UNITED STATES/IRAQ: The collection of photographs begins like a travelogue from Iraq. Here are US soldiers posing in front of a mosque. Here is a soldier riding a camel in the desert. And then: a soldier holding a leash tied around a man's neck in an Iraqi prison. He is naked, grimacing and lying on the floor.
Mixed in with more than 1,000 digital pictures obtained by the Washington Post are photographs of naked men, apparently prisoners, sprawled on top of one another while soldiers stand around them.
There is another photograph of a naked man with a dark hood over his head, handcuffed to a cell door. And another of a naked man handcuffed to a bunk bed, his arms splayed so wide that his back is arched. A pair of women's underwear covers his head and face.
The graphic images, passed around among military police who served at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, are a new batch of photographs similar to those broadcast a week ago on CBS's 60 Minutes II.
They appear to provide further visual evidence of the chaos and unprofessionalism at the prison detailed in a report by army Maj Gen Antonio Taguba. His report, which relied in part on the photographs, found "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" were inflicted on detainees.
They have sparked particularly strong indignation in the Middle East, where many people see them as reinforcing the notion "that the situation in Iraq is one of occupation," according to Mr Shibley Telhami, who holds the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland.
The impact is heightened by religion and culture. Arabs "are even more offended when the issue has to do with nudity and sexuality", he said. "The bottom line here is these are pictures of utter humiliation."
The new pictures obtained by the Washington Post appear to show American soldiers abusing prisoners, many of whom wear ID bands, but the possibility that some of them were staged could not be eliminated. It is unclear who took the photographs, or why.
They include shots of soldiers simulating sexually explicit acts with one another and shots of a cow being skinned and gutted and soldiers posing with its severed head. There are also dozens of pictures of a cat's severed head. Other photographs show wounded men and dead bodies. In one, a dead man is lying in the back of a truck, his shirt, face and left arm covered in blood. His right arm is missing.
Another photograph shows a dead body, grey and decomposing. A young soldier is leaning over the corpse, smiling broadly and giving the "thumbs-up" sign.
And in another picture a young woman lifts her shirt, exposing her breasts. She is wearing a white band on her wrist, but it is unclear if she is a prisoner.