A U.S. senator lashed out Tuesday at the furor caused by photos showing the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of U.S. guards.
Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, a Republican, said that he was sick of complaints about the treatment of prisoners that he characterized as "terrorists" and "murderers."
Ignoring a Red Cross report that said that up to 90 per cent of the prisoners held at Abu Ghraib prison had been rounded up by mistake, Mr. Inhofe suggested that no one should feel sorry for detainees who had been photographed in humiliating and degrading positions.
"You know they're not there for traffic violations," he told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"If they're in cellblock 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands, and here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals."
Mr. Inhofe's position is sharply different from the repeated public statements emanating from the most senior levels of the U.S. government.
President George W. Bush went on Arabic-language television to express U.S. outrage and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld took "full responsibility" for troop misconduct.
The House of Representatives passed a resolution last Thursday deploring the mistreatment or prisoners and, on Monday, the Senate voted 92-0 for the bipartisan resolution condemning the abuses at Abu Ghraib. It was not clear whether Mr. Inhofe had voted.
A poll released Monday indicated that nearly three-quarters of Americans considered the treatment of Iraqi prisoners shown in the photographs to be unjustified under any circumstances.
Mr. Inhofe's comments came during a committee appearance by U.S. Army Major-General Antonio Taguba, whose report detailed abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. During questioning of the general, Mr. Inhofe prefaced his query with a lengthy statement denouncing the outrage spawned by the photos.
"I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment," he said.
"I am also outraged that we have so many humanitarian do-gooders right now crawling all over these prisons looking for human-rights violations while our troops, our heroes, are fighting and dying."
Senator John McCain got up and left the room while his fellow Republican was speaking. Mr. McCain, who was captured and tortured during the Vietnam War, told reporters that he rejected Mr. Inhofe's position.
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