China's Xinhuanet News featured these photos of soldiers [released by other news agencies] posing with the body of an Iraqi prisoner who reportedly died while in custody at Abu Ghraib:

Spc. Sabrina Harman, also of the 372nd Military Police Company, gives a thumbs-up sign by the body of Iraqi detainee Manadel al-Jamadi. [Reuters/ABCNEWS]

According to testimony from Spc. Jason Kenner, obtained by ABCNEWS, the man was brought to the prison by U.S. Navy Seals in good health. Kenner said he saw extensive bruising on the detainee's body when he was brought out of the showers, dead. Kenner says the body was packed in ice during a "battle" between CIA and military interrogators over who should dispose of the body. The Justice Department opened an investigation into this death and four others today following a referral from the CIA. The photos were taken by Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick , who in e-mails to his family has asked why the people responsible for the prisoner's death were not being prosecuted in the same manner that he is.

There is just something very, very wrong with images like these, on so many levels. Committing these abuses is one matter...but, photographing them for posterity - on digital media no less? From the Washington Post on May 21:

Spec. Joseph M. Darby told investigators that he returned to Abu Ghraib from leave in November and heard about a shooting at the prison's "hard site," which contains Tier 1A. He said that he asked the MP in charge of the tier's night shift, Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr., if he had any photographs of the cell where the shooting took place.

Darby said Graner handed him two CDs of photographs. "I thought the discs just had pictures of Iraq, the cell where the shooting occurred," Darby told investigators. Instead, Darby viewed hundreds of photographs showing naked detainees being abused by U.S. soldiers. "It was just wrong," Darby said. "I knew I had to do something."

He said that he asked Graner, a Pennsylvania prison guard in civilian life, about the photographs. Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.' "

Unfortunately, seeing these cheerful, smiling members of the military posing with prisoners (dead or alive) reminds me of nothing more than those stories on News of the Weird's "Least Competent Criminals" feature, where burglars sometimes take instant photos of themselves at the scene of a crime as "souvenirs," only to have the photos used as evidence against them. This how these soldiers want their children, grandchildren, or their country to remember them? History never takes kindly to these types of acts, "winner writes the history" or not. [crossposted on farkleberriesUSA]

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