Hersh, who writes for the New Yorker magazine, told the American Civil Liberties Union earlier this month, “The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling, and the worst part is the soundtrack, of the boys shrieking. And this is your government at war.”

Whereas George W. Bush said that photos of U.S. soldiers sexually humiliating and torturing Iraqi detainees merely show “conduct by a few American troops,” Hersh told the ACLU there was “a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command (level) out there, and higher.”

A newly released 2002 Pentagon memo reveals that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally authorized the use of dogs for intimidation and the stripping and hooding of prisoners. Rumsfeld also ordered military officials not to comply with the International Red Cross’ request to report the names of prisoners.

According to Newsweek magazine, this and similar memos and orders were signed by Rumsfeld, Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

A member of the CERJ (Coalition for Equity-Restorative Justice) email list reports that there have been other allusions to children in Iraq prisons, especially in the German press, at www.sadlyno.com/archives/000730.html. A subscriber to the website Daily KOS, at www.dailykos.com/story/2004/7/7/13273/37170, has translated excerpts:

“From his cell in the adults’ section, he hears a girl of maybe 12 years of age crying. Later he found out that her brother was held in a cell on the second floor of the prison. Once or twice, he says, he saw the girl himself. … She called out her brother’s name. She was beaten. She cried out, ‘They took off my clothes. They poured water on me.’” - Suhaib Badr-Addin Al-Baz

“Over the course of 19 visits in six different detention facilities from January to May of this year, we counted 107 children. These facilities were under the control of coalition troops.” - Florian Westphal, International Committee of the Red Cross

The translator laments: “Why the hell do we have to rely on the foreign press to do the job our press corps should be doing?”

Jules Siegel of Mexico reports to the CERJ list, “The ICRC found minors in both Qasr and Abu Ghraib. Two international organizations confirm, independently, that coalition troops have jailed Iraqi children. But information directly from the prisons remains unavailable. UNICEF was not able to visit the children’s prison in Baghdad … access was denied.”

Read the full Aljazeera story at http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E3C89C20-6A0A-48F9-9476-A72F4E00A426.htm. The video of Hersh’s ACLU conference speech is on the web at http://stream.realimpact.
net/?file=clients/aclu/conf2004/20040707_aclu_AmericaAtACrossroads_300.rm.