Abu Ghraib

WASHINGTON - Among the handful of Army officers facing scrutiny in the investigation of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast is perhaps the least known, but among the most important. Fast, 50, the senior intelligence officer in Iraq, was the key conduit for orders and information that related to Abu Ghraib, which she visited frequently, including the infamous cellblocks 1A and 1B, where abuses took place. A civilian interrogator at the prison wrote that she was involved in CIA access, and Brig.

Although Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan was listed as "chief" of the interrogation center at the Abu Ghraib prison, one of his subordinates testified yesterday that Jordan was not the person he went to when he had questions about interrogating prisoners. Instead, Chief Warrant Officer Edward J. Rivas III said he sought answers from Col. Thomas M. Pappas, who commanded the military intelligence brigade based at Abu Ghraib. Jordan faces a dozen charges stemming from the sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi prisoners and is the highest-ranking American and the first officer to be charged in the Abu Ghraib investigation.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader convicted of crimes against humanity, could face the hangman in four or five months inside the notorious Abu Ghraib prison where he sent many of his victims, the lead prosecutor in his case and a top Iraqi legal expert said yesterday. Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Mousawi, who dueled with Hussein during 11 months of grueling courtroom confrontations, estimated that the Iraqi High Tribunal's nine-judge appellate panel would complete its review in about two months.

PRETORIA, South Africa -- Until about nine months ago, when we moved from Chevy Chase to Pretoria, my 9-year-old son read the newspaper every day. He started with the sports pages, flipped to the end of the feature section for the comics and finished by studying the front page. He crunched his cereal while he scanned the headlines and read captions. On the occasion when a photograph caught his eye, he would often read the story. In South Africa, my son's newspaper habit has gone dormant.

Those "Support Our Troops" car magnets bother me for some reason. I think it's the implied rebuke - that since I'm driving around without one, I'm not supporting the men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan as much as someone who has undertaken the heroic and self-sacrificing act of slapping a magnet on his or her car. So I had to laugh when I spotted one variation, which encouraged, "Support the magnetic ribbon industry." Just how hollow the support-our-troops sentiment has become was on full display at a hearing at Fort Meade yesterday, where testimony concluded in the case of the highest-ranking soldier charged with criminal violations for his role in the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse case.

NEW YORK - Thousands of miles from Iraq, in a dark gray midtown gallery, spotlights shed light on 20 of the images that exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal last spring. The hooded Iraqi prisoner forced to stand on a box with wires attached to his fingers. A soldier's smile and thumbs up as he poses with a dead body. An Army dog eyeing a petrified prisoner. Repeatedly transmitted over the Internet and shown in the media, they're all familiar by now. But displayed unframed and fastened to the gallery wall with push pins as an exhibition called Inconvenient Evidence: Iraqi Prison Photographs and Abu Ghraib at the International Center of Photography, these amateur digital images downloaded from the Internet, acquire a cultural significance that reaches beyond their initial shock value, one of the show's curators says.

SINCE THE Iraq prison abuse scandal broke, commentators have focused on the question of responsibility. Was the abuse independently devised by individual guards? Was it ordered by superiors? If so, how highly placed were they? The New Yorker reported that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld secretly authorized "physical coercion and sexual humiliation" against detainees. According to The New York Times, U.S. soldiers charged with abuse have told investigators that they were following orders.

A defense attorney for Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, the first officer to be charged with crimes at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, argued at a military hearing yesterday that not even a "blurry line" connected Jordan with the physical and sexual abuses that occurred at the prison. But prosecutor Lt. Col. John P. Tracy said Jordan failed to carry out his duties as head of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib. Tracy said Jordan neglected to train and supervise the 70 people working for him and subjected Iraqi detainees to forced nudity and intimidation by military working dogs.

WASHINGTON -- A military judge dismissed yesterday allegations that a top general improperly steered the investigation against the highest-ranking American soldier - and only officer - charged with a crime in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. The ruling clears the way for the Army to try Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, a 51-year-old reservist from Virginia who ran the interrogation center at the Iraqi prison, for failing to exert his authority as soldiers abused detainees. Seven lower-ranking military police officers, including some from Maryland-based units, have been convicted in trials that exposed how U.S. soldiers in Iraq stripped prisoners naked, photographed them in outrageous poses and threatened them with police dogs.

WASHINGTON --The Army plans to charge Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, former head of the interrogation center at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, with dereliction of duty, lying to investigators and conduct unbecoming an officer, the officer's lawyer said yesterday. Jordan would be the highest-ranking officer at Abu Ghraib to face criminal charges in the abuses at the prison. Ten low-ranking soldiers who served at the prison outside Baghdad have been convicted. The highest-ranking officer convicted in any of the prisoner abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan is Capt.