President Bush and his administration have moved rapidly to contain the enormous damage done to their country's reputation by the revelations that US military personnel have been torturing Iraqi prisoners.
Mr Bush told Arabic television stations yesterday that this is abhorrent, does not express American values, will be thoroughly investigated and those responsible will be brought to justice. It is one thing to state the position clearly; another to follow it up with action. The way of democracy must prevail. There can be no departure from the obligations of occupying powers under the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war and civilians agreed in 1949.
The question arising from this potentially crippling blow to the coalition's occupation of Iraq, after a dreadful series of events and mistakes over the last month, is how far up the military and political command the approval of torture went. How much is it built into the fabric of policy as directed against a growing movement of popular resistance on which the US-led coalition has scant human intelligence? Is it mirrored in prisons run by British troops, as is also now alleged? The horrifying and deeply shocking photographs showing sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners could prove a turning point in the occupation.
The 10,000 prisoners held in Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad have been the subject of investigations and complaints by human rights bodies for months. The New Yorker has now revealed that a 53-page report by Major General Antonio Taguba on institutional failings and conditions there was completed in February. He found that between October and December last year there were numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses". They were perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, by members of American military intelligence and by civilian contract employees according to this report. The prison commander, Brig Gen Janis Karpinski, was suspended in unexplained circumstances last January and now blames military intelligence for the torture. Relatives and lawyers for the soldiers accused say they are being used as scapegoats to protect their superiors.
Senior congressional figures have made it clear more revelations are to come and there are growing calls for resignations at the top political levels. Alongside this growing scandal comes news that army officials are investigating the deaths of 25 prisoners held by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. One has to wonder, in the light of these revelations, about conditions in the Guantanamo prison, where US forces have held prisoners of war outside established legal limits for months and years of interrogation.
It becomes daily more and more clear that only a radical internationalisation of the Iraqi occupation under the auspices of the United Nations can give the country stability and eventual democracy.