Rumsfeld bans camera phones
<"MOBILE phones fitted with digital cameras have been banned in US army installations in Iraq on orders from Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, The Business newspaper reported today.

Quoting a Pentagon source, the paper said the US Defence Department believes that some of the damning photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were taken with camera phones."
FULL STORY:   ¶ 10:20 AM

  Abu Ghraib: US security fiasco | The Register
Abu Ghraib: US security fiasco | The Register:
"This new festival of human rights violations by the United States government is about revenge for 9/11, not about gathering useful intelligence. It is also about deterrence: it's a symbolic putting of heads on pikes near the city gates to discourage criminals. It is, quite simply, a terror tactic."  ¶ 10:35 AM

  Institutional atrocities As evidence mounts of systematic abuse of prisoners by British and American soldiers in Iraq, no doubt we shall be told that these were the crimes of a rogue element who have besmirched the honour of their respective noble military traditions.
When one considers the record, for instance in the 19th Century the genocide of native Americans directed by war criminals like Custer, and the thousands of Boers and native Africans who died in British concentration camps in South Africa, it is clear that the military traditions of both countries are dishonourable and bloody.
Of the worst war crimes of the 20th Century the following are among the best documented:

• the killing of 379 civilians by the British army in the town of Amritsar in India in 1919;
• the beheading of captured guerrillas (also photographed enthusiastically) by British troops in Malaya;
• the machine-gunning of PoWs in Koje prison camp in Korea by US troops in 1952, resulting in over 100 deaths;
  (The official reports of the events on February 18 and June 10, 1952, stated:
  "The 3rd Battalion of the 27th Infantry Regiment moved in during the early hours of 18 February. Between 1,000-1,500 internees pressed the attack and the soldiers were forced to resort to concussion grenades. When the grenades failed to stop the assault, the UNC troops opened fire. Fifty-five prisoners were killed immediately and 22 more died at the hospital, with over 140 other casualties as against one U.S. killed and 38 wounded.
  "On the morning of 10 June, he [Brig. Gen. Haydon L. Boatner, assistant division commander of the 2nd Division] ordered Col. Lee Hak Koo to assemble the prisoners of Compound 76 in groups of 150 in the center of the compound and to be prepared to move them out. . . Crack paratroopers of the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team wasted little time as they advanced without firing a shot. Employing concussion grenades, tear gas, bayonets, and fists, they drove or dragged the prisoners out of the trenches. As a half-dozen Patton tanks rolled in and trained their guns on the last 300 prisoners still fighting, resistance collapsed. . . During the two-and-a-half-hour battle, 31 prisoners were killed, many by the Communists themselves, and 139 were wounded. One U.S. soldier was speared to death and 14 were injured.")/li>
• British atrocities in Kenya, including the gang-rapes of 650 women by British troops, which are only now coming to light;
• the execution of captured National Liberation Front troops in Vietnam by throwing them from helicopters.

The terrible list goes on and on, and continues today.
The Guardian's revelations of the cases of Iraqi civilians who have died after being picked up by UK soldiers in Basra indicate that what is happening in Iraq is not confined to captured soldiery.
Far from being the actions of a rogue minority, these are institutional atrocities deliberately perpetrated against their victims in colonial wars.

  ¶ 1:58 PM