Pentagon, think-tank screens Saddam torture videos

This week, in the midst of the burgeoning Abu Ghraib scandal, right-wing think-tank The American Enterprise Institute screens a four minute plus video clip it obtained from the Pentagon depicting the torture of detainees by Saddam's military. The video contains gruesome, inhuman, terrible scenes of torture, including:

• fingers being hacked off one by one;
• tongues being cut off with razor blades;
• beatings; and
• decapitations.

It is accompanied by documents describing far worse atrocities perpetrated under Saddam.

Deborah Orin, a journalist who reported on the video, accuses journalists of duplicity for not covering the Pentagon-released video. Further, she argues that, by highlighting the current and ongoing actions of the U.S. Administration who are answerable to the U.S. voters, rather than the actions of Saddam, U.S. journalists "have become propaganda tools for the other side".