US President George W. Bush yesterday took personal command of efforts to counter a backlash in the Arab world to US soldiers murdering and abusing Iraqis in what was once Saddam Hussein's most notorious jail.
After the US army revealed Americans killed at least two Iraqi prisoners, Bush was to give interviews on Arab television to condemn "shameful and unacceptable" behavior. A top ally said the scandal could undermine Bush's entire project in Iraq.
A further 10 deaths were being investigated, the army said, a week after the publication of photographs showing laughing soldiers abusing naked detainees. The pictures sparked worldwide outrage and a hasty damage-limitation exercise in Washington, where official inquiries into the allegations began in January.
"It is a complete breakdown in discipline," Army Vice Chief of Staff General George Casey said after briefing senators.
At Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, where nearly 4,000 Iraqis are held, hundreds marched outside the heavily guarded walls demanding the release of relatives. Some vowed vengeance.
A probe into abuse last year at Abu Ghraib by Major-General Antonio Taguba recounted detainees being sodomized, beaten, held naked for days, and forced to masturbate while being filmed.
US officials in Iraq have rejected comparisons with the old regime, which killed and tortured thousands in Abu Ghraib.
"We didn't put 300,000 in mass graves," one said.
Asked if he would apologize, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would only say: "Any American who sees the photographs ... has to feel apologetic to the Iraqi people who were abused."
But US efforts to isolate the case captured on camera to a few bad apples -- six soldiers face court-martial and seven have been reprimanded -- ring hollow to many Iraqis, for whom tales of beatings and humiliation behind the razor wire have been commonplace since the US invasion toppled Saddam a year ago.
"The prisoner abuse is so disgusting, so degrading that I think humanity has been hurt broadly. And that will be interpreted around the world I think as almost undercutting our efforts," said Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.
The Republican president, seeking re-election in November, says "Operation Iraqi Freedom" will lead to a democratic Iraq that will serve as a beacon of stability to the wider Middle East. The next step is the return of formal sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government on June 30.
US forces, however, will remain long after that date and in numbers greater than Washington once forecast. The present level of about 138,000 US troops will be maintained into the fall and winter, Rumsfeld said. "You're going to have a period of increased attacks," he said.
Last month was the bloodiest of the war for the US, which saw 129 killed in action. Insurgencies among minority Sunni Muslims and Shiites in the south have put particular strain on US forces. Three soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb hit their convoy near Baquba yesterday, witnesses said.
However, yesterday also saw more promising news.
In Fallujah, a turbulent city west of Baghdad, a deal between local ex-soldiers and US Marines appeared to be settling into something close to peace. Marines planned to lift a security cordon on the most violent district and fighting has died away.
US commanders concede that some of the new Iraqi force in the town may be drawn from the ranks of the insurgents and it remains unclear that these will meet all US demands.
There were fresh clashes between US and allied Bulgarian forces and Shiite Muslim militiamen loyal to rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the holy city of Kerbala early yesterday, killing three fighters, witnesses and hospital sources said.
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