IRAQ

New Zealand Herald: Saddam's old terror cells fail squeaky-clean test despite US facelift by Robert Fisk

ABU GHRAIB PRISON - We could see them beyond the dirt yard, standing in the heat beside their sand-brown tents, the razor wire wrapped in sheaths around their compound.
No pictures of the prisoners, we were told. Do not enter the compound. Do not go inside the wire.

Of the up to 800 Iraqis held in Abu Ghraib Prison, on the outskirts of Baghdad, only a handful are "security detainees" - the rest are "criminal detainees" - but until now almost all of them have lived out here in the heat and dust and muck.

Which is why the Americans were so pleased to see us at Saddam Hussein's vile old jail yesterday: things are getting better.

So first, the good news. Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, commander of the US 800th Military Police Brigade, has cleaned up the burned and looted cells for hundreds of prisoners.