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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, March 24, 2003

Iraqi TV yesterday showed images of the first U.S. captives, who were asked why they came to Iraq. One simply answered: "I follow orders."

Iraqi TV via Associated Press

Video shows dazed POWs, dead soldiers on display

 •  21 soldiers killed or captured; Saddam addresses Iraqis
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 •  U.S. troops seize possible chemical weapons plant
 •  Map (opens in new window): Closing in on Baghdad

By Bradley Graham and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post

Iraq's capture yesterday of five U.S. Army soldiers confronted the Bush administration with the unsettling reality of its first group of war prisoners, a development the Iraqis trumpeted by releasing a videotape showing the Americans, some bruised or dazed, being questioned.

Insisting the setback would not slow the war effort or undercut troop morale, senior officials warned that Iraqi authorities would be held accountable for the captives' fate.

President Bush demanded that Iraq treat the prisoners "humanely" and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accused the Iraqis of trying to use the capture for propaganda purposes, in violation of international laws of war on the treatment of prisoners.

"The Geneva Convention indicates that it's not permitted to photograph and embarrass or humiliate prisoners of war," Rumsfeld said on CBS' "Face the Nation." Article 13 of the Conventions requires that prisoners be protected "against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity."

Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials also criticized the Arabic satellite network Al-Jazeera, which was first to broadcast the footage outside Iraq, hours before military representatives could get word of the captures to the soldiers' relatives.

Iraqi Defense Minister Sultan Hashem Ahmad said Iraq will respect the Geneva Conventions in its treatment of any U.S. or British prisoners, Agence France-Presse reported.

Along with footage of the prisoners, the Iraqi tape contained gruesome images of several dead U.S. soldiers, two apparently shot in the head. U.S. military officials said all the soldiers belonged to an Army maintenance unit that had strayed off course and wound up in a firefight with Iraqi militia or paramilitary troops near the city of Nasiriyah. Twelve soldiers from the unit were unaccounted for, officials said, seven of them now presumed dead.

Military officials said the unit, part of the 507th Maintenance Company, had been in a six-vehicle convoy that was ambushed by "irregular" Iraqi forces while trying to make its way north.

"I believe that it is probably like many other tragic incidents in war — that a young officer leading his convoy made a wrong turn and went somewhere where he wasn't supposed to," Army Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, said at a news conference in Qatar. "There weren't combat forces around where it happened. Combat forces arrived at the scene and helped extricate some of the survivors."

Nasiriyah, which straddles the Euphrates River about 180 miles south of Baghdad, was also the scene yesterday of a major battle involving U.S. Marines, who fought regular Iraqi forces and militia units for control of two key bridges.

The images of the dead and captured American soldiers were apparently taken by Iraqi state television; a yellow Iraq TV microphone could be seen in footage. An opening clip showed a tan U.S. military supply truck towing a tan potable water tank that an announcer said was stopped on a road near Nasiriyah.

The body of a U.S. serviceman lay on the road behind the truck. The victim, who appeared to be a black male, wore a tan battle uniform and helmet. The footage did not show his injuries. Bloodstains were visible on the truck. A second clip showed four dead male soldiers lying on the floor of a room identified by the announcer as a makeshift morgue. The camera panned over the bodies, showing close-up shots of their wounds.

In another sequence, an orderly was pictured rifling through papers that rested on the chests of the bodies and that appeared to have been taken from their pockets.

The next clip showed a room with several more dead soldiers. The faces and wounds were not as visible. An orderly in blue scrubs could be seen moving the bodies. He smiled briefly at the camera.

The final clip pictured the five American prisoners being asked, one by one, to provide their names, their hometowns and their ages, and to explain why they had come to Iraq. The Washington Post is not publishing the names of some of the soldiers because they have not been officially released by the Pentagon.

The one exception is Spc. Joseph Hudson of El Paso, Texas, whose mother, Anecita, spoke to reporters outside her home in New Mexico holding a photograph of her son.

"I was told to come here. I just follow orders," said the first soldier to appear in the video, looking calm and uninjured.

"Why do you fight Iraqis?" he was asked.

"They shot at me first, so I shoot back," he said. "I don't want to shoot anybody."

Hudson, who appeared next, stared impassively into the camera. Asked why he had come from Texas to Iraq, he answered simply, "I follow orders."

A third service member, lying on the floor, groaned and grimaced from apparent injuries. His face was bloody and his arms were bandaged. Yet another sat nervously in a chair, hands clasped and eyes glancing around.

The only woman among the captives sat on a sofa, clutching her arms. She was barefoot and her left ankle was bandaged.