0
Among these were a photograph of a naked man with a dark hood over his head, handcuffed to a cell door.Another was of a naked man handcuffed to a bunk bed, his arms splayed so wide that his back is arched. A pair of women's underwear covers his head and face.
The publishing of these images, clearly showing abuse of human rights, comes as another major blow to the Bush Administration.
It was reported that President George W Bush is annoyed with the way Mr Rumsfeld handled the crisis over the photographs. Bush was concerned that he was not kept up to speed on the scope of the scandal-- and how the Pentagon was handling it, officials said.
Rumsfeld also made clear that he, too, felt "he didn't know some things he should have," according to the senior official, along with another official.
Moreover, some news agencies say that Mr Rumsfeld might be forced to resign.
The graphic images, passed around among military police who served at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, are a new batch of photographs similar to those broadcast a week ago on CBS's "60 Minutes II" and published by the New Yorker magazine. They appear to provide further visual evidence of the chaos and unprofessionalism at the prison detailed in a report by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. His report, which relied in part on the photographs, found "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" that were inflicted on detainees.
This group of photographs, taken from the summer of 2003 through the winter, ranges widely, from mundane images of everyday military life to pictures showing crude simulations of sex among soldiers. The new pictures appear to show American soldiers abusing prisoners, many of whom wear ID bands, but The Post could not eliminate the possibility that some of them were staged.
The photographs were taken by several digital cameras and loaded onto compact discs, which circulated among soldiers in the 372nd Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit based in Cresaptown, Md. The pictures were among those seized by military investigators probing conditions at the prison, a source close to the unit said.
