When will it end?

Will any new report of lies, horrors, duplicity, hypocrisy, and flat out war crimes finally lead to true accountability for the president’s Gestapo-like program in Iraq?

If we had not acted, the torture chambers would still be in operation.

Vice President Dick Cheney
July 24, 2003


For the vast majority of Iraqi citizens who wish to live as free men and women, the capture of Saddam brings further assurance that the torture chambers and the secret police are gone forever.

The capture of the former Iraqi dictator is crucial to the rise of a free Iraq. It marks the end of the road for him, and for all who bullied and killed in his name.

White House Press Release
December 17, 2003


Because our coalition acted, Saddam Hussein's torture chambers are closed.

President Bush
Stock 2004 campaign phrase used frequently both before and after the Abu Ghraib photos hit the media in late April.


Despite the horrific acts of the terrorists in Iraq, there are going to be free elections in Iraq in January. And think how far that country has come from the days of torture chambers and mass graves. Freedom is on the march, freedom is on the move around the world.

President Bush
Stock campaign phrase, October 2004


Twenty months after Saddam Hussein's government was toppled and its torture chambers unlocked, Iraqis are again being routinely beaten, hung by their wrists and shocked with electrical wires, according to a report by a human rights organization.

Iraqi police, jailers and intelligence agents, many of them holding the same jobs they had under Hussein, are "committing systematic torture and other abuses" of detainees, Human Rights Watch said in a report to be released Tuesday.

Torture in Iraq Still Routine, Report Says
Detainees Beaten, Hung by Wrists, Shocked by Security Forces, Rights Group Finds; Doug Struck, Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 25, 2005; Page A10