Bush Denounces Troops’ Treatment of Prisoners

President Bush on Friday strongly condemned the alleged mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers even as graphic pictures of abuses aired around the world, angering Arabs and threatening to further undermine the occupation of Iraq.

The images, first broadcast Wednesday on the CBS program “60 Minutes II,” show male and female American troops, smiling, posing, laughing or giving the thumbs-up sign in front of naked Iraqi men held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, the center for torture during the Saddam Hussein regime.

“Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people. That’s not the way we do things in America. I didn’t like it one bit,” Bush said. “I share a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated.”

The photographs topped the newscasts on many of the Arab satellite TV channels, including Al Jazeera. The graphic content -- particularly the sexual abuse implied in pictures of naked men stacked on top of one another -- fed Arab beliefs that U.S. soldiers are free to trample Iraqi human rights.

The Army announced in March that it had charged six military police officers and suspended 11 others for abuse of prisoners late last year in the Abu Ghraib investigation. Most of the troops are reservists with the 372nd Military Police Company from Cumberland, Md.

New attention was focused on the case when photographs of the incidents appeared on “60 Minutes II.”

The scandal appeared to grow Friday, when a private military contractor, Arlington, Va.-based CACI International, said its personnel in Iraq had volunteered to be questioned in connection with the investigation. It was the first indication that civilian contractors, an increasingly important part of the occupation, might have been involved in prisoner mistreatment along with the military.

The photographs were not likely to be widely distributed until today because most Iraqi newspapers do not publish on Friday, the traditional day of rest in the Muslim world. Most Iraqis do not have access to Arabic-language TV channels such as Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera.

But elsewhere in the Arab world, the reaction was hostile.

“People will easily believe that this sort of brutal mistreatment of prisoners or suspects is generally approved of and that unless he is caught on camera, a GI can get away with anything,” said an editorial in Saudi Arabia’s Arab News. “The great loss the Americans face is to their reputation.”

At the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher said the agency “was not too concerned” about whether the revelations undermined U.S. credibility and hurt America’s standing with Arab nations. Boucher noted that the government had disclosed the wrongdoing and was taking action against the alleged perpetrators.

“It has been very, very clear all along -- from our statements, from things we’ve done -- that there is absolutely no policy, systematic abuse, political motivation, or anything else that would liken these kind of abuses and aberrations to the consistent practices of the old regime,” Boucher said.

The Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, is a potent symbol of the excesses the U.S. said it wanted to correct by deposing Hussein.

The prison has been remodeled by occupation forces and turned into the U.S.-led coalition’s major detention center, and holds 8,000 prisoners.

With Iraq exploding with violence against Americans -- and anyone perceived as connected with Americans -- the battle to win over Iraqis has already suffered significant setbacks. But U.S. officials fear that the abuse revelations could further shake Iraqi perceptions of the U.S. mission.

Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, chief military spokesman in Baghdad, said he met with the Arab-language media before the “60 Minutes II” broadcast in an attempt to defuse emotions about the images.

“What I would say to the people of Iraq ... is this is a very small minority of the hundreds and hundreds of guards [who] we have operating in Abu Ghraib prison,” Kimmitt told reporters Friday.

“Am I going to apologize for those soldiers? Hell, no,” Kimmitt said. “They did wrong.”

The graphic nature of the pictures, which are believed to have come from a participant, are likely to fuel the anger.

One Iraqi man depicted in the photos had a slur written on his skin in English. Another was directed by Americans to stand on a box with his head covered and wires attached to his hands. He was informed that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted. The wires were apparently not connected to an electricity source.

The condemnation was certain to spread after Britain, the chief U.S. partner in the occupation, announced Friday that it had launched an investigation of allegations that British soldiers had tortured Iraqi prisoners.

Britain’s army chief, Gen. Mike Jackson, ordered an immediate inquiry after it emerged that the Daily Mirror newspaper in its Saturday editions published photos of British soldiers abusing prisoners.

The paper told Reuters the images included one of a British soldier urinating on a crouching, hooded Iraqi.

After talks with Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, Bush told reporters: “I also want to remind people that those few people who did that do not reflect the nature of the men and women we’ve sent overseas. That’s not the way the people are. It’s not their character, that are serving our nation in the cause of freedom.

“And there will be an investigation,” Bush said of the troops’ actions. “I think they’ll be taken care of.”

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John F. Kerry said he was “troubled” by what he called “the evidence of shameful mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners” and called on the military to take “appropriate action.”

An aide on the Senate Armed Services Committee said members were concerned that the episode would further undermine support for the United States across the Middle East because “Muslim populations would see this as somehow reflective of the manner in which Americans treat Muslims.”

The committee was warned this week that “60 Minutes II” would be showing the images, and the panel is expected to seek a more detailed account from the Pentagon about the investigation.

Schrader reported from Washington and McDonnell from Baghdad. Times staff writers Megan Stack in Damascus, Syria, and T. Christian Miller in Washington contributed to this report.