5.27.2004

In the "Gee What a Surprise" Department

Threats and torture used against hundreds of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year yielded very little results in the form of usable intelligence.

But civilian and military intelligence officials, as well as top commanders with access to intelligence reports, now say they learned little about the insurgency from questioning inmates at the prison. Most of the prisoners held in the special cellblock that became the setting for the worst abuses at Abu Ghraib apparently were not linked to the insurgency, they said.

As Gomer Pyle would say, "Surprise, surprise, surprise!"