The Australian news program Dateline aired a report earlier this week that showed new photographs of Iraqi detainees being tortured inside Abu Ghraib. The photographs were graphic, showing among other images, a dead man lying in the dirt with blood coming out of his head, another prisoner covered in feces and others in sexually humiliating positions. The U.S government quickly condemned the release of the new photographs. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said that the photos will only inflame and incite unnecessary violence and would endanger the U.S military. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday that the photos are nothing new and that the perpetrators have already been punished.

So far, no high-ranking officer or official has been charged in the abuse scandal. Meanwhile, State Department legal adviser John Bellinger criticized the release of the photos. In Australia, Dateline’s Executive Producer, Mike Carey, spoke out yesterday defending his program’s decision to air the photos. We go now to an excerpt of the report that aired on the Australian news program Dateline. For the T.V. viewers, please be warned that the images are extremely violent and graphic in nature.

• Olivia Roussert, reporter for SBS Dateline. She joins us on the phone from Sydney.