who has just been appointed the head of prisons in Iraq. Britain's Mail on Sunday, and Newsweek, both carry reports that much of the abuse at the Iraqi prisons started after a visit there late last summer by Gen. Miller, then in charge at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay.

The Washington Post reports that as the insurgency grew in Iraq last summer and fall, the need for intelligence also grew. Miller was brought in by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the Coalition commander in Iraq, and his top intel officer, Maj. Gen. Barbara Fastto, to find ways to improve the flow of intelligence from detainees.

"He came up there and told me he was going to 'Gitmoize' the detention operation," turning it into a hub of interrogation, said Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, then commander of the military prison system in Iraq. "But the difference is, in Guantanamo Bay there isn't a war going on outside the wall."

Miller defended his tactics at the prison and denied that his suggestions might have contributed to mistreatment of prisoners by overzealous military police. "I stand by those recommendations," General Miller said on Saturday. "Those recommendations were based on a system that provided humane detention, excellent interrogation, all within the bounds of the . . . Geneva Conventions."

But as the Los Angeles Times reported over the weekend, an internal army investigation of the abuse compiled by Major-General Antonio Taguba has challenged Miller's approach, particularly the use of military police to "soften" up prisoners for interrogation. Military law forbids the use of military police for this role. The Sydney Morning Herald reports, however, that for the reservist military police units at Abu Ghraib abusing prisoners seemed almost routine, " a fact of army life the soldiers felt no need to hide." One of the reservists charged with abuse claimed last week that it was her job to " make it hell" for the prisoners and that she didn't read a copy of the Geneva conventions until two weeks after she was charged.

The Guardian also reported last week that US military police moved unregistered Iraqi prisoners, known as "ghost detainees", around an army-run jail at Abu Ghraib, in order to hide them from the Red Cross.

The Washington Post reported Sunday that the abuse scandal means the US "faces the prospect of a severe and enduring backlash not just in the Middle East but also among strategic allies."

The White House is so gloomy about the repercussions that senior adviser Karl Rove suggested this week that the consequences of the graphic photographs documenting the US abuse of Iraqi detainees are so enormous that it will take decades for the United States to recover, according to a Bush adviser.

Martin Schram of the Naples (Florida) Daily Times writes that the abuse scandal has handed Osama bin Laden his greatest victory ever over the US military. International Affairs columnist Fareed Zakaria, writing in Newsweek, says that while people like Rumsfeld have said that they "accept responsibility" for what happened, it never seems to go beyond just saying the words – no one ever does seem to take responsibility.

After the greatest terrorist attack against America, no one was asked to resign, and the White House didn't even want to launch a serious investigation into it. The 9/11 Commission was created after months of refusals because some of the victims' families pursued it aggressively and simply didn't give up. After the fiasco over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, not one person was even reassigned. The only people who have been fired or cashiered in this administration are men like Gen. Eric Shinseki, Paul O'Neill and Larry Lindsey, who spoke inconvenient truths.

Mr. Hersh said the magazine also has photos of after the attack that show the man with a large wound caused by the dogs, and that the US soldiers in the pictures are a completely different group than the seven reservists already charged with mistreating prisoners. Columnist Jenny McCartney of The Telegraph of London says the new photos prove that the problem wasn't "an interrogation centre with a couple of rogue soldiers in it: it was a sadistic free-for-all of the basest kind."

On Monday, the White House restated its support for Rumsfeld, as the president visited the Pentagon. ABS-CBNNews of the Philippines reports that "hushed whispering" out of the Pentagon indicate that Mjr. Gen. Taguba did such a through job in his 53-page report, and so upset the Pentagon, that he may have " written a death warrant to his career."

And as one of the first reservists charged in the abuse scandal is about to be tried in a court martial, Newsday reports that Specialist Joe Darby, the man who first brought the photos of prisoner abuse to the military's attention in January of 2004, is now so hated in the town in Maryland where he and other reservists in one of the military police unit came from, that people there are saying his life may be in danger. "Darby's going to be shunned," said Tanya Vargas, a former weekend reservist with the 372nd. "He's going to be blackballed. His life is in jeopardy, because he's a snitch. I hope they have protection for him."

Also...
• Bush, Kerry differ on war only in degree of delusion ( Baltimore Sun)
• Rumsfeld: A father's nemesis who became a son's trusted aide ( New York Times)
• Loyal...to a fault ( Toronto Star)
• British soldier gives new details of abuse of jailed Iraqis ( Guardian)

• Feedback appreciated. E-mail Tom Regan .