The Guantanamo-Abu Ghraib Connection

To anyone who has been following this story, Friday's article in The Guardian regarding two British men formerly detained at Guantanamo is hardly a bombshell. But it does tend to further confirm that Gen. Miller was dispatched by the Pentagon to institute Guantanamo-style interrogation tactics in Iraqi prisons.

Two British men who were held at Guantánamo Bay claimed that their US guards subjected them to abuse similar to that perpetrated at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

In an open letter to President George Bush, Britons Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal accused US military officials of deliberately misleading the public about procedures at Guantánamo.

Mr Rasul and Mr Iqbal, who were freed in March after being arrested in Afghanistan and held without charge for more than two years, allege that heavy-handed treatment was systematic.

"From the moment of our arrival in Guantánamo Bay (and indeed from long before) we were deliberately humiliated and degraded by methods we now read US officials denying," the men write.

The men describe a regime that included assaults on prisoners, prolonged shackling in uncomfortable positions, strobe lights, loud music and being threatened with dogs.

At times, detainees would be taken to the interrogation room and chained naked on the floor, the letter says. Women would be brought to the room to "inappropriately provoke and indeed molest them. It was completely clear to all the detainees that this was happening to particularly vulnerable prisoners, especially those who had come from the strictest of Islamic backgrounds," the letter says.

Why do these peculiar procedures - the nudity, the dogs, the humiliation by female guards - seem to follow Gen. Miller?