US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made a surprise visit to Baghdad yesterday, flying into the eye of the storm over Americans torturing prisoners that has sapped Washington's credibility in Iraq.
Hours after US lawmakers viewed "sadistic" new photographs of US troops torturing Iraqis, the embattled secretary met Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the US commander in Iraq, and Major General Geoffrey Miller, the new head of US prisons there.
It was not clear whether he would visit the nearby Abu Ghraib jail itself, where seven military police reservists are charged with sexually and physically tormenting detainees.
PHOTO: AP
His trip looked like a robust answer to critics who say Rumsfeld, one of the architects of the Iraq war, should resign, six months before US President George W Bush seeks re-election.
As international anger at US conduct in Iraq -- and at its Guantanamo Bay prison on Cuba -- mounts, General Richard Myers, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff who visited with Rumsfeld, said: "We absolutely have the high moral ground."
Once notorious as Saddam Hussein's torture chamber, Abu Ghraib has become a symbol of the US failure to win over many Iraqis despite ridding them of Saddam a year ago. With just seven weeks to go until Washington hands sovereignty back to an Iraqi government, that is a serious problem for Rumsfeld.
Efforts by the Bush administration to contain the damage to the seven soldiers charged have been buffeted by reports from the Red Cross and other groups saying that Washington was warned about systematic and widespread torture many months ago.
Not only are Arabs dismayed at evidence that the troops who overthrew Saddam's dictatorship were inflicting torments themselves on thousands of Iraqis but US allies, many of whom opposed the war, are also becoming more vocal in criticism.
"It all gives the impression of a total lack of direction," French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier told Le Monde newspaper in unusually tough comments about Iraq under US occupation.
Prisoner abuses and persistent violence showed the country and region were spinning out of control, Barnier said.
In the holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala, where US troops are facing an uprising by a Shiite Muslim militia loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, there was renewed fighting.
Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fighters stormed the main police station in Najaf overnight and emptied the weapons store, police said, before they were driven off by US tanks.
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