Why Bush fears the last Abu Ghraib photos...

The Pentagon handed the last of the Abu Ghraib photos to the ACLU, but the Bush administration filed a motion to block their release at the last minute this Friday.

They have good reason to be afraid of their release.

These are the photos and videos that include rape, children, who were subject to the same abuse as adults.

Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, was shown these photos at the Pentagon by military officials disgusted with what the Bush administration is doing. One was of a boy being raped, and Hersh has said he will be haunted by his screams for the rest of his life. This story from the New York Times describes the scope of the problem, if not the graphic details:

http://www.occupationwatch.org/analysis/archives/2005/06/arrested_develo.html

A British news show had these drawings done to illustrate an Iraqi reporter documented of an attack on an 12 year old girl: If that made you mad, think about the effect of the actual photos.



Here's the German news article that describes the incident and has links to the international organizations looking into this.
http://www.swr.de/report/archiv/sendungen/040705/07/frames.html

This is the description of the event in the drawing:

One person who has seen the children's wing with his own eyes is the journalist Suhaib Badr-Addin Al-Baz. Our correspondent met him last week in Baghdad. The Iraqi TV reporter tells how he himself was arrested arbitrarily by the Americans while shooting a film and spent 74 days in Abu Ghraib.

"I saw a camp for children there. Boys, under the age of puberty. There were certainly hundreds of children in this camp. Some have been released, others are certainly still there."

From his single cell in the adults' section, Suhaib heard a perhaps 12-year-old girl crying. Suhaib learned that her brother was being held on the second floor of the prison. Suhaib says he saw her there himself once or twice.

In the night, they had been in her cell. The girl had shouted to the other prisoners and called out her brother's name.

"She was beaten. I heard her call out: They have undressed me. They have poured water over me."

Daily, says Suhaib, one had heard her cries and her whimpering. Some of the prisoners had therefore wept...

The last paragraph of the article is chilling:

We have, of course, confronted those responsible with our researches. [sic] The British Ministry of Defence let it be known: Children and juveniles are not being held in custody by British troops. We are still waiting for a reply from the Pentagon in America..