Excerpt (because it's buried inside a bomb story) from an AP story:

Fresh evidence emerged Sunday to belie protests by US President George W. Bush and his administration that abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American troops was confined to a small minority.

Bush sought in his weekly Saturday radio address to play down the extent of abuse of Iraqis held at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, blaming "a small number of American servicemen and women."

But one of the seven US soldiers charged with abusing prisoners said she was acting under direct orders from military intelligence to "make it hell" for inmates before interrogation, The Washington Post reported.

Sabrina Harman told the Post they were given no rules and little training, and she never read the Geneva Convention until two months after she was charged.

"I read the entire thing, highlighting everything the prison is in violation of. There's a lot."

The Washington Post also said that deep divisions were emerging at the top of the US military over the course of the occupation of Iraq ( news -web sites ), with some senior officers saying the United States faces the prospect of taking high casualties without establishing a democratic Iraq.

The newspaper said the officers' major worry was that the United States was prevailing militarily but failing to win the support of the Iraqi people.

Colonel Paul Hughes, who last year was the first director of strategic planning for the US occupation authority in Baghdad, noted that a pattern of winning battles while losing a war characterized the US failure in Vietnam.

Some officers say the way to begin restructuring US policy is by ousting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whom they see as responsible for a series of strategic and tactical blunders over the past year, according to the report.

Calls have also arisen for Rumsfeld to resign over the prisoners issue, following testimony to congressmen in which he apologised but warned that more revelations were to come.



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