More on Iraqi Detainees Scandal

Mistreatment Of Detainees Went Beyond Guards' Abuse
Ex-Prisoners, Red Cross Cite Flawed Arrests, Denial of Rights

The Road to Abu Ghraib | Part 3 - Global Detentions
Secret World of U.S. Interrogation
Long History of Tactics in Overseas Prisons Is Coming to Light

Amnesty International Report Widens Scandal

Amnesty International accused British soldiers in Iraq on Tuesday of killing civilians who posed no apparent threat, widening an Anglo-American scandal over the behavior of occupation troops.

The human rights group said in a report that Britain was undermining the rule of law in Iraq by failing to investigate properly the killings of up to 37 civilians over the past year, including an eight-year-old girl.

Washington Post Editorial Accuses Bush of Lying about Abuse.

ON JUNE 27 President Bush pledged in a speech that the United States would not use torture on detainees in the war on terrorism. The same day, the Defense Department's general counsel released a letter specifying that "all interrogations, wherever they may occur," would not violate prohibitions in the U.S. Constitution against cruel and unusual punishment. It turns out those assurances were false.

The crimes at the Abu Ghraib prison grew out of this improper system of interrogation. It is a regimen the administration has never fully disclosed, and about which it has misled Congress and the public through statements such as those of last June. Despite the incalculable damage caused by Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration persists in defending the system and in justifying its continued use, both at Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq. At congressional hearings last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and senior military commanders repeatedly tried to distinguish what they characterized as isolated acts by a handful of individuals at Abu Ghraib from the general procedures under which physical and mental harassment is used to soften up prisoners and under which prison guards are ordered to "set the conditions" for intelligence interrogators. They pretended there was no connection between the two.

Mr. Bush traveled across the Potomac yesterday to congratulate Mr. Rumsfeld for the "superb job" he is doing as defense secretary. The president again characterized the abuses as the aberrations of a "small number" of servicemen and women. These are not the right responses to one of this nation's worst disgraces. Instead, the administration should reform the system so that it meets the guarantees that Mr. Bush falsely offered last June.