corrente

Remember "Baghdad Bob"? The Iraqi Minister of Information, real name Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf? He was widely made fun of at one time, like when he said:

"These images are not the suburbs of Baghdad. From what I glimpsed, these gardens with rows of palm trees on the side, which you saw in the images, are located in the south of Abu Ghreib, where we have surrounded the Americans and British."

We're not laughing any more.

(via WaPo)

BAGHDAD, June 24 -- The company commander of the U.S. soldiers charged with abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison testified Thursday during a legal hearing that the top military intelligence commander was present the night a cover-up was hatched to deal with the death of a detainee who apparently died during an interrogation.

Capt. Donald J. Reese, commander of the 372nd Military Police Company, said he was summoned to a shower room in a cellblock at the prison one night in November, where he discovered a group of intelligence personnel standing around the body of a bloodied detainee discussing what to do. He said Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of military intelligence at the prison, was among those who were there.

Reese testified that he heard Pappas say, "I'm not going down for this alone." Reese said an Army colonel named Jordan sent a soldier to the mess hall for ice to preserve the body overnight.

Reese said no medics were called, and the detainee's identification was never logged...

Reese's testimony came during the first day of an investigative hearing for Spec. Sabrina Harman, one of seven Army reservists from the 372nd,which is based in Cresaptown, Md., charged with abusing detainees at the prison. During investigations of alleged abuse at Abu Ghraib, statements by other witnesses have described the death of the detainee, and the corpse appears in photographs documenting abuse at the prison. But no testimony or evidence had previously indicated Pappas was in the shower room the night the detainee died...

"My MPs, they were directed by the MI people for what they wanted and how they wanted it," he [Reese] said.

UPDATE Remember the Hersh photo of the corpse on ice in the plastic bag? This corpse is it.

Um, I thought we were the goood guys? The fish rots from the head.... —Lambert