The catalogue of abuse, which was obtained by the online American magazine Salon, could not have arrived at a worse time for the Bush administration, coinciding with yesterday's United Nations report on abuse of detainees at Guantánamo, the release of a video showing British troops beating up Iraqi youths, and lingering anger in the Muslim world over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

Bush administration officials had already been fending off a new wave of anger about the torture of detainees - following the airing of graphic images from Abu Ghraib on Australian television - when Salon posted a story on its website yesterday saying it had obtained what appears to be the fullest photographic record to date of the abuse.

It said the material, gathered by the army's criminal investigation division, included 1,325 photographs and 93 video clips of suspected abuse of detainees, 546 photographs of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, as well as 660 images of adult pornography, and 29 pictures of US troops engaged in simulated sex acts. Based on date stamps, all were recorded between October 18 and December 30 2003, the same timeframe as the original scandal.

The website published 18 pictures from the prison. Aside from the ritualised images of humiliation - naked Iraqi men kneeling or lying on the ground alone or in a heap or wearing women's underwear on their heads - they also reveal the apparent normality of those bizarre scenes within Abu Ghraib. One of the pictures shows an army sergeant standing calmly to fill out paperwork on a wall. Behind him is a hooded, naked detainee. Another photograph shows Staff Sergeant Ivan Chip Frederick - who was tried for his role in the abuse scandal - trimming his fingernails beside an Iraqi who is standing on a box wearing a hood and electrical wires.

There are also images of physical violence: a blood-streaked cell, and a picture of the battered face of a corpse packed in ice. "The DVD also includes photographs of guards threatening Iraqi prisoners with dogs, homemade videotapes depicting hooded prisoners being forced to masturbate, and a video showing a mentally disturbed prisoner smashing his head against a door. Oddly, the material also includes numerous photographs of slaughtered animals and mundane images of soldiers travelling around Iraq," Salon said.

The magazine said it thought the material included all of the pictures that originally surfaced when the abuse became known in April 2004, as well as the pictures aired on Australian television. Human rights organisations have been fighting for months for the army to release a full record of the abuse at Abu Ghraib. Salon said it received the material from a member of the military who had spent time at the jail and was familiar with the investigation.

The first official response from Washington as well as Baghdad was concerned as much with the impact these new pictures of abuse could have in the Middle East at a time when anger against the west is high. A Pentagon spokesman said the release of additional images of abuse "could only further inflame and possibly incite unnecessary violence in the world".

Iraq's prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, while condemning the abuse at Abu Ghraib, noted that US soldiers had already been punished for it.

Mr Jaafari's government was also on the defensive about torture yesterday after the first direct evidence emerged that death squads had operated from within the interior ministry.

The US general in charge of training the Iraqi police, Major General Joseph Peterson, told the Chicago Tribune that the death squads that had been arresting and killing Sunnis had been operating from within the police force although they wore commando uniforms. "We have found one of the death squads," Gen Peterson told the paper. "They are a part of the police force of Iraq."

In another development, ABC television on Wednesday night aired audio tapes of Saddam Hussein's cabinet meetings during the mid-1990s, including a segment in which he says he warned Washington of a terror attack. "Terrorism is coming. I told the Americans," Saddam is heard saying, adding that he "told the British as well". However, he adds: "This story is coming, but not from Iraq."

The report, by five inspectors for the UN human rights commissioner, refers to shackling, hooding and forcing detainees to wear earphones and goggles. In particular, it refers to interrogation techniques and excessive violence used to forcefeed prisoners on hunger strike. Based on interviews with detainees' lawyers, former inmates and written exchanges with US officials, it calls on the US to put the 490 inmates on trial or release them.

Last night, the secretary general, Kofi Annan, said: "Sooner or later there will be a need to close the Guantánamo [camp]." He added that though he did not agree with everything in the report, he opposed holding people "in perpetuity".

The UN inspectors refused a US offer to tour Guantánamo after they were barred from visiting the prisoners. The 40-page document is the UN's first to address Guantánamo. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, dismissed its findings as a "rehash of old allegations" and "a discredit to the organisation". "The detainees are being treated humanely," he said. "Remember these are terrorists."

But in one of the strongest remarks yet by a British cabinet minister, Peter Hain said last night that the government believed the camp should be shut. Asked on the BBC's Question Time programme whether Tony Blair supported that view he said "I think so, yes".

The Bush administration has defined torture in narrow terms, referring to intense physical injury and organ failure. Controversy about the definition goes to the heart of allegations that the US has secretly used Britain to transport detainees to interrogation centres in countries where torture occurs, in the practice known as "extraordinary rendition".

Ministers have relied on US assurances that senior British lawyers have repeatedly questioned. In a law lords judgment last year, Lord Bingham referred to US techniques, including sensory deprivation and inducing a perception of suffocation, which, he said, would be defined as torture in British law.

Mr Justice Collins said three British residents in Guantánamo could now seek a court order requiring the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, to petition for their release. The case, brought by Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil el-Banna, and Omar Deghayes, and relatives living in Britain, could be heard as early as next week.

Responding to the judge's remarks about the US definition of torture, Rabinder Singh QC, counsel for the three detainees and their families, said Britain and the European court of human rights would "undoubtedly condemn" many of the practices at Guantánamo. Mr Rawi is an Iraqi who has lived in the UK since 1985. His business partner, Mr Banna, is a Jordanian refugee, and Mr Deghayes is a Libyan refugee. All three were taken to Guantánamo via Afghanistan.

Mr Rawi and Mr Banna were seized by CIA agents in Gambia in 2002. Chris Mullin, a former Foreign Office minister for Africa, says British agents helped the Americans seize the two men. They are alleged to have had contacts with al-Qaida because of a connection with the radical cleric Abu Qatada.

Mr Deghayes was detained in Pakistan. His name was said to be on the FBI's "most wanted" list yet the photograph in his file was of a different person, the court heard. Mr Deghayes was almost blind in one eye through the use of pepper spray and gouging during his detention, yet is still being constantly subjected to bright light.

Mr Hain said on BBC1's Question Time: "I would prefer that it wasn't there. I would prefer it was closed, yes."

Asked if it was Government policy that Guantanamo should be shut down, he replied: "That's what I think."

And challenged on whether Mr Blair agreed with him, he said: "I think so, yes."

The camp was opened in 2002 to hold terror suspects seized during the Afghanistan war and is currently believed to contain around 500 inmates.

Mr Blair told MPs last November that Guantanamo Bay was "an anomaly that sooner or later has to be dealt with".

Mr Hain said that the British Government accepted that useful information had been obtained from detainees at Guantanamo, but had always been uncomfortable with its existence.

"What we've said all along is, we don't agree with that," he said last night. "(The Prime Minister) has said that, as a matter of fact, some of the information that came from there was of importance, but that doesn't mean to say that he thinks the place should have been set up in the first place. There's a distinction there.

"We've made clear our position. We've made it absolutely clear. (Foreign Secretary) Jack Straw's made it clear, so has the Prime Minister."

He added: "We've always said that Guantanamo Bay was something that shouldn't have happened."

Yesterday's UN report, ordered by the body's Commission on Human Rights, called on the US government to refrain from any practice "amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" at Guantanamo.

It said all detainees should be brought to trial or released "without further delay" and the facility closed.

Some aspects of prisoners' treatment, including force-feeding hunger strikers, amounted to torture, it said.

Mr Annan said: "I think sooner or later, there will be a need to close Guantanamo, and I think it will be up to the (US) Government to decide, hopefully, to do it as soon as is possible."

Following the report's publication, the US administration dismissed its findings as "largely without merit".

The five UN investigators who compiled it had refused an invitation to visit Guantanamo Bay, said a spokesman, because the US would not allow them interview detainees.

They relied instead on interviews with former detainees, public documents, media reports, lawyers and a questionnaire filled out by the US Government.

Nine British nationals who had been detained there have now been flown back to the UK and released without charge.

None of the current inmates at Guantanamo are British, but Amnesty International believes that eight have previously been resident in the UK and that some have relatives here.

Yesterday, three long-term UK residents - although not British citizens - were given the go-ahead to seek a High Court order requiring Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to petition for their release from Guantanamo.

A judge in London said allegations of torture being practised at the facility meant the detainees, and their families living in the UK, had an arguable case that the British Government was under an obligation to act on their behalf.

Lawyers for the three men, Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil el-Banna and Omar Deghayes, and their families, were told there was "no guarantee" they would win the case, expected to be heard in full in mid-March.

The Syrian-born Canadian was detained in 2002 during a layover at New York's JFK airport on a flight home to Canada from Tunisia; he was detained by US immigration officials and then deported to Syria, where he was born. Arar alleged he was deported so that he could be tortured in Syria, where he eventually made false admissions of terrorist activity. Referring to information linking Arar to al Qaeda, the Justice Department said that deporting him was "in the best interest of the United States." Syria has denied the allegations of abuse.

Arar's lawyers argued that the Torture Victim Protection Act provides the US court with jurisdiction over cases involving civil rights abuses committed abroad, but Judge Trager dismissed the case citing "the national security and foreign policy considerations at stake" and held that Arar, as a non-citizen, could not raise a constitutional right to due process. The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights has a press release on the ruling and background on the case.

The defeated Iraqi army of Saddam Hussein is no longer the enemy in George Bush's unjust war; its place has been taken by insurgent forces, as well as by al Qaeda and other groups who use the country as a battlefield and guerrilla training ground for their own troops. Added to the tragedy in Iraq is the travesty of Bush's "War on Terror" -- a formless justification for the growth of federal government power and the steady erosion of our Bill of Rights through warrantless searches, illegal spying, kidnapping and torture, and imprisonment without either trial or conviction.

American soldiers -- courageous, dedicated and trained to fight to preserve our freedoms, and raised to believe in the importance of a virtuous life -- are fighting under Rules of Engagement that permit the use of such destructive retaliatory force that they cannot avoid the commission of atrocities against helpless civilians. American Marines -- always prepared to be "the first to fight" and whose motto is "semper fidelis" -- are being used for immoral ends by an administration that has proven faithless to the people of the country it pretends to represent.

And what has this corruption of the best of our youth in an immoral military debacle cost? In trying to answer this question, we submit that the least significant costs are those that can be quantified. The most recent and most general attempt to estimate both the direct and indirect costs of George Bush's war is that of economists Linda Bilmes and Joe Stiglitz, who summarized their estimate in a paper presented at the January 2006 meetings in Boston of the American Economic Association.

Bilmes and Stiglitz present a "moderate" estimate of $1.3 trillion for past and expected federal budget outlays related to this unnecessary war. This includes military operations, reconstruction, foreign aid and enhanced base security for the military bases in Iraq. Currently, the monthly average cost of military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan is $7.1 billion -- enough in one year of expenditure to rebuild the city of New Orleans, including levees that would withstand category 5 hurricanes.

In calculating their estimate of the total of direct and indirect costs of the war, Bilmes and Stiglitz include an estimate of the economic value of American soldiers killed and wounded, and the estimated future costs of caring for those wounded, while excluding any calculations of similar costs for other countries, including Iraqi soldiers, civilians and insurgents killed or wounded. They include the direct and indirect costs of the American military arms and equipment used and destroyed, but not that of the destruction to the land and economy of the Iraqis. They include the increased costs of providing greater security for military bases, but not the costs of increased counter-intelligence activities by the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Bilmes and Stiglitz admit that they were unable to include most of the economic costs associated with Bush's war; for instance, they omit the damage to international trade and the standard of living in the world as a consequence of the increased trade barriers imposed in the "War on Terror". They omit the economic damage caused by higher prices for oil because of decreased production in the Middle East, and the consequent lower production of other goods and services as energy expenditures replace others in budgeting. They omit the loss of investment expenditures in the American economy as military spending replaces domestic spending and interest payments on debt from deficit spending on the war crowd out business borrowing.

If all economic costs could be included, Bilmes and Stiglitz speculate that their estimate of the Iraq war costs would rise to $2.2 trillion. We submit that this is still too low because it fails to allow for the fact that military expenditures are expenditures for destruction, not for the creation of value and increases in the standard of living. Resources wasted in the destruction of human life and property, are resources that cannot be used for building houses or feeding the hungry. It also fails to allow for the demoralization and destruction of the whole American military establishment that is one of the seldom-mentioned results of fighting this immoral, pointless and savage war.

To reach their cost estimates, Bilmes and Stiglitz had to make a number of restrictive assumptions, a change in any one of which would greatly change the results of their calculations. The only unimpeachable fact and undeniably true statement in their entire paper is a concluding remark that "the most important things in life -- like life itself -- are priceless." And what do they recommend for the future? Like a slap in the face of all that is moral and good in humankind and its potential for greatness, Bilmes and Stiglitz urge BETTER COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS before undertaking future wars!

How does one react to the recognition that life is priceless, but a price should be put upon it for the purpose of deciding whether to make war? It can only be with outrage. We are outraged that a war should be considered as anything but a last resort, fought in defense and after an attack by an organized and dangerous enemy bent on our destruction or conquest. We are outraged that a pre-emptive and poorly thought-out invasion of a foreign country was undertaken under a pretense that was subsequently revealed to be a pack of lies. We are outraged at the incalculable human cost of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. We are outraged that human and other resources desperately needed to respond to the Gulf Coast disaster last fall were instead in Iraq, being used for the wasting and occupation of that country.

Outrage is what Cindy was feeling when she toured the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans in mid-February. Outrage, sorrow, horror and sickness over the destruction she saw there. A destruction that is both complete and profound. A destruction that was made worse by poor preparation at all levels of government. Miles and miles of collapsed houses, overturned cars and toys alike flung far and wide: miles and miles of proof of the incompetence and callousness of government.

Cindy was in New Orleans as people were being kicked out of their subsidized FEMA housing while hundreds of millions of dollars of "FEMA trailers" sat in lots and on railroad cars waiting for a place to be parked. She listened to Richard Skinner of Homeland Security say on CNN that FEMA is spending "eight to ten million dollars" to spread gravel on a lot in Arkansas so that the 11,000 trailers that should be in the Gulf States, but are parked on that lot, won't sink into the mud while they sit. She saw hundreds of units of low income housing in St. Bernard's Parish that could be rehabilitated with some sheetrock and paint, but are sitting empty and useless. Hundreds of residents could return to their homes for what it would cost for 18 months use of two of those empty trailers -- each of which is estimated by the Times-Picayune to cost as much as $120,000.

Cindy left New Orleans depressed and missing her son, Casey, even more. Like other American soldiers, Casey was raised to understand the importance of a virtuous life. He neither sought, nor wanted, to kill innocent people in Iraq, and he voiced this often during his last visit home at Christmas, 2003. On April 4, 2004, he was killed while on a rescue mission to retrieve wounded comrades in arms. Casey came home to be buried, as have almost 3000 others in the last three years.

But, what of those soldiers who come home wounded or unscathed? To what do they return? They come home to a Veterans Administration that is inadequately funded for the job it has to do. Too many come home to divorce, to become homeless, to die by their own hands. Iraq War veterans come home to a VA that has failed even to provide the benefits due veterans of the Vietnam War -- a war that has since claimed more veterans through suicide than were killed fighting.

Like the water that poured over the weak and compromised levees in New Orleans, the human lives and money that are being poured into the sands of distant Iraq are harming our very humanity. Rather than accolades, the American people are receiving worldwide hatred in return. Rather than greater security, they are receiving less. Rather than expanding freedom in the world, they are losing their own to a mindless expansion of federal government power.

Life is priceless. The present value of all the future income Casey Sheehan might have earned is miniscule compared to the value he had to himself, to Cindy, to his father, to his brother and sisters -- to all his family and friends. Multiply that way of valuing Casey by 3000 killed, 20,000 wounded, and thousands mentally damaged or embittered for life and you get an obscenity. This is the human cost of war.

Cindy Sheehan is the proud mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan who was 24 when he was KIA in Sadr City, Iraq on 04/04/04. She is also the author of Not One More Mother's Child available at www.koabooks.com. Cindy is the founder and President of Gold Star Families for Peace. Cindy is above all the very proud mother of Carly, Andy, and Janey Sheehan who hold down the fort in California.

Sam Bostaph, Ph.D., is Pofessor of Economics and Chairman, Department of Economics, University of Dallas. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles on topics in intellectual history, economic theory and economic theory. A former Marine, who later served as a U.S. Army intelligence staff officer during the Vietnam War era, he is the proud father of Katie and Megan Bostaph and prays that they may never go to war themselves.

First published at michaelmoore.com

The report was published on Thursday, as a senior High Court judge, Mr Justice Collins, stated that American actions over Guantanamo's Camp Delta do not "appear to coincide with that of most civilised nations". As a result of his ruling, three of eight British inmates held in the camp are to appeal to the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to intervene with the Bush administration on their behalf.

Archbishop Sentamu's comments will strengthen the increasingly insistent international pressure for Guantanamo to be closed. Archbishop Desmond Tutu called for its closure, after similar appeals by Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, and the UN secretary general Kofi Annan.

Dr Sentamu said the UNHRC should seek a writ of habeas corpus, compelling the US to bring those being detained at Guantanamo to court, to establish whether they are imprisoned lawfully and if they should be released.

"The American Government is breaking international law," he told The Independent. "The main building block of a democratic society is that everyone is equal before the law, innocent until proved otherwise, and has the right to legal representation. If the guilt of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay is beyond doubt, why are the Americans afraid to bring them to trial? Transparency and accountability are the other side of the coin of freedom and responsibility. We are all accountable for our actions in spite of circumstances. The events of 9/11 cannot erase the rule of law and international obligations.

"The US should try all 500 detainees at Guantanamo, who still include eight British residents, or free them without further delay. To hold someone for up to four years without charge clearly indicates a society that is heading towards George Orwell's Animal Farm."

The Government has already managed to secure the release, in March 2004, of the four British nationals who were detained at Guantanamo ­ Moazzam Begg, Feroz Abbasi, Martin Mubanga and Richard Belmar ­ although only after guarantees they would be constantly monitored and face an investigation to ascertain whether they can be charged in this country.

Washington had claimed all four were "enemy combatants" who trained at camps run by al-Qa'ida. But they were released after UK police concluded there was not enough evidence to charge them with any offence. The men said they had been tortured at Guantanamo, allegations the US denied.

So far the Prime Minister appears unmoved by the growing sense of indignation brought on by the UNHRC report. He reiterated a statement first made a year ago that the base in Cuba was "an anomaly".

Sir Menzies Campbell, the acting Liberal Democrat leader, said: "This is not an anomaly which needs to be sorted sooner or later. This is an outrage that needs to be sorted out now. Guantanamo Bay has damaged the reputation of the US and its allies across the globe, and particularly in the Middle East."

The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, told the BBC the military tribunals proposed by Washington to try detainees at the base did not amount to a fair trial "by standards we would regard as acceptable". But last night, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, rejected Mr Annan's calls.

"He's just flat wrong. We shouldn't close Guantanamo," he said. " We have several hundred terrorists, bad people, people who if they went back out on the field would try to kill Americans ... To close that place and pretend that really there's no problem just isn't realistic."