Following the sterling example of Senator James Inhofe, another GOP member of Congress shrugs off Abu Ghraib:

U.S. Rep. Steve King of Iowa said Thursday that Iraqi prisoner abuse amounted to little more than "hazing" and called for Democrats to stop criticizing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld....

"What amounts to hazing is not even in the same ballpark as mass murder," said King, who has gained a reputation as an outspoken conservative in the Iowa Legislature and in Congress....

--Des Moines Register

Once again, for those, like Congressman King, with bad reading-comprehension skills:

JACK REED: ...Let me put it this way. 72 hours without regular sleep, sensory deprivation which would be a bag over your head for 72 hours. Do you think that's humane? And that's what this says, a bag over your head for 72 hours. Is that humane?

--question posed to Paul Wolfowitz in Senate hearings yesterday

The now-former prisoner, Saddam Saleh Aboud, 29, said that escalated into a threat of rape by an American soldier named Ivan in the 1-A block of Abu Ghraib prison. Then, he said, he was chained in a sitting position to the bars of a cell for 23 hours in a day. Loud music thumped, he said. He urinated where he sat.

Every few days, he said, he was uncuffed for other treatments: douses of cold water, barking dogs, something called "the scorpion," in which his arms were cuffed to his legs, behind his back....

Mr. Aboud's allegations of the methods of abuse largely squared with those in General Taguba's report....

--New York Times today

Lawmakers who viewed hundreds of images of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners said Wednesday that the photographs were even more graphic than they had expected, and included pictures of forced sexual acts between male detainees...

...Among the most shocking images, several said, was a video of a male detainee repeatedly banging into a cell door, until he collapsed. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, said it appeared that the man had a rope lashed around his waist and that someone was pulling him toward the door....

...Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell... said the photographs also showed dogs snarling at cowering prisoners; other lawmakers said some prisoners appeared to have dog bite wounds and abrasions....

--New York Times yesterday