FT.com : US reveals deaths of prisoners in Iraq

The assertion by Iraqis that the level and quality of incarceration by the US of "prisoners" in Iraq is "just as bad as under Saddam" has been given more strength by the recent admissions in the US.

"The Pentagon, struggling to contain allegations of torture by US soldiers, revealed on Tuesday an investigation into the deaths of no fewer than 25 prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Then there is more bad news about "accountability".

"President George W. Bush first saw the torture pictures when they were broadcast on television last week, and did not learn of a classified Pentagon report on the initial investigation until it was reported in the US press, the White House said on Tuesday.

In his radio address to the nation last week, the president had declared there was no more torture in Iraqi prisons."

Apparently, Bubba Bush did not mean US-originated torture, which is, after all, "good" torture and only for good ends.

Then, the punchline:

"Douglas Feith, an undersecretary of defence, said: 'There is no country in the world that upholds the rules of the Geneva Convention more steadfastly than the United States.'"

After Guantanamo, after massive incarceration, after torture, after the vicious assault on Fallujah and the deaths of 700 civilians during an "occupation", how can Feith claim that the US upholds the Geneva Convention?