Eideard

An American soldier has pleaded guilty to being part of a “kill team” who deliberately murdered Afghan civilians for sport last year.

Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock, 23, told a military court he had helped to kill three unarmed Afghans. “The plan was to kill people, sir,” he told an army judge in Fort Lea, near Seattle, after his plea.

The case has caused outraged headlines around the world. In a series of videotaped confessions to investigators, some of which have been broadcast on American television, Morlock detailed how he and other members of his Stryker brigade set up and faked combat situations so that they could kill civilians who posed no threat to them. Four other soldiers are still to come to trial over the incidents.

The case is a PR disaster for America’s military and has been compared to the notorious incidents of torture that emerged from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. This week the German magazine Der Spiegel published three pictures that showed American soldiers, including Morlock, posing with the corpse of a young Afghan boy as if it were a hunting trophy.

Some soldiers apparently kept body parts of their victims, including a skull, as souvenirs. In a statement issued in response to the publication of the photos the US army apologised to the families of the dead. “[The photos are] repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States army,” the statement said.

Violent criminal behavior is repugnant to civilized people the world over. Taking murder to the level of sport is not only reprehensible – you have to wonder, to question, the “values” that this thug learned in his young years.

And where they came from?

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She said she was a scapegoat. She said she was just following orders. She said she was demoted unfairly.

Now, retired Army Col. Janis Karpinski can say: I told you so.

Karpinski was one of two officers punished over the aggressive interrogations at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Pictures of detainees caused outrage around the world when they were leaked to the news media in May 2004. The photos showed naked prisoners stacked on top of each other or being threatened by dogs or hooded and wired up as if for electrocution.

Throughout the ordeal, Karpinski maintained that she and her troops were following interrogation guidelines approved by top brass. Today, Karpinski has found validation in a few Bush-era memos released last week by the Obama administration.

“The outrage was over the photographs, because the photographs were living color of what those top-secret memorandums authorized,” Karpinski said in an interview Wednesday. “So, it is unfair … the soldiers may have moved through [the military justice] system, but they never had a fair court-martial. Not any one of them, because they were condemned as one of the ‘bad apples…’ “

The memo, by then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee and then-Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven G. Bradbury, allowed the use of such tactics as keeping a detainee naked and in some cases in a diaper, and putting detainees on a liquid diet. One memo said aggressive techniques such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and slapping did not violate laws against torture absent the intent to cause severe pain…

The guidance was delivered to Abu Ghraib by then-Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was summoned to Baghdad from Guantanamo to evaluate the prison system.

Accusations were never allowed to proceed above members of the military. The sacrosanct Bush Administration publicly washed their hands. Lying through their teeth.

Too bad the mainstream press was busy tidying up after the lack of oversight from Congress. Stopped asking questions after a few hearings, baseline trials – don’t offend the guys in power.

Daylife/AP Photo by Karim Kadim

Iraqi officials have formally reopened Abu Ghraib prison, which became synonymous with abuse under the U.S. occupation, and in addition to a fresh coat of paint, gave it a new name.

The prison on the western outskirts of Baghdad earned global notoriety after U.S. jailkeepers filmed themselves tormenting and sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners less than a year after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein…

Renamed Baghdad Central Prison, it already has around 400 inmates, said prison director general Alsharif al-Murtadha Abdul al-Mutalib…

The Iraqi authorities running the new prison appeared intent on constructing an entirely different image now.

The newly minted Baghdad prison has modern medical and dental facilities, a computer chatroom and a courtyard for visiting families that contains a children’s playground and a water fountain.

Inmates will be able to sew their own clothes in a small sewing factory. The prison also has a mosque and a hair salon that would not look out of place in a city street outside.

As the new prison slowly fills, there remains questions about what will be done with prisoners still held by the American military. 14,000 of them.