US Reaction: Bush administration officials yesterday expressed fury about the broadcast on Al-Jazeera television of Iraqi TV pictures showing the interrogation of American prisoners of war, including a woman soldier, by Iraqi captors, writes Conor O'Clery, North American Editor, in New York
President Bush warned that any Iraqis treating prisoners of war inhumanely would be dealt with harshly. "I expect them to be treated humanely just like we treat prisoners of theirs that we capture humanely," he said. "If not, the people who mistreat war prisoners will be treated as criminals."
Mr Bush claimed that by contrast "a lot of their soldiers are welcoming American troops, surrendering gleefully, happily, they will be treated well".
The Iraqi pictures are a stark image of the vulnerability of the American forces, in contrast with the widespread perception in the US that the war would be an invincible high-tech military operation against a collapsing regime.
Only one US channel showed the footage of the interrogation of the four male and one female prisoners and pictures of four American soldiers in uniform in an Iraqi morgue, and did not repeat it. The Pentagon said yesterday that Al-Jazeera had agreed to Washington's request to stop replaying the images.
Some US news websites such as the Drudge Report, however, published graphic pictures of an American corpse shown by Iraqi TV and argued that the six-minute video of interrogations should be seen by the average US citizen to discredit Iraqi forces with the disgust and horror they would generate.
CNN showed a picture of several soldiers lying dead without revealing their faces, and reported that some seemed to have been shot in the forehead.
US Secretary of Defence Mr Donald Rumsfeld said that showing the interrogation of prisoners on television was a breach of the Geneva Convention on warfare. The International Red Cross in Washington later confirmed this to be the case.
Ms Amanda Williams of the International Red Cross in Washington said the showing on US television of Iraqi prisoners of war could also be argued to be a contravention of the convention.
Mr Rumsfeld told NBC's Meet the Press the US "avoids showing photographs of prisoners of war".
American media has in the past two days shown images of defeated Iraqi soldiers trudging along holding white cloth, and others lying on the ground while being searched by US forces.
Article 13 of the Geneva Convention relating to the treatment of prisoners of war states they must at all times be humanely treated and protected "against insults and public curiosity". The US Defence Secretary hinted that retribution for the broadcast would come swiftly for Iraqi TV, saying, "I would strongly advise those civilians to leave" who worked at the TV centre in Baghdad and at other communications installations.
Mr Rumsfeld said he was not surprised by the fight put up by Iraqis in areas said earlier to be secured by US and British forces. "One has to imagine there would be pockets of resistance," he said.
Progress in the air and on the ground has been excellent and "towns are friendly and supportive of our forces coming in generally". Asked at what point the US could say there had been "regime change" he replied that this would happen when the Iraqi government was no longer in control of "real estate", air space or foreign policy.
Iraqis had been repressed by a "vicious regime" under Saddam Hussein. "At some point their fear of him will be much less than their fear of us. At what point it will tip nobody knows. The closer we get to Baghdad the more likely that they will tip."
Both Mr Rumsfeld and Mr Bush expressed concern about the reported entry of Turkish troops in large numbers into northern Iraq. "We do not feel it is appropriate or necessary to bring large numbers of forces into northern Iraq and to my knowledge they are not," Mr Rumsfeld said. The US would do what was needed to see there was no conflict between Turkish and Kurdish forces.
Mr Bush, speaking to reporters after spending the weekend at Camp David, said: "We're making it clear to the Turks we expect them not to come in to northern Iraq. They know we are working with the Kurds to make sure there's not an incident" that would give them an "excuse" to go into northern Iraq.
He promised that "massive amounts" of humanitarian aid were poised to move into Iraq in the next 36 hours. "That's going to be positive news for those who suffered a long time under Saddam Hussein," he said.
Mr Bush will meet congressional leaders today to brief them on the cost of the war which a senior official put at between $70 billion and $90 billion.
Time magazine yesterday reported the President had planned the war as long ago as March 2002. "F..k Saddam. We're taking him out," he reportedly said, after poking his head into the office of National Security Adviser Ms Condoleezza Rice.
The Washington Post reported yesterday that the start of the ground war was advanced by 24 hours after the President ordered an air strike at the Dora Farm complex in Baghdad on Wednesday on intelligence reports that President Saddam and his sons were there. Mr Rumsfeld said yesterday they did not know if Saddam Hussein was alive.