The report appeared to be more in line with the view of the US ambassador to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, who conceded this week that the US had "opened a Pandora's box in Iraq", than Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, who accused the US and other media on Tuesday of exaggeration.

"Civic life and the social fabric remained under intense strain from the widespread violence, principally inflicted by insurgency and terrorist attacks," the report said.

"Additionally, the misappropriation of official authority by groups – paramilitary, sectarian, criminal, terrorist and insurgent – resulted in numerous and severe crimes and abuses," it added.

Much of the report was devoted to "extra-legal killings", arbitrary detention and torture committed by government forces, both police and military. However it also admitted that insurgents or criminals had killed and kidnapped while wearing official uniforms.

"The vast majority of human rights abuses reportedly carried out by government agents were attributed to the police," it said, describing how the Badr Organisation and Mahdi army militias, both Shia-based, had infiltrated the interior ministry.

The report documented the cases of Sunni inmates tortured in secret prisons, and noted that Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the prime minister, had set up an interagency inspection team to examine all prison facilities and abuses.

There was no mention of the conduct of US forces at the Abu Ghraib prison where abuses and deaths were revealed in 2004, or of US training of Iraqi forces.

But close allies of the US, the Kurdish security forces, were accused of committing abuses against non-Kurdish minorities in northern Iraq.

"Bombings took thousands of civilian lives during the year," the report said. "All sectors of society suffered from the continued wave of kidnappings."

It noted the killing by Islamist extremists of women in the southern city of Basra – under the control of UK troops – for not following strict dress codes.

"Large-scale financial, as well as political, personal corruption in the government remained a severe problem," it said.

Asked if he thought that civil war could break out in Iraq, he said: "It's very,very likely ... I think that the main problem for Iraq now is the occupation itself.

Opposing occupation

"I am against the occupation. I am against those who are working with the occupation."

He said he thought that Iraq was "very, very capable of governing itself" and that when the occupation forces pulled out, the people who had arrived at the same time would go home too.

He said Iraqis were a "very rational" people and that there might be some trouble from the Kurdish population in the north, but "the other part of Iraq [Sunni and Shia], I think they will stick to their unity. I think this is ... their hope".

Aldouri said the Iraqis were now pinning their hope on "the national resistance, who resist the occupation, who resist the foreign armies".

While he did not condone Iraqi insurgents attacking fellow Iraqis, Aldouri said the attacks against the US-led occupation forces were justified.

"This is legal ... to resist foreigners, the occupation," he said.

With similar reasoning, Aldouri considered Saddam's incarceration and prosecution unjustified.

"It is illegal ... because, you know, he was captured under the occupation ... So [under] international law, he should not [be jailed]."

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Headlines from Iraq seem to be getting progressively worse. Not only are suicide attacks and bombings a daily occurrence, but particularly after the February attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra -- a Shiite holy site -- deadly sectarian violence has increased. Are we witnessing a country falling apart?

Marina Ottaway: At this point in Iraq, you do not have a central government -- so you don't have a legitimate authority running the country. You don't have a government with the power to establish or maintain order. What you have is a nominal government that can only stay in power because the Americans are there. The government is supposed to have derived legitimacy from the constitution and the elections. But I think the government we end up with, won't have much legitimacy either.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why not? After all, the Iraqis went to the polls and chose their representatives. That seems pretty legitimate, does it not?

Ottaway: It is now almost three months after the elections and there is still no government. The Iraqis continue postponing the opening of parliament because according to the constitution, after they open parliament, they only have two months to form the government. They don't think they can form a government that quickly. A government that takes over five months to form is not a government that is going to have very much legitimacy in the end. The country has already collapsed. Now the challenge is figuring out a way to deal with this fact.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The idea, of course, was that the United States was going to help the Iraqis with security until they could help themselves, hopefully providing an atmosphere in which the Iraqis could build a democratic state. What went wrong?

Ottaway: The process the United States envisaged for putting into place a new legitimate government -- a government that has both authority and power -- is not working. The power component -- training a new military and a new police force -- is not going well. Even the government is now admitting that the police force is not a national police force. Rather it is riddled through and through with the militias and it is fragmented and divided. It's a similar situation with the military. Some of the troops also have split loyalties. In some of the Kurdish units, for example, you have troops who are not only wearing the insignia of the Iraqi army on their sleeves, but also the insignia of the Peshmerga -- the Kurdish militia.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: We have heard a number of conflicting reports about how well the training of the Iraqi military and security forces is going. Is there any hope that the Iraqis may eventually be able to take care of their own security?

Ottaway: The Americans have discovered that there are very few Sunnis in the military and the police force, so they are trying to speed up the recruitment of Sunnis. That effort, in my opinion, will ultimately fail. The last of three groups of recruits -- they take in classes of about 1,200 men -- have been predominantly Sunni; the last one almost completely Sunni. There is a great danger that, rather than creating a more balanced national police force, this will create a Sunni militia alongside a Shiite militia that for all practical purposes already exists.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You mean to say that the Americans are essentially in the process of training soldiers for an eventual sectarian civil war?

Ottaway: That's a real risk.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is there a clear dividing line between the military forces trained by the Americans and the militias?

Ottaway: During the congressional hearings at the beginning of 2005, the US government said there was a high degree of combat readiness in the Iraqi military. Three months later, though, that readiness had dropped. You have to ask yourself, 'well, what happened?' There is a great danger -- and I have no proof but there certainly is a lot of circumstantial evidence -- that people who have been trained defected, or their officers defected, and that they are now in fact working for the militias. People don't become untrained.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Given such fragmentation, how can power and authority be created for the Iraqi government? Where do we go from here?

Ottaway: We need to start thinking about things radically differently. Rather than trying to impose our own view -- or the American vision -- of what Iraq should be like, it's time to seriously consider doing what was done with Bosnia in the Dayton Accords. The Dayton Accords were not an attempt to impose an American or a European solution. It was an attempt to take into consideration what the various groups wanted. At that point, what they wanted was to not have anything to do with each other -- but the treaty more or less salvaged Bosnia. The time may have come to do the same in Iraq.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is there not any hope that the current way of doing things will bear fruit?

Ottaway: There is absolutely nothing we can do to stop what is currently going on in Iraq and I don't believe that there is really anybody who disagrees on this point. You can't, for example, convince the Kurds to give up on the dream of an autonomous region. That is just impossible. The Kurds have been essentially autonomous for the last 10 years. They are very well armed -- they have probably the strongest militia force in that country. Nobody is going to force the Kurds to do something that they do not want. And convincing the Sunnis and the Shiites to stay together? I'm really not sure about that. The real question is whether an agreement can be reached on a decentralized system without descending into civil war.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: A lot of people think that we are witnessing a civil war already.

Ottaway: It depends on what you mean by civil war. One type is the civil war we know from the United States in the 19th century or Bosnia in the 1990s where factions fought against each other with actual armies in the field. Then you have the civil war that we see in many African countries -- more wars of disintegration. These are fought in a disorganized way where the lines between the government troops and the militias are very unclear. If you accept that as a form of civil war, then Iraq is experiencing civil war.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Which is exactly what the United States wants to avoid. Has the American project of building a democratic country in the Middle East been reduced to preventing an all-out eruption of sectarian violence?

Ottaway: Not really. The United States is trying not to intervene in the conflicts flaring at the moment. Following the blowing up of the Golden Mosque in Samarra and the retaliatory attacks against Sunni mosques, American troops were pretty much confined to barracks. This led to a lot of complaints, but the position taken by the United States was that it was not going to step into the middle of these sorts of conflicts. The American role is to build up the Iraqi national forces so that they can provide security. The problem is, as we said, that the national police force and national military -- but particularly the police force -- are to a large extent fiction.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But the US continues to rely on this strategy. Why? Is it naivety?

Ottaway: It's not naivety. We have never understood the political situation in Iraq. And don't forget that the American policy in Iraq was driven almost completely by the military. It was not designed by experts on the country. And frankly I'm not sure anybody else could have done better -- it is an extremely complicated situation. There was an honest attempt by the United States to create a new Iraq. But it has failed.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Meanwhile, attempts to create a government in Iraq continue. Might they be successful after all?

Ottaway: I don't doubt that they will be able to put together a government of sorts. But will that government really have legitimacy in the eyes of most Iraqis? US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad wants the Sunnis to be over-represented in the hopes of pacifying the Sunni insurgency. The danger is that he will make the situation worse. There is a real chance that the Sunni insurgency will ignore the government as mere puppets of America -- and that Khalilzad's strategy will alienate the Shiites. That would lead to an enormously dangerous situation. One of the reasons why the United States is still in Iraq is because the Shiites have continued to tolerate their presence. That could change, and at that point the American occupation would be in serious trouble. And the whole of Iraq would be in serious, serious trouble.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So the Americans have to stay?

Ottaway: Whether you believed in the war in the first place or not, at this point, a sudden American withdrawal would result in a mess. Americans should perhaps not be there, but now that they are there, they cannot just pick up and go.

Marina Ottaway is a specialist on democracy and post- conflict resolution with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She is also the senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Project which analyzes the state of democracy across the globe and looks closely at efforts by the United States to promote democracy. She is currently working on a book about the political transformation in the Middle East and on reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This interview with Ms. Ottaway took place in Berlin at a symposium sponsored by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung on the chances and risks of exporting democracy.

"The violence is increasing monthly," Carter said. "My prayer is we'll see some kind of democracy eventually evolve."

His comments came at a news conference before a building dedication at the University of Washington.

Carter was the keynote speaker at the dedication of the university's new Genome Sciences and Bioengineering Building in honor of William H. Foege. Foege directed the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during Carter's presidency and later headed The Carter Center, which promotes peace and health programs around the world.

Carter credited Foege with saving the lives of millions of people through his efforts to eradicate smallpox, Guinea worm and river blindness, and by encouraging childhood immunization.

Foege works with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which contributed $50 million for the building.

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press.

It was such a relief to me to learn we are making "very, very good progress" in Iraq. As the third anniversary of our invasion approaches, I could not have been more thrilled by the news reported by Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on a Sunday chat show. Vice President Dick Cheney's take was equally reassuring: Things are "improving steadily" in Iraq.

I was thrilled -- very, very good progress and steady improvement, isn't that grand? Wake me if anything starts to go wrong. Like someone bombing the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra and touching off a lot of sectarian violence.

I was also relieved to learn -- via Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, so noted for his consistently accurate assessment of this war -- that the whole picture is hunky-dory to tickety-boo. Since the bombing of the mosque, lots of alarmists have reported that Iraq is devolving or might be collapsing into civil war. They're sort of jumping over the civil war line and back again -- yep, it's started; nope, it hasn't -- like a bunch of false starts at the beginning of a football play.

I'm sure glad to get the straight skinny from Ol' Rumsfeld, who has been in Iraq many times himself for the typical in-country experience. Like many foreign correspondents, Rumsfeld roams the streets alone, talking to any chance-met Iraqi in his fluent Arabic, so of course he knows best.

"From what I've seen thus far, much of the reporting in the U.S. and abroad has exaggerated the situation," Rumsfeld said. "We do know, of course, that al Qaeda has media committees. We do know they teach people exactly how to try to manipulate the media. They do this regularly. We see the intelligence that reports on their meetings. Now I can't take a string and tie it to a news report and then trace it back to an al Qaeda media committee meeting. I am not able to do that at all."

No horsepoop? Then can I ask a question: If you're able to monitor these media committee meetings, how come you can't find Osama bin Ladin?

But, Brother Rumsfeld warns us, "We do know that their goal is to try to break the will; that they consider the center of gravity of this -- not to be in Iraq, because they know they can't win a battle out there; they consider it to be in Washington, D.C., and in London and in the capitals of the Western world."

I'm sorry, I know we are not allowed to use the V-word in relation to Iraq, because so many brilliant neo-cons have assured us this war is nothing like Vietnam (Vietnam, lotsa jungle; Iraq lotsa sand -- big differences). But you must admit that press conferences with Donny Rum are wonderfully reminiscent of the Five O'Clock Follies, those wacky but endearing daily press briefings on Southeast Asia by military officers who made Baghdad Bob sound like a pessimist.

Rumsfeld's performance was so reminiscent of all the times the military in Vietnam blamed the media for reporting "bad news'" when there was nothing else to report. A briefing officer once memorably asked the press, "Whose side are you on?" The answer is what it's always been: We root for America, but our job is to report as accurately as we can what the situation is.

You could rely on other sources. For example, the Pentagon is still investigating itself to find out why it is paying American soldiers to make up good news about the war, which it then passes on to a Republican public relations firm, which in turn pays people in the Iraqi media to print the stuff -- thus fooling the Iraqis or somebody. When last heard from, the general in charge of investigating this federally funded Baghdad Bobism said he hadn't found anything about it to be illegal yet, so it apparently continues.

Meanwhile, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told the Los Angeles Times that Iraq is "really vulnerable" to civil war if there is another attack like the al-Askari bombing. By invading, said Khalilzad, the United States has "opened the Pandora's box" of sectarian strife in Iraq.

Could I suggest something kind of grown-up? Despite Rumsfeld's rationalizing, we are in a deep pile of poop here, and we're best likely to come out of it OK by pulling together. So could we stop this cheap old McCarthyite trick of pretending that correspondents who are in fact risking their lives and doing their best to bring the rest of us accurate information are somehow disloyal or connected to al Qaeda?

Wrong, yes, of course they could be wrong. But there is now a three-year record of who has been right about what is happening in Iraq, Rumsfeld or the media. And the score is: Press -- 1,095; Rumsfeld -- zero.

Every American soldier transformed into an author has his story of mortal blunder at a checkpoint. The victims are neither kamikazes nor combatants. They committed the mistake of not stopping in time or of having just popped up in the wrong place at the wrong time. "Everybody was scared shitless," relates Chief-Sergeant Jimmy Massey in "Kill! Kill! Kill!" [2]: "When the tractor truck turned up, one of his men raised his arm to signal the driver to stop. Without effect. We all opened fire. Without notice ... A man on fire, who is around sixty years old, jumped from the cabin and ran to the highway, trying to put out the flames."

Gore Fest

The first books follow the first discharges. Three years after the beginning of the hostilities, the testimonies of American veterans returning from the Middle East are multiplying. Every conflict generates its own literary genre: epic for the Second World War, tragedy for the Vietnam War. And "junk" for Operation Iraqi Freedom. The material is composed from blogs, personal letters, raw details furtively thrown on paper between two patrols. The combat scenes oscillate between video games and gore fests. Garrison life provides closed-door secrets worthy of a reality show. Question of the times, the culture, and also of the context. Iraq inspires its conquerors to disjointed tales with no message, no direction, no laurels, no praise, and no critique. No diatribe against the US Army or George W. Bush, but no great patriotic couplets either.

The soldiers did not come to establish democracy, liberate a people, or destroy weapons of mass destruction, just to "do their job" and "stay alive." They barely believe the objectives proclaimed by their bosses. The objectives for the war? "Oil and profit," maintains Staff-Sergeant Massey. "The lies that brought us there, which cost some their lives and wounded many others, only the most chauvinistic among us swallowed them," writes Kayla Williams for her part, sergeant in the Military Intelligence Division of the 101st Airborne.

In "Love My Rifle More Than You" [3], this young woman relates her successive disillusions. She denounces the machismo and xenophobia of her comrades in arms, recounts "things" she'd like "to forget." An Arab speaker, she sometimes participates in interrogation sessions. She has to humiliate prisoners who line up naked in front of her. She acquits herself of her task with neither enthusiasm nor talent, but also without protest, by stringing together remarks about the size of their penises: "You think you can satisfy a woman with that?" There are also tortures, beatings, burnings with lit cigarettes, injuries, sometimes even a death. "It wasn't just at Abu Ghraib. That happened elsewhere." She emits timid protests, then falls in line.

These war chronicles allow us to better understand why the American Army has failed to "win the hearts and minds" of those it came to "liberate." From the outset, relations with "the locals" turned septic. The first weeks after Saddam's fall were nothing but a series of abuses, accidents, misunderstandings. The road blocks, often the sole point of contact with the population, became firing ranges. There were no signs in Arabic to order drivers to stop. In "Kill! Kill! Kill!" a squadron opens fire on unarmed demonstrators who are screaming anti-American slogans in a Baghdad suburb. One soldier fired, his companions imitated him. Four died. "Too many soldiers acted like they were out hunting," deplores Sergeant Williams.

Unlike British soldiers, these Marines and GIs had no "peacekeeping" mission experience. Nothing prepared them for what awaited them. Before rushing into Iraq, Captain Fick's men learned two phrases in Arabic: "Stop or I'll shoot!" and "We're here to help you." Twenty-eight-year-old soldier Colby Buzzel got an hour-long lesson. "Today they gave us some ideas about Iraqi customs and Arabic. I slept through half the course," he notes in "My War, Killer Time in Iraq." [4]

"Fucking Terrorist"

This son of a soldier keeps a blog that becomes a book on his return. Unemployed, he signed up for two years with the Army because it offered him a $4,000 signing bonus, two weeks of leave a year and health and dental insurance. He is also looking for adventure and finds it in Baghdad's streets. "I hate to say it because it may seem racist, but everybody looks like a fucking terrorist to me. Everybody. And, guy, they're everywhere. I saw two guys with AK-47s on a bridge; they weren't wearing uniforms, but they must have been police because nobody from my platoon was shooting at them," he writes after his arrival in the Iraqi capital.

These soldiers return to their country disabused, sometimes suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, but not disgusted. Once demobilized, Kayla Williams proclaims her desire to return to Iraq to "finish what we've begun." Nathaniel Fick finishes his work with: "I am proud." Only Jimmy Massey wants to denounce the abuses of power committed in Iraq, confesses to suffering from psychological problems, says he can no longer look at himself in the mirror. He could find no United States publisher for his book.

Footnotes

[1] "One Bullet Away," by Nathaniel Fick. Houghton Mifflin Co., New York 2005.

[2] "Kill! Kill! Kill!" by Jimmy Massey, with Natasha Saulnier. Panama, Paris 2005.

[3] "Love My Rifle More Than You," by Kayla Williams. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2006.

[4] "My War, Killer Time in Iraq," by Colby Buzzel. G.P. Putnam's sons, New York 2005.

Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.

That request by the inspector general, made after a review of three previous investigations, implies a clear rebuke of the military's handling of this case to date. But as much as Mary Tillman and the rest of the Tillman family hope this new inquiry will clear up the glaring contradictions and mysterious discrepancies of the previous accounts, she knows it is not prudent to be overly optimistic.

That's because, quite apart from what happened on that afternoon two years ago, there can now be little doubt that the Bush administration quickly and cynically moved to spin the story in ways that would serve its political purposes at the expense of the truth.

"The administration used Pat," Mary Tillman told me in a phone interview on Monday from San Jose. "They tried to attach themselves to his virtue and then they wiped their feet with him."

Her words were chosen carefully, as befits a schoolteacher who spends many hours each week grading the logic and syntax of her students. But over the past two years, she has been fed so many lies by this administration that she now confidently accuses it of something much more sinister than simple incompetence.

As a star safety for the Arizona Cardinals who gave up a contract worth millions of dollars to join the military in a burst of post-Sept. 11 patriotism, Pat Tillman was certainly one of a handful of popularly known American soldiers of his generation - along with the similarly exploited Jessica Lynch and the infamous Abu Ghraib guard Lyndie England. It was the scandal of Abu Ghraib, in fact, that the family believes may have driven the Bush administration and the military to cover up the embarrassing truth of Tillman's pointless death.

First, Pat's relatives were informed that he had been killed by enemy fire, even though it was soon obvious to his superiors in Afghanistan that this was untrue. Soldiers on the scene knew the truth, but were told by higher-ups not to reveal it, even to Pat's brother, Kevin, a professional baseball player who had enlisted alongside his brother. Kevin, who served in the same unit as Pat, was patrolling nearby at the time and accompanied his brother's body home, unaware of the cause of his death.

For more than a month, an investigating officer's determination that friendly fire and possible "gross negligence" had led to Tillman's death was buried so that military press releases and a nationally televised memorial service could sell America on the completely false notion that Tillman had died in a battle with Taliban or Al Qaeda irregulars. The officer also later testified that, in the subsequent investigations, key witnesses were allowed to change their previous testimony.

It is inconceivable that the facts of this publicly revered soldier's death were not transmitted to the top brass at the Pentagon and over to the White House. As Mary Tillman pointed out Monday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had written a letter to her son when he enlisted, congratulating him on his patriotic spirit.

"I'm sure he was on their radar and I'm sure the Army wouldn't do this without the administration knowing. The administration covered it up because they needed to promote the war and it came at the time of the Abu Ghraib scandal," she said. "They spun a fantasy story that made his Silver Star suspect - I know that Pat was heroic and I didn't need their deceptions to confirm it."

When they enlisted in the Army's elite Rangers, serving tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the Tillman brothers became convenient poster boys for a Bush administration eager to exploit the patriotic sensibilities of a wounded nation. What a tragedy that the family's deep sacrifice should come to be treated so shabbily.

Hero is a word easily cheapened by overuse, especially in times of war. Yet it is clear that the Tillman family has provided us with more than one of the real thing. The public should back its request for a full accounting as to the death of Pat Tillman, but that will require more than another perfunctory Army investigation, which their congressional representative, Mike Honda (D-San Jose), has criticized as yet another example of the military "investigating itself." There needs to be a congressional hearing on the role of the administration in exploiting this tragic episode.

The second thoughts have spread across the conservative spectrum, from William Buckley, venerable editor of The National Review to Andrew Sullivan, once editor of the New Republic, now an influential commentator and blogmeister. The patrician conservative columnist George Will was gently sceptical from the outset. He now glumly concludes that all three members of the original "axis of evil" - not only Iran and North Korea but also Iraq - "are more dangerous than when that term was coined in 2002".

Neither Mr Buckley nor Mr Sullivan concedes that the decision to topple Saddam was intrinsically wrong. But "the challenge required more than [President Bush's] deployable resources," the former sadly recognises. "The American objective in Iraq has failed."

For Mr Sullivan, today's mess is above all a testament to American overconfidence and false assumptions, born of arrogance and naïveté. But he too asserts, in a column in Time magazine this week, that all may not be lost.

Of all the critiques however, the most profound is that of Francis Fukuyama, in his forthcoming book, America at the Crossroads. Its subtitle is "Democracy, Power and the Neo-Conservative Legacy" - and that legacy, Mr Fukuyama argues, is fatally poisoned.

This is no ordinary thesis, but apostasy on a grand scale. Mr Fukuyama, after all, was the most prominent intellectual who signed the 1997 "Project for the New American Century", the founding manifesto of neo-conservatism drawn up by William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, the house journal of the neo-conservative movement.

The PNAC aimed to cement for all time America's triumph in the Cold War, by increasing defence spending, challenging regimes that were hostile to US interests, and promoting freedom and democracy around the world. Its goal was "an international order friendly to our security, prosperity and values".

The war on Iraq, spuriously justified by the supposed threat posed by Saddam's WMD, was the test run of this theory. It was touted as a panacea for every ill of the Middle East. The road to Jerusalem, the neo-cons argued, led through Baghdad. And after Iraq, why not Syria, Iran and anyone else that stood in Washington's way? All that, Mr Fukuyama now acknowledges, has been a tragic conceit.

Like the Leninists of old, he writes, the neo-conservatives reckoned they could drive history forward with the right mixture of power and will. However, "Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States."

But was it not Mr Fukuyama who claimed in his most celebrated work, The End of History and the Last Man, that the whole world was locked on a glide-path to liberal, free-market democracy? Yes indeed. But that book, he points out, argued that the process was gradual, and must unfold at its own pace.

But not only were the neo-cons too impatient. A second error was to believe that an all-powerful America would be trusted to exercise a "benevolent hegemony". A third was the gross overstatement of the post 9/11 threat posed by radical Islam, in order to justify the dubious doctrine of preventive war.

Finally, there was the blatant contradiction between the neo-cons' aversion to government meddling at home and their childlike faith in their ability to impose massive social engineering in foreign and utterly unfamiliar countries like Iraq. Thence sprang the mistakes of the occupation period.

Some, however, are resolutely unswayed. In the latest Weekly Standard, Mr Kristol accuses Mr Fukuyama of losing his nerve - of wanting to "retrench, hunker down and let large parts of the world go to hell in a handbasket, hoping the hand-basket won't blow up in our faces."

Christopher Hitchens, the one-time Trotskyist turned neo-con fellow traveller and eternal polemicist, derides Mr Fukuyama for "conceding to the fanatics and beheaders the claim that they are a response to American blunders and excesses," and for yearning for a return of Kissingerian realism in foreign affairs.

The fact, however, remains that future Bush policymakers who signed the PNAC nine years ago are now mostly gone. Paul Wolfowitz, the war's most relentless and starry-eyed promoter, has moved on to the World Bank, silent about the mess he did so much to create. Richard Perle, leader of the resident hawks department at the American Enterprise Institute think-tank here, has vanished from the scene. Lewis Libby meanwhile has stepped down as Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, to focus his energy on staying out of jail.

Yet another signatory was Zalmay Khalilzad, now the US ambassador to Iraq. This week even he - Afghan born and the one original neo-con who had the region in his blood - admitted that the invasion had opened "a Pandora's box" that could see the Iraq conflict spread across the entire Middle East.

Those left in the administration - primarily Mr Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, are not so much neo-conservatives as "Hobbesian unilateralists", concerned to protect and advance US national interests in a lawless and violent world, whatever it takes.

As for Condoleezza Rice, never a signed-up member of the movement but mostly sympathetic to it when she was the President's security adviser - she has metamorphosed from hawk into pragmatist with her move from the White House to the State Department.

It is on George Bush's lips that neo-conservatism most obviously survives - in the commitment to spreading freedom and democracy that he proclaims almost daily, and most hubristically in his second inaugural in 2005 that promised to banish tyranny from the earth.

But even the extravagant oratory of that icy January day cannot obscure the irony of America's Iraq adventure. The application of a doctrine built upon the supposed boundlessness of US power has succeeded only in exposing its limits.

Thus chastened, Mr Fukuyama now wants to temper the idealism of the neo-conservative doctrine with an acceptance that some things are not so easy to change, and that the US must cut its cloth accordingly. He calls it "realistic Wilsonianism". A better description might be neo-realism. And if that brings a smile to the face of a certain former US high priest of realism with a pronounced German accent, who can blame him?

In the chaos of Baghdad, it was not always easy to establish whether the killings were politically or criminally motivated.

Rawi said the campaign against Iraq's leading intellectuals was being orchestrated by parties inside and outside the country and motivated by perceived allegiance of an individual to one particular religious or secular party.

Addressing a news conference at the association's headquarters in western Baghdad, Rawi appealed to all groups to protect the country's academics.

In recent incidents Ali Hussein al-Khafaj, dean of the college of engineering at Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad was kidnapped as he left for work on Tuesday.

Gunmen shot dead prominent Iraqi academic and political analyst Abdul Razak al-Na'as in his car in January as he left his office at Baghdad University's College of Information, in the center of the capital.

In several kidnap cases, families have paid ransoms only to receive the bodies of the victims, Rawi said.

Rawi said if the situation did not improve university lecturers would strike or organize other traditional protests such as sit-ins.

Copyright 2006 Reuters News Service.

"He has been abused and tortured. Mr Alex told me that he said he has been tortured," Mahmoud Jamal said yesterday. "They told me that he has a lot of rashes on his body and that he has lost his memory … His loss of memory is from torture and electricity."

The Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed that his son said he was tortured but could not comment on the allegation of electrocution.

A spokesman said Mr Jamal asked Australian authorities not to raise his mistreatment with Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq because he feared reprisals.

But he said the Federal Government was pursuing the case, saying it was of "serious concern".

The spokesman also defended the department's inability to visit Mr Jamal for so long, which has enraged his family and Mr Kenny.

The Government found out in November 2004 - after it was informed by the Red Cross - that Mr Jamal, an Australian citizen who was then aged 22, had been detained in northern Iraq for "security-related issues".

He was first detained in September 2004, not long after leaving Australia and telling his family he was visiting the Middle East to find a bride and see the region.

The spokeswoman said "extensive representations" had been made to secure access to Mr Jamal and that logistical issues and a dangerous environment had prevented it from visiting earlier.

But Mr Kenny said this explanation was unacceptable, noting that over the same period scores of dignitaries, including the Prime Minister, had visited Iraq, not to mention executives from AWB.

"The Australian Government has a responsibility to protect Mr Jamal and the length of time they have taken to contact him is of great concern," Mr Kenny said.

"They should have got there much earlier. They failed to protect Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks. Here was a third chance for them to do the right thing."

Mahmoud Jamal said he had been warned that his son may be charged soon for waging jihad.

"This type of young generation, they don't know what they are doing," he said. "He said he would find a beautiful girl but he was tortured and abused."

The Jamal family is no stranger to seeing its members detained on terrorism charges. Ahmed Jamal's older brother, Saleh, is in jail in Lebanon on weapons charges and is accused of plotting terrorist attacks in Lebanon and in Australia.

He escaped from Australia on a false passport while on bail for his alleged role in a drive-by shooting at the Lakemba police station.

Mohammed Omar Jamal, another brother, was arrested in Sydney in December and charged with conspiring to manufacture explosives in preparation for a terrorist act.

The last of the alleged Sydney terrorist cell to be arrested, he allegedly brought large quantities of chemicals which could be used to make a bomb.

A Jamal family member who asked not to be identified further said: "They are treating them like dirt. We are waiting for them to take the other boys as well."

The buildings at Abu Ghraib, built by a British contractor in the 1960s, and the tented camp thrown up by American forces in 2003 to hold the overflow of detainees, are to be handed over to the Iraqi government.

In April 2003, a few days after the fall of the Iraqi regime, the Guardian visited the prison with one of its former inmates under Saddam, and we were led through the punishment units, windowless cinder block cells one metre by 50cm, the yellow holding pen where men fought to sleep next to the stinking latrine because it gave them a few centimetres more space, and the courtyard, where hangings were held on Mondays and Wednesdays.

But, in the Arab world at least, that terrifying reputation has been obscured and obliterated by the horrors perpetrated by US troops on Iraqi detainees that came to light in April 2004 when CBS television and the New Yorker published the searing images of abuse.

It was not immediately clear yesterday how the announcement of Abu Ghraib's handover fitted with a promise by President Bush in May 2004 to demolish Abu Ghraib as "fitting symbol of Iraq's new beginning". A US military spokesman, Colonel Barry Johnson, said the decision to shut the jail had been dictated by security concerns. "Abu Ghraib prison is in a region that has been susceptible to attacks and it is difficult to support logistically, so there has always been the intention the move detainees to a more secure location," he said. But he acknowledged: "There are other associations with Abu Ghraib that are more emotional".

The abuse scandal deeply shocked Americans' sense of mission in Iraq, adding shame to pride at the overthrow of Saddam. In the outside world, the scandal deepened anger at America for the invasion of Iraq, and became a symbol of American disdain for Muslims and their culture. As Mr Bush said in his May 2004 speech to the Carlisle barracks war college: "That same prison became a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonoured our country and disregarded our values."

Multiple investigations by the US military produced a mountain of evidence of abuse committed between October and December 2003: thousands of photographs and dozens of video clips showed the ritualised humiliation of Iraqi detainees. Some have become iconic: the figure in a cloak and a hood standing on a box with wires attached to his limbs; the naked human pyramids of Iraqi detainees and their gloating jailors giving the thumbs-up sign; the pixie-like female soldier tugging a detainee on a dog leash.

There were photographs of Iraqis forced to masturbate in front of female prison guards, or simulate sex acts upon each other. There were photographs of Iraqis cowering before prison dogs. There were photographs of Iraqis with women's underwear on their heads.

The Bush administration insists the mistreatment of detainees was the work of a handful of troops, and not part of its policy. To date, seven soldiers have been sent to court martial and convicted of their role in the abuse scandal. Two, widely recognised from the abuse photos, received long jail sentences: Specialist Charles Graner was sentenced to 10 years, while his former girlfriend Lynndie England, who had a child by Graner, received a three-year term. The most senior officer linked to the scandal, the commander of the prison, Brigadier Janis Karpinski, was demoted to the rank of colonel last year.

The Pentagon's insistence that the abuse was confined to a few officers has deepened the perception in the Arab world that Washington was not committed to getting to the bottom of the scandal. That suspicion is unlikely to be allayed by indications that Abu Ghraib is not to be demolished after all.

History

1960s

Built by British contractors

1979

Saddam becomes president of Iraq; prison divided into five separate walled compounds: foreign prisoners, long sentences, short sentences, capital crimes, and 'special' political crimes

January 1994

More than 150 detainees executed over two days

November 1996

Hundreds of government opponents executed

June 1998

60, mostly Shia, executed

October 1999

At least 100 prisoners executed

22 April 2003

US forces take over prison, renamed Baghdad Central Detention Centre

July 2003

Amnesty International publishes first post-war allegations of torture

Nov 24 2004

Twelve prisoners shot, three killed, in prison riot

Jan 14 2004

US army begins inquiry into abuses

Jan 31 2004

Major General Antonio Taguba appointed head of inquiry

March 12 2004

Taguba presents report

April 28 2004

CBS airs first photos of abused detainees

May 6 2004

President Bush apologises to Arab world for abuses

May 24 2004

Bush announces prison will be demolished 'as a fitting symbol of Iraq's new beginning'

March 9 2006

Announcement prison to be closed

TRANSCRIPT
In the eyes of much of the world this man is a torturer.

SHALEEK: The prodigal son has returned! This is him, we love him to death.

But in his hometown of Roselle, New Jersey Javal Davis is a young man who lives with his grandparents and goes to church every Sunday. When he left school he joined the army to serve his country.

Soon after spending several months peacekeeping in Bosnia he was shipped off to Iraq.

JAVAL DAVIS, FORMER MILITARY POLICEMAN: We were trained up before we left, you know, all we were going to do, that we were going to go over there, we were going to fight, fight, fight, fight, kill, kill, kill, you know, the enemy.
Once they're destroyed, then we would go home. It didn't turn out to be exactly that way.

Like other guards at Abu Ghraib Javal Davis put prisoners in stress positions, threw cold water on them and played loud music to keep them awake in preparation for interrogations.
He pleaded guilty to assaulting a group of prisoners and then lying about it to investigators, but he says we shouldn't condemn him.

JAVAL DAVIS: Unless you were there, unless you were there, live it, sleep it, eat it every day, you know, stay open about drawing an opinion. It's easy to draw conclusion or what I would have, should have, could have did from the comforts of your living room, from the couch watching CNN.
If you were actually on the other side of CNN, on the other side of the camera, fighting for your life, that's the only way you'd understand, that's it.

KEN DAVIS, FORMER MILITARY POLICEMAN I hate that I would even know the word Abu Ghraib, I hate it because it hurts. it's like a wound that doesn't heal.

Like Javal, Ken Davis was a military policeman in the 372nd Company. He enlisted on September 11, 2001, wanting to do something for his country, but scarred by his experiences in Iraq he left the army and became a policeman in Maryland.

KEN DAVIS: I went over there believing that I can help Iraqi people be free. I believe in that. But after Abu Ghraib, I wish I had never been a part of it.
When someone will come up to me and say, "Hey, we hear you were in Iraq, what unit were you in?" I have to pick my head up and say, "I was with 372nd MP company."

Last year, in my first story on Abu Ghraib, I interviewed Iraqis who were tortured in the prison. Abu Maan and Haj Ali shared terrible stories with me about months they spent without charge being abused by guards and interrogators.

HAJ ALI, (Translation): They'd load a pistol and put it here and tell me in Arabic, "Execution, Execution, Execution."

ABU MAAN (Translation): What has information got to do with making you drink urine? If his aim was to get information
It's not about information at all, it's about a few Americans in a frenzy of sadism, headed by Rumsfeld, sadist number one. And sadism filtered down to some Americans, not all.

HAJ ALI, (Translation): I can never forget their faces. It's true their features differed but the monster was the same behind the masks they were wearing.

I wanted to find out what had turned ordinary American soldiers into the apparent monsters revealed in the photographs.

According to Ken and Javal, Abu Ghraib was living hell for the guards as well as the prisoners.

JAVAL DAVIS: It was very fearful being alone was, you know, we were out there, we were pretty much on our own at Abu Ghraib.

Like you drive three miles up the street from our prison you're in Fallujah and if you drive a couple miles west, you're in Ramadi. Now if you remember watching television, Fallujah and Ramadi were like the hottest spots in Iraq. We were right there. They would come down from Fallujah, shoot mortars at us and drive back into Fallujah.

The military police from the 372nd Company, like Ken and Javal were never trained to guard prisoners, but at times there were up to 7,000 Iraqis being held in overcrowded conditions for months on end. There were around 75 prisoners to each soldier.

JAVAL DAVIS: We worked seven days straight, you know, 12-, 16-hour days. We didn't have enough people to man all the positions and it was just... it was hard.

REPORTER: And where did you sleep?

JAVAL DAVIS: I slept in the prison cell. It was myself and seven other soldiers, you know, we were seven to a cell. I mean, we slept in the same conditions that the prisoners did.

But the prisoners certainly received different treatment. When I met with Ken and Javal I had already obtained a disc with thousands of previously unreleased photographs taken by MPs who served at the prison. Of the thousands of photos and videos taken at Abu Ghraib most are snapshots of the everyday life of the soldiers. Others reveal how out of control the prison had become.

The most shocking experience for both Javal and Ken, was on November 24, 2003 in the camp compound outside the cellblocks. The prisoners started a riot to protest their living conditions, which official reports say were overcrowded and dangerous.

JAVAL DAVIS: I heard it over the radio, I heard it. All you heard was over the radio "We're out of less lethal, it's not working," you know, "what do we do?"

KEN DAVIS: And the command came back across the radio and it just sent shivers down our backs. They said, "If you're out of non-lethal rounds, we are in a combat zone - you go to lethal rounds."

JAVAL DAVIS: "We're going hot. We're going live." And the next thing you know - boom, boom, brrrr. And you just heard it, like a turkey shoot.

KEN DAVIS: You've got to understand these are Iraqis, unarmed, they might have shanks, spoons that they've sharpened, whatever, tent stakes, rocks, but they're inside of concertina wire, they're not going anywhere. And now they're being shot.

So as I roll up, I have my weapon out, I'm thinking people are breaching the wire, they're coming through. No-one's coming through the wire.

JAVAL DAVIS: Next thing you know, the Medevac chopper's coming in, the helicopters coming in like crazy, they were taking out the wounded ones and the dead ones.

KEN DAVIS: I see them all huddled in a second containment where their tents are and they're dragging a dead guy out and throw him by my feet. So I looked at the chaplain's aide who responded, he had ended up right beside me I said, "What are we doing?" I said, "This guy's dead and he's unarmed."

JAVAL DAVIS: When they went to live ammunition, wow, I mean it's one of those things. I mean, unfortunate a lot of lives were lost that day. Oh, yeah.

These are the corpses of the men killed that day. The US Army told Dateline that the use of live rounds was justified.

KEN DAVIS: And I remember calling home that night and... saying "I can't take this any more because if this is what we're going to do, if this is what we have come to, I'm done." But being done and being able to leave is two different things. So you just have to suck it up, get over it, as they say, and just do what you're told to do.

In the months leading up to the riot, the insurgency had taken hold and the Americans were desperate for intelligence to stop the killing of their troops. In September 2003 General Geoffrey Miller, who was in charge of Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay, was sent to Abu Ghraib to upgrade interrogation techniques. When Javal Davis arrived, soon after Miller's new regime had started, things were already far from normal.

JAVAL DAVIS: When we took over from the 72nd MP Company, you know, the guys were butt naked in the jail cells and had like panties on their head. I'm like, I'd never seen that before. I'm like, "Why are these guys naked?" Our company commander was even like, "What's going on with all the nakedness? Why are all these guys naked?" And they're answering back to them from the other MP company was, "Hey, this is what the MI guys - this is what they want", you know. That's how it goes, so.

Putting MI or military intelligence in charge of the MPs was one of General Miller's recommendations, even though it runs counter to army doctrine.

REPORTER: Who told you to stress the prisoners out or who told you to prepare them for interrogation?

JAVAL DAVIS: The military intelligence personnel, they had an analyst, a linguist and an interrogator, their job, they come up with a list of instructions - "OK, keep this guy up, he can sleep up to two hours, up to 5 hours, sleep for 15 minutes, up. Slam the doors, keep them up." You know, stress positions, things like that.

REPORTER: Nothing inside you thought, "I shouldn't be doing this?"

JAVAL DAVIS: Of course, I mean, it's... I mean who wants to... First off my attitude was I'm tired, I'm the MP, I'm the combat support MP, it's not my job. I don't feel like going around waking everybody up, I want to go to sleep myself.
So some nights I didn't do what they told me to do, that's why I ultimately I was replaced, you know, the story be told correctly.

While he spent several months at Abu Ghraib, Javal Davis only spent one week guarding high value prisoners in Cell Block 1A which is where most of the photos of abuse were taken.

REPORTER: So what did you do in that week you were in Cell Block 1A?

JAVAL DAVIS: Hit the garbage cans, slammed doors, threw cold water, played the radio music loud, stuff like that. That's what I did. I just kept them awake, made life miserable. Put the radio up to the megaphone and play heavy metal music for like four hours straight, you know. That's it.
Some of the younger detainees, you know, they started liking it so you see them playing air guitar out of their cell door, you know, they're like "Yeah." So oh, God, I've got to change this. So I changed all that. I put in rap music one time.

It's like everyone loves hip-hop music, all the youth. So you see them bobbing their heads in the cell, so you're like "Oh, I can't play that." So then I settle with country music. They hate country music. That was the kicker. That worked.

REPORTER: Did you get to... Did you feel that you were turning into a monster?

JAVAL DAVIS: Yeah, I could see... I wouldn't say a monster but, yeah, you could say a monster. I was totally desensitised. It was like after time, over time at being at Abu Ghraib, you know, with your life on the line every day, you just start to not care. I mean, that's pretty much how it went.

The soldier who was seen as the biggest monster of all at Abu Ghraib was the so called ringleader, Charles Graner. This is him on November 8, 2003. The prisoners in these photos are the same people that Javal Davis was convicted of assaulting.

These men were suspected of leading a riot in the outside camp which resulted in a female MP being hit in the face with a brick. This attack infuriated Javal.

JAVAL DAVIS: Everyone was very upset, myself included. That was the last straw. We were eating the same food, living in the same cells, my life sucks just like yours. I'm away from home, you know. You're sitting here, you trying to take our life, that's it. I snapped. And that's what happened.
Your mind frame, your way of thinking is so jaded because, you know, life sucks there. Your life's on the line every day, you lose control. That's what happened. It happened to anyone.

Javal Davis was charged with throwing his bodyweight on the pile of prisoners. According to him it was an isolated 10-second lapse of judgment.

JAVAL DAVIS: If you look at my record of trial, my record of trial, exactly what I'm accused of, exactly what I was charged with, step on the finger and toe of a detainee, landed on them with my body weight, getting up, yelling at them and leaving.

Later that night, when Javal had left the scene, the prisoners were stripped naked and ordered to masturbate. Graner then put the prisoners in formation for a human pyramid.

Ken Davis says that Graner felt he was being compromised and did consult his conscience when he started to torture the prisoners.

KEN DAVIS: Graner actually came to me early in October and had told me that they're making him do things that are legally and morally, he feels are legally and morally wrong.

REPORTER: He said that?

KEN DAVIS: He did, and that was early October. Late October is when all the pictures, a lot of the events started taking place.

When people slate Graner and these seven as monsters, you have to ask yourself who created the environment for this to go on? Who opened the door for these people, these young soldiers to walk through? Those are the monsters.

On November 16, 2003, a few weeks after the torture had begun, Graner got a commendation from his platoon leader, Captain Brinson.

STATEMENT: "Corporal Graner, you are doing a fine job in tier one. You have received many accolades from the military intelligence units here and specifically from Lieutenant Colonel Jordan.

Continue to perform to this level and you will help us succeed at our overall mission".

KEN DAVIS: For someone, after they've done all this, to get a counselling statement praising the work you're doing on Tier 1A in the hard site, you're not going to stop. You're going to keep going and you're going to take it up a notch. You're going to take it up a level, especially when you're getting high fives and that-a-boys and "keep up the great work", you know, from officers of military intelligence and OGA.

Charles Graner is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence.

CHARLES GRANER: I was a soldier and if I did wrong, here I am.

The longest sentence anyone has received for torturing prisoners to death in Iraq is five months.

KEN DAVIS: This is actually my prison cell, that is my bed, where I slept.

Ken Davis came home in early December 2003 to get treatment for an injury. He says he reported the abuses he witnessed to army superiors but no-one took any notice.

KEN DAVIS: At first they're just like "Oh really, see a chaplain, talk to a chaplain about it, talk to the chaplain about it." A lot of people, they use psychology on you, "Well it's all your perception. It's how you perceive things. Maybe it's not as bad as what it really is."

A few weeks later, on January 14, MP Joseph Darby handed investigators a disc containing photos of abuse. Another three months passed before the scandal became public.

JAVAL DAVIS: I was sitting eating in chow hall and I looked up at CNN and I saw a picture of me when I was like 16 years old. I'm like, "What the hell am I doing on television?" And then I saw like the photographs and I couldn't believe it. I'm like, "Oh, my God."

When the torture scandal broke Javal Davis and six other low ranking soldiers were charged for the abuses.

All defended themselves by saying they were acting under direct orders. The army denies this, claiming they acted on their own volition.

JAVAL DAVIS: They tried to say that we were some uneducated, dumb, poor kids from 'Garbagecan' USA when it didn't turn out to be that way. I actually do have a brain, I do have some intelligence and I wasn't going to lay down and let the government run my name into the ground, or my family, or lead people astray. It just isn't going to be that way.

Before Abu Ghraib, Javal Davis had an exemplary record. He was a track and field star at high school, and seeing his leadership potential his coach encouraged him to join the army.
Even though Javal has served his time, he and his family are determined to appeal his conviction. Paul Bergrin is their lawyer.

PAUL BERGRIN, LAWYER: Javal Davis, long time no see!

JAVAL DAVIS: What's going on brother?

Paul Bergrin is pinning his hopes on the upcoming trial of two dog handlers at Abu Ghraib. Sergeants Michael Smith and Santos Cardona who were also charged with abusing prisoners.

PAUL BERGRIN: It's starting to explode from almost the top now.

The former head of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib has been given immunity to testify at the dog handlers' trial. Paul Bergrin is sure this will expose the entire chain of command's responsibility for the abuses.

PAUL BERGRIN: I don't think there's any way in the world anyone wants to know what Rumsfeld told Sanchez, and what Sanchez told Geoffrey Miller, because you know what they told him "We don't care what you do, just get in there and get us information. You can kill 'em for all we care. Treat 'em like dogs". We don't care how you get the information. Your job is to get the information" And I think that is starting to roll down hill.

Javal Davis always saw himself as a proud and dedicated soldier but the way he was treated by the military has left him deeply disillusioned.

JAVAL DAVIS: If I could say something to the decision makers, I'd say, "You stabbed me in the back, you stabbed a whole bunch of soldiers in the back, you know, left a whole lot of soldiers out there to dry, you know." That's what I say to my leadership, "Shame on you."

Ken Davis hasn't lost faith in all of America's institutions, but he thinks that by not telling the truth about Abu Ghraib, the military and the administration will pay the price.

KEN DAVIS: It was said, right in the New Testament, the truth doesn't have to justify itself because the truth will be known, So it's kind of one of those things where OK, if you want to lie, go ahead because the truth will be known and people are going to see it and if that's what you want your legacy based on, fine.

And there are soldiers that know the truth. We battle with what we battle internally, the war isn't over for us because inside is a fight every single day that we live.

GEORGE NEGUS: Janis, thanks very much for your time.

JANIS KARPINSKI, FORMER ABU GHRAIB COMMANDER: Thank you. Glad to be with you.

GEORGE NEGUS: The world was actually quite outraged by what happened at Abu Ghraib and now are wanting to know, how in heaven that could possibly do. You are claiming that you are a scapegoat in all of this, and that the whole thing went right to the top. Who do you think is ultimately responsible?

JANIS KARPINSKI: Well, I think if you're looking to find the start, you have to go back to the memorandum that was authored by our now-Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzalez, and John Ewe, from out in California, who was with the current administration at the time, and they did a memorandum, authorising departures from the Geneva Convention.

GEORGE NEGUS: So what you're saying is that people like yourself, as the commander of the prison at the time, had no idea that the American Government was taking no notice whatsoever of any Geneva Convention and therefore, if you like, the gloves were off and anything was OK, so far as torture and interrogation was concerned.

JANIS KARPINSKI: Absolutely. And remember that military police detention operations are separate and apart from military interrogations and they always have been. There are regulations that govern the conduct of soldiers in each of the specialities.
There had never been any discussion of military police personnel working for interrogators or with interrogators or setting the conditions as was happening down in Guantanamo Bay, none of those discussions were held with me or anybody else in the 800th Military Police brigade.

GEORGE NEGUS: Are you saying, and to have said this goes right to the top, you have mentioned Attorney-General Gonzales, but are you saying that the American Government, at the highest level, sanctioned, condoned, if indeed encouraged what we now know to be the abuse of detainees?

JANIS KARPINSKI: The memorandum, which was certainly discussed at length with the Secretary of Defence and the Vice-President, according to sworn statements by people who were there when those conversations took place, that authorised the initial departure.
And yes, there was a memorandum that was posted at Abu Ghraib prison, that I only became aware of, after I heard of this ongoing investigation out at Abu Ghraib, and it was signed by the Secretary of Defence.

GEORGE NEGUS: And it had a note in the margin that said "this must happen"?

JANIS KARPINSKI: Yes, "Make sure this happens".

GEORGE NEGUS: And you attribute that to Donald Rumsfeld?

JANIS KARPINSKI: Well, the signature on the memorandum was over the signature block of the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and the ink that was used to sign appeared to be the same ink used for this handwritten note in the margin, "make sure this happens", and it was a list of interrogation techniques that were approved, so he obviously had knowledge of those interrogation techniques.

GEORGE NEGUS: Janis, you have been attributed with the comment that Donald Rumsfeld ordered the torture that occurred in Abu Ghraib, that is a gigantic call. Are you prepared to stick by that, that it went that high?

JANIS KARPINSKI: Absolutely... When the Secretary of Defence, when General Miller, when General Sanchez when General Taguba, when they testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, they were very careful to say, in response to a question about the photographs, that they knew nothing about the photographs.
However, nobody on the Senate Armed Services Committee asked them "Did you know anything about the actions depicted in those photographs?" Because they would have had to give a truthful answer and the answer would have been yes, in fact they authorised the actions depicted in those photographs.
The Secretary of Defence authorised it, in conversations with General Miller, his Under-Secretary for Intelligence not only authorised those actions but was staying on top of the progress of those actions and those activities.

GEORGE NEGUS: When you found out what had been going on in that block, the abuse that was occurring, we now know from the pictures that we and other networks have shown, what was your reaction? What did you try and do about it?

JANIS KARPINSKI: Well, I'm shocked I was absolutely shocked and when I saw the photographs, I'd heard about the investigation actually 11 days before I saw the photographs, finally, as soon as I heard there was an ongoing investigation at Abu Ghraib, although the prison, Abu Ghraib itself, was no longer under my control, we left the location where we were, very close to the Iranian border, and drove into Baghdad and immediately went out to Abu Ghraib to see what had happened, what was this ongoing investigation, what with the allegations and, of course, all of the people, including the soldiers shown in those photographs, they had already been removed from their positions at Abu Ghraib. And shortly after that, when I try to get access to those soldiers, to ask them what in the world was going on, I was told that they did not work for me and I had no right to have access to any one of them.

GEORGE NEGUS: In November 2003, there was a riot and we have spoken to two of the guards, two of the people under your command, originally, who talked about that riot where unarmed Iraqis were killed, using firstly non-lethal ammunition, plastic bullets, and then live ammunition. Who ordered that?

JANIS KARPINSKI: The battalion commander, who was on-site at Abu Ghraib, ordered the soldiers to go to lethal ammunition, it is actually standard operating procedure. Now when you have several thousand prisoners in confinement and it gets out of control, and it did very quickly, they tried to bring it under control with non-lethal rubber bullets, usually, and because it was a winter month, I believe it occurred in October/November time-frame, and it was cold, so the prisoners had jackets or sweaters on over their clothing, the rubber bullets were not been very effective.

GEORGE NEGUS: The men we have spoken to, under your command, say it was like a turkey shoot. That unarmed Iraqis were gunned down.

JANIS KARPINSKI: I have to tell you, and I have to emphasise this, when you have far too few military police personnel to guard far too many prisoners, and they get out of control, and it is on the verge of them being able to break through the compounds, a battalion commander is authorised to take the action necessary to bring that situation under control.

GEORGE NEGUS: Janis, the irony is that now you're facing a lawsuit with Donald Rumsfeld with Sanchez, with Pappas, as being guilty of legal responsibility for the torture and abuse of detainees in Abu Ghraib.
Now, if you're an innocent party in all this, somebody who has been the scapegoat for these other people, why are you being charged with that same crime?

JANIS KARPINSKI: Well, because they're trying to make it appear... The organisation that filed the lawsuit is the Civil Liberties Union. I believe that Human Rights, is involved in a lawsuit as well, and they included me because the soldiers were assigned to a company, assigned to one of my subordinate battalions. But the truth will come out during that testimony. And it does not make any difference what side I represent, I intend to tell the truth. And the truth is they kept the information from me, we did not discover until long after the photographs were released that these actions were endorsed at the highest levels of our government and were taking place at Guantanamo Bay and in Bagram Airforce Base in Afghanistan long before Abu Ghraib was in anybody's discussion.

GEORGE NEGUS: In all reality though, if you say, you claim you are totally innocent of those sorts of charges, do you really expect that Donald Rumsfeld will be found guilty of those allegations, those charges?

JANIS KARPINSKI: No. And it is my understanding that even as recently as yesterday the attorneys went to court and asked for the case to be dismissed because the Secretary of Defence, apparently, has some protections in his position.

GEORGE NEGUS: The Taguba Report actually said that you showed lack of leadership in all of this and therefore you are partly responsible for what happened. So it is certainly not all over yet for you.

JANIS KARPINSKI: It absolutely is not. But I will tell you this, when they do an investigation with that kind of potential, the rules are very clear, you have to identify an impartial person to do the investigation and General Taguba did not serve one day in Iraq, he spent his deployment time in the safety of Kuwait. And he was, as it came out afterwards, a good friend of General Sanchez.
So if General Sanchez gave the investigating officer specific instructions on what he wanted to see in the conclusions, General Taguba was able and determined to provide and conclude what General Sanchez wanted to see. And he did exactly that.
The findings in the report have been largely discredited because he was not an impartial party and because so much more information has come out.

GEORGE NEGUS: You believe that the Taguba inquiry was a foregone conclusion, a set-up?

JANIS KARPINSKI: Absolutely no doubt in my mind. Because he was not charged with discovering what caused the photographs, General Taguba's instructions were to investigate the 800th Military Police Brigade and discover what was wrong with General Karpinski.

GEORGE NEGUS: No doubt we could talk for a lot longer, it is a shame we haven't got more time. But thank you very much for talking to us now.

JANIS KARPINSKI: Thank you, I appreciate it.

Here is what the introduction has to say:

In Iraq 2005 was a year of major progress for democracy, democratic rights and freedom. There was a steady growth of NGOs and other civil society associations that promote human rights. The January 30th legislative elections marked a tremendous step forward in solidifying governmental institutions to protect human rights and freedom in a country whose history is marred by some of the worst human rights abuses in the recent past.

But then skip to the country report:

Throughout the year the prime minister renewed the "state of emergency" originally declared in November 2004 throughout the country, excluding Kurdistan. The state of emergency allows for the temporary imposition of restrictions on certain civil liberties.

The following human rights problems were reported:

* pervasive climate of violence
* misappropriation of official authority by sectarian, criminal, terrorist, and insurgent groups
* arbitrary deprivation of life
* disappearances
* torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment
* impunity
* poor conditions in pretrial detention facilities
* arbitrary arrest and detention
* denial of fair public trial
* an immature judicial system lacking capacity
* limitations on freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and association due to terrorist and militia violence
* restrictions on religious freedom
* large numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs)
* lack of transparency and widespread corruption at all levels of government
* constraints on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
* discrimination against women, ethnic, and religious minorities
* limited exercise of labor rights

Man, I don't know how much more of that "major progress for democracy, democratic rights and freedom" that those Iraqis can stand.

"The competent authorities have today carried out the death sentences of 13 terrorists," the Cabinet said.

It said Farid had "confessed that foreigners recruited him to spread the fear through killings and abductions."

In September, Iraq hanged three convicted murderers, the first executions since the 2003 ouster of Saddam. They were convicted of killing three police officers, kidnapping and rape.

Iraqi authorities reinstated the death penalty after the end of the U.S.-led occupation in June 2004 so they would have the option of executing Saddam if he is convicted of crimes committed by his regime.

He and seven co-defendants are on trial for allegedly massacring more than 140 people in Dujail, north of Baghdad, after an alleged assassination attempt against him in 1982.

Death sentences must be approved by the three-member presidential council headed by President Jalal Talabani, who opposes capital punishment. In the September executions and again in Thursday's hangings, Talabani refused to sign the authorization himself but gave his two vice presidents the authority.