Keep saying it to yourself ... just a few bad apples ... just panties on the head ...

The company commander of the unit charged with abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib testified Thursday that the top military intelligence officer at the prison was in the cellblock the night a prisoner died during interrogation....

Testifying at a hearing for one of the seven accused members of his unit, the 372nd Military Police Company, Capt. Donald Reese said that one night in November 2003, he saw the bloodied body of an Iraqi prisoner who had died during interrogation inside a shower stall in a prison cellblock. He said a number of officers were standing around it, discussing what to do.

One of them, he said, was Colonel Pappas, the head of the military intelligence at the prison. "I heard Colonel Pappas say, 'I'm not going to go down alone for this,' " Captain Reese testified.

An autopsy the next day established the cause of death as a blood clot from trauma, he said....

In addition to Colonel Pappas, Captain Reese testified that among the others in the room were members of the Central Intelligence Agency. He also said there was a female major present, as well as a man named Jordan. It was not clear whether he was referring to Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, the head of the interrogations center at Abu Ghraib.

Captain Reese, whose testimony lasted several hours and was covered in a news pool report, said he had been told the detainee had died from "a heart attack." But, he said, the body was "bleeding from the head, nose, mouth."...

--New York Times