60 new Abu Ghraib pictures released

The pictures shown on SBS Dateline in Australia can be seen here at Daily Kos there are also some more at the SBS website gallery and URUKNET
and also at Raw Story
WARNING : Extraordinarily unpleasant.

This is what the Senate and Congress members were reported saying by the Wapo after viewing the pictures and videos in May since then of course the pictures / videos have been successfully kept from the world.

"What we saw is appalling," said Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), the Senate majority leader, after the Defense Department brought a computer disc containing the digital photos and video clips to Capitol Hill and displayed them on a computer in a closed-door meeting.

Keeping the pictures under wraps "protects the integrity of the legal process" and avoids "inspiring the enemy" to harm members of the U.S.-led coalition or civilians in Iraq, Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Warner said.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said, "What I have seen is disgusting and it is disappointing." He said there were "obvious examples in videos of inhumane treatment" and that, in one photo, he counted seven or eight troops in a hallway in which several Iraqi prisoners were tied together naked on the floor.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said what most shocked her was a video clip of a handcuffed prisoner beating his head against a wall. She said another video showed a group of men masturbating.

On January 27th, President Bush, in an interview with the Times, assured the world that “torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture.”

US Statute § 2340A. Torture

Release date: 2004-08-06
(a) Offense.— Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.
(b) Jurisdiction.— There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if—
(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or
(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender.
(c) Conspiracy.— A person who conspires to commit an offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties (other than the penalty of death) as the penalties prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.

Article 35 (c) of the new Iraqi Constitution BBC translation

(c) All forms of torture, mental or physical, and inhuman treatment are forbidden. There is no recognition of any confession extracted by force or threats or torture, and the injured party may seek compensation for any physical or mental injury that is inflicted.

Comments were made here in December "Fucking Lying bitch"

“The US does not condone torture,” Condoleezza Rice told reporters gathered in the Berlin Chancellery. “We do, however, have an obligation to defend our people and to use every lawful means to combat terrorism.”
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Michael Scheuer was the senior CIA analyst responsible for tracking Osama bin Laden from 1996, he writes

“bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. None of the reasons have anything to do with our freedom, liberty, and democracy, but have everything to do with U.S. policies and actions in the Muslim world.” Osama’s concern “is out to drastically alter U.S. and Western policies toward the Islamic world,” Scheuer writes: “He is a practical warrior, not an apocalyptic terrorist in search of Armageddon.”

Recent blogs on same topic here