US image in tatters over abuse of Iraqi prisoners

"I'm afraid that this is, in a sense, the last nail in the coffin in the raft of arguments for the Iraq war," said Rashid Khalidi, director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University. "We started with nuclear weapons, then democratisation, then de-Baathification, then to stopping torture and really, in the matter of a few months, every one of these has fallen away.

"The United States looks increasingly foolish," he said.

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But Robert Leiber, professor of government and foreign service at Georgetown University said that he hoped the abuse by US forces would be kept in perspective.

"The photographs and, more importantly, the acts themselves are harmful to the cause of helping the Iraqis form a stable and democratic country," Leiber said, but he noted that such treatment is contrary to US policy.

"We must keep in mind that, although this has been an ugly business, it pales in comparison to what Saddam (Hussein) did to his own people over 30 years," he said.

"This is vastly different than Saddam's murder of millions of his own people, including "feeding people into plastic shredders and torturing children in front of their parents."

US and international media last week showed pictures of Iraqi prisoners being mistreated at Abu Gharib, a prison outside Baghdad where former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime tortured and executed opponents.

One photograph showed a prisoner standing on a box with a hood over his head and wires attached to his hands. CBS news, which first showed the pictures, said he had been told he would be electrocuted if he fell off.

Other pictures showed nude prisoners stacked on each other and simulating sex acts as smiling US troops pointed and laughed.

Khalidi said US credibility had already been damaged with the invasion and occupation of Iraq and that the scandal about prison mistreatment was just "sort of icing on the cake."