America shaken by images of PoWs

The last time American prisoners of war were paraded on television - when the corpses of soldiers were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993 - US public opinion quickly came to view the conflict as a disastrous debacle, and troops left soon afterwards. Yesterday's footage caused outrage among politicians and the public, and threw media organisations into a panic about how to deal with it.

The CBS television network was the only major broadcaster to show the tape, and it did so while Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defence, was still in the studio.

Immediately afterwards, reportedly after being contacted by the Pentagon, the channel agreed to show it with the prisoners' faces blurred. Interviewed later on CNN, Mr Rumsfeld said: "Television networks that carry such pictures are, I would say, doing something that's unfortunate".

CNN itself did not show the video, choosing instead to carry repeatedly a single still photograph from the Arab-language news channel al-Jazeera, showing uniformed corpses lying on the floor, but without any identifying features. It warned viewers that the image was "disturbing".

At a briefing in Qatar, Lieutenant-General John Abizaid said he was "very disappointed" that al-Jazeera had screened the footage, promising to "hold those [responsible] accountable for their actions," including possible breach of the Geneva convention. "I would say the pictures were disgusting."

Pentagon officials, aware that the captured soldiers' names would inevitably become public soon, scrambled to inform their families. Officials issued an alert to media organisations repeating their request that the prisoners not be identified until the families knew.

But around El Paso, home to the Fort Bliss military base from which the missing soldiers came, the news was permeating too fast to be controlled. Anecita Hudson, from Almagordo outside El Paso, identified herself as the mother of Joseph Hudson, the name given by one of the soldiers interviewed on Iraqi TV. She had seen the footage on a Filipino television station she subscribes to.

"It's my son. My son is OK," she told a reporter from the El Paso Times. "I'm praying my son will be all right."

Confusion reigned at the base, where a press conference was called off at the last minute yesterday evening, just as Colonel Ben Hobson was walking towards the podium. He reportedly received a call from a three-star general in Washington instructing him to call off the event.

Base officials said army chaplains, and a "family readiness group" founded by spouses of the men and women serving in Iraq, were in touch with some of the families involved. "The army is fully prepared to take care of its own and will see to it that the families of these soldiers are taken care of in the proper way," a statement issued by Fort Bliss authorities said.

The US army insisted that the events would not cause a "Somalia effect" among the public or the military, even if that had been the aim of the Iraqi regime. "Certainly, I don't think that these pictures will damage either the psychology of our soldiers, morale of our soldiers, or the steadfastness of our government, or the resolve of our people," Gen Abizaid said. "We're a pretty tough people."

Returning to Washington from the presidential retreat at Camp David, President George Bush said he expected "those people to be treated humanely". Dick Lugar, the Republican chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, said he was "disturbed" by the captures, condemning Iraq's prisoner-of-war record as "abysmal".

Mr Rumsfeld said the Geneva convention "indicates that it's not permitted to photograph and embarrass or humiliate prisoners of war". The defence department has asked journalists not to show Iraqi prisoners identifiably either, but the faces of some Iraqis have been clearly visible in television footage.

Lawrence Korb, an assistant secretary of defence in the Reagan administration, said a Somalia-style alienation of US public opinion was probably Iraq's propaganda aim. "I think in his own mind, Saddam Hussein thinks it will be another Somalia, where, when you saw the Americans being dragged through the streets, people said: 'What the hell are we doing there? This is not our fight. How did this happen?'"