abuse in iraq

One of six US soldiers charged with abusing prisoners in Iraq says she acted under direct instructions from military intelligence who wanted the prisoners softened before interrogation, the Washington Post has reported.

The newspaper says that military police officer Sabrina Harman, who was stationed at Abu Ghraib prison, states in interviews she was assigned to break down prisoners for interrogation.

"They would bring in one to several prisoners at a time already hooded and cuffed," she was quoted as saying in the interviews by email this week from Baghdad.

"The job of the MP was to keep them awake, make it hell so they would talk."

She said her military police unit took direction from the military intelligence officers in charge of the facility and from civilian contractors who conducted interrogations, according to the Post.

She did not discuss the abusive treatment of prisoners, who ordered that treatment, or any questions about the charges against her, the paper said.

Ms Harman posed in a widely published photograph showing naked Iraqi detainees stacked in a pyramid.

On Friday, another female soldier who appeared in a widely published photograph leading a naked Iraqi prisoner by a leash, Private First Class Lynndie England, 21, was charged with maltreating a detainee.

-- AFP

Looks like pretty minor abuse to me, no limbs cut off or eyes poked out like the muslims do to theirs. It is war and captured soldiers get rough and humiliating treatment in any war.
Dave R.