Pentagon dismisses new report on US military torture in Iraq

A report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) provides chilling new details of the torture of Iraqi detainees by US forces. The report, issued September 24 - "Leadership Failure: Firsthand Accounts of Torture of Iraqi Detainees by the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division" - is based on interviews with a US Army captain and two sergeants. It details abuse carried out at Forward Operating Base Mercury (FOB Mercury), near Fallajuh in Central Iraq, from 2003 through 2004.

The Pentagon has denounced the report as a politically motivated smear. Defense Department spokesman Lt. Col. John Skinner criticized it as an effort "to advance an agenda through the use of distortions and efforts in fact." He made the remarkable claim that the military has "looked at all aspects of detention operations under a microscope."

The soldiers' accounts include such practices as hitting detainees with baseball bats, breaking limbs, placing them in "stress positions," forcing them to form human pyramids, dousing them with cold water, exposing them to extremes of hot and cold, depriving them of sleep, and withholding food and water. The US troops committing the atrocities were nicknamed "the Murderous Maniacs" by the residents of nearby Fallujah, who were their victims. The abuse took place on a daily basis.