President Bush, seeking to appease international anger over U.S. soldiers’ mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners, appeared on Arab television Wednesday to formally apologize for the American military.
“The people in Iraq must understand that I view those practices as abhorrent. They must also understand that what took place in that prison does not represent the America that I know,” Bush said during a televised interview.
Incriminating pictures were uncovered last week showing images of U.S. soldiers forcing naked Iraqi soldiers into human body pyramids, sexual positions, and other humiliating abuses. Internal reports with the Department of Defense found the Iraqi prisoners were abused previous to the release of the pictures.
The pictures, which have been broadcast across the Arab world, are particularly damaging to the United States at a time when preserving the military’s moral legitimacy is crucial in the Bush Administration’s efforts to legitimize the war in Iraq.
“The images that we have seen that include U.S. forces are deeply disturbing both because of the fundamental unacceptability of what they depicted and because the actions by U.S. military personnel in those photos do not in any way represent the values of our country or the armed forces,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in a press conference Tuesday.
The location of the abuses occurred in the Abu Ghraib prison, which was the jail where Saddam Hussein’s regime committed some of its most gruesome and cruel imprisonments.
Although many experts feel the photos will severely damage U.S. efforts to regain stability in Iraq, particularly before the June 30 handover of sovereignty, the Bush Administration has launched a large damage-control effort and has promised it will severely reprimand those involved in the abuse.
“We will find the truth, we will fully investigate, the world will see the investigation, and justice will be served,” President Bush said Wednesday.
Six supervisors at Abu Ghraib have been sent letters of severe reprimand. A seventh was sent a letter of admonishment, according to the New York Times.
