Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America?s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas. . . .

I put my big question about life to my biological son Mark. Mark is a pediatrician, and author of a memoir, The Eden Express. It is about his crackup, straightjacket and padded cell stuff, from which he recovered sufficiently to graduate from Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: "Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is." So I pass that on to you. Write it down, and put it in your computer, so you can forget it.

I have to say that's a pretty good sound bite, almost as good as, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, 500 years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.

The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. . . .

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

But, when you stop to think about it, only a nut case would want to be a human being, if he or she had a choice. Such treacherous, untrustworthy, lying and greedy animals we are!

I was born a human being in 1922 A.D. What does "A.D." signify? That commemorates an inmate of this lunatic asylum we call Earth who was nailed to a wooden cross by a bunch of other inmates. With him still conscious, they hammered spikes through his wrists and insteps, and into the wood. Then they set the cross upright, so he dangled up there where even the shortest person in the crowd could see him writhing this way and that.

Can you imagine people doing such a thing to a person?

No problem. That's entertainment. Ask the devout Roman Catholic Mel Gibson, who, as an act of piety, has just made a fortune with a movie about how Jesus was tortured. Never mind what Jesus said.

During the reign of King Henry the Eighth, founder of the Church of England, he had a counterfeiter boiled alive in public. Show biz again.

Mel Gibson's next movie should be The Counterfeiter. Box office records will again be broken.

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us. . . .

My government's got a war on drugs. But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.

One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed or tiddley-poo or four sheets to the wind a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 41. When he was 41, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint.

Other drunks have seen pink elephants.

And do you know why I think he is so pissed off at Arabs? They invented algebra. Arabs also invented the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which nobody else had ever had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.

We're spreading democracy, are we? Same way European explorers brought Christianity to the Indians, what we now call "Native Americans."

How ungrateful they were! How ungrateful are the people of Baghdad today.

So let's give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That'll teach bin Laden a lesson he won't soon forget. Hail to the Chief.

That chief and his cohorts have as little to do with Democracy as the Europeans had to do with Christianity. We the people have absolutely no say in whatever they choose to do next. In case you haven't noticed, they've already cleaned out the treasury, passing it out to pals in the war and national security rackets, leaving your generation and the next one with a perfectly enormous debt that you'll be asked to repay.

Nobody let out a peep when they did that to you, because they have disconnected every burglar alarm in the Constitution: The House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the FBI, the free press (which, having been embedded, has forsaken the First Amendment) and We the People.

About my own history of foreign substance abuse. I've been a coward about heroin and cocaine and LSD and so on, afraid they might put me over the edge. I did smoke a joint of marijuana one time with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, just to be sociable. It didn't seem to do anything to me, one way or the other, so I never did it again. And by the grace of God, or whatever, I am not an alcoholic, largely a matter of genes. I take a couple of drinks now and then, and will do it again tonight. But two is my limit. No problem.

I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.

But I'll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver's license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut.

And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.

When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won't be any more of those. Cold turkey.

Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn't like TV news, is it?

Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.

And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on.

If the United States wants to pull itself out of the mess in Iraq and the particularly uncomfortable stain of some of its troops' degrading treatment of Iraqi prisoners, it would do well to look to Gaza, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general. Palestine and Iraq may be two very different issues for Washington, but Arabs -- and most of the rest of the world, I think -- see these as two sides of the single problem of American policy in the Middle East.

With Washington's credibility throughout most of the Middle East at rock bottom, American officials speak less often these days about promoting Arab democracy or mediating to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Their words simply carry much less force today than they did months or years ago.

The loss of American credibility and influence is one of the two major consequences of the whole American military adventure in Iraq (the other is the brisk expansion of terror attacks worldwide, against American and other targets). The spectacle of relatively small numbers of armed men resisting the might of the American armed forces in towns like Fallujah, Karbala and Najaf is another dimension of Washington's diminished political and even military stature in the Middle East. It remains the strongest military and economic power in all recorded human history ? but a power that has few partners in the field and even fewer in its political and diplomatic strategy.

The more the US deploys its military power and uses threats and sanctions against others in this region (Iran, Syria, Hizbollah), the more determined becomes the indigenous will to resist and defy the United States. Young Palestinians have behaved similarly for the past 15 years, defying Israeli tanks and planes with the near certainty that they would die in the process. This is the paradox of power that Bush, Rumsfeld, and others in power in Washington are learning anew in Iraq, and that Israelis continue to refuse to learn in Palestine.

The United States is deeply mired directly in Iraq, and indirectly in Palestine-Israel through its bias towards Israel. Retreating from Iraq and achieving the stated goals of leaving behind a stable, sovereign, democratic Iraqi system will take a long time. Washington is unable to achieve this goal swiftly or alone, and needs massive assistance from the UN and other countries.

This is why Washington should refocus quickly and more intelligently on Gaza and Palestine as a whole. A decisive, active, equitable policy there would be the fastest and most effective way for the US to start turning around its miserable public standing in the Arab world, including Iraq. This also would be in the national interest of the US, Israel, the Palestinians, and all others in this region.

Rarely has the US faced the opportunity of such an obvious potential win-win situation as it does in pursuing a better, fairer policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict. The urgency for Washington to do so is compelling.

The practical diplomatic mechanism that Washington could use to do this is also available, and legitimate: the "roadmap" for Palestinian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli negotiations that is supposed to be monitored and implemented by the "Quartet" (the US, UN, Russia and the European Union). Slightly overshadowed by the crisis in Iraq, last week the Quartet met in New York and issued a substantive statement in response to Ariel Sharon's plan for unilateral disengagement from Gaza.

People will rightly disagree on the value of words on paper. But the words and principles that the Quartet reaffirmed in its May 4 statement are worth pondering, especially in view of the renewed US commitment to them. The Quartet essentially reaffirmed the need for a full and complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, a link to withdrawal from the West Bank based on the "roadmap", and an eventual end to the Israeli occupation that started in June 1967, based on UN resolutions 242 and 338, leading to "a viable, democratic, sovereign, and contiguous Palestine", within the framework of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace (i.e., including Lebanon and Syria), based on direct negotiations between the parties.

The revival of the Quartet's effort after months of hibernation could be an opportunity for all who seek a way out of the increasingly violent tendencies in this region, in Iraq, Palestine-Israel and elsewhere. The Quartet is in the process of establishing "an appropriate coordinating and oversight mechanism", and has already approved an action plan to push forward implementation of the "roadmap".

Some high-level diplomats suggest in private that the May 4 statement may represent the first sign of backtracking by the United States on last month's support for the Sharon-Israeli position on settlements and Palestine refugee rights. Another important aspect of current trends is the revival of the United Nations' political and peace-making roles in Iraq and Palestine-Israel. This is in everybody's interest, especially a Washington seeking a credible exit strategy from Iraq.

The United States and all the Arabs have much to gain from giving the Quartet and the "roadmap" maximum support, and essentially calling their bluff. We need to find out once and for all if this is a realistic means to a fair negotiated Arab-Israeli peace. If it is not, we should stop wasting time. If it is, we should embrace it with all the power and will at our disposal.

Israel will complain and resist complying with the "roadmap" provisions for withdrawal and dismantling its colonial settlements. But if there is a global consensus on how to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict (which there is) and the US is part of this consensus (which it says it is, in the Quartet mechanism), pushing to implement a fair and legitimate Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli peace process would be the single most effective way for Washington to stop making enemies in the Middle East and most of the world, and start making friends and partners again.

THE al Qaeda leader in Iraq beheaded an American civilian and threatened more killings in revenge for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, an Islamist website said yesterday.

The Bush administration said the people who beheaded Nick Berg were enemies of freedom who would be hunted down and brought to justice. A poor quality videotape on the website showed a man dressed in orange overalls sitting bound on a white plastic chair in a bare room, then on the floor with five masked men behind him.

"My name is Nick Berg, my father's name is Michael -- I have a brother and sister, David and Sarah," said the bound man, adding that he was from Philadelphia. After one of the masked men read out a statement, they pushed Mr Berg to the floor and shouted "God is greatest" above his screams as one of them sawed his head off with a large knife and then held it aloft for the camera.

The website said Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a top ally of Osama bin Laden, was the man who cut off Mr Berg's head. The statement read out before the killing was signed off with al Zarqawi's name and dated May 11.

Around the halls of the Pentagon, a term of caustic derision has emerged for the enlisted soldiers at the heart of the furor over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: the six morons who lost the war.

Indeed, the damage done to the U.S. military and the nation as a whole by the horrifying photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at the notorious prison is incalculable.

But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons.

There is no excuse for the behavior displayed by soldiers in the now-infamous pictures and an even more damning report by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. Every soldier involved should be ashamed.

But while responsibility begins with the six soldiers facing criminal charges, it extends all the way up the chain of command to the highest reaches of the military hierarchy and its civilian leadership.

The entire affair is a failure of leadership from start to finish. From the moment they are captured, prisoners are hooded, shackled and isolated. The message to the troops: Anything goes. . . .

Army commanders in Iraq bear responsibility for running a prison where there was no legal adviser to the commander, and no ultimate responsibility taken for the care and treatment of the prisoners.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, also shares in the shame. Myers asked "60 Minutes II" to hold off reporting news of the scandal because it could put U.S. troops at risk. But when the report was aired, a week later, Myers still hadn?t read Taguba?s report, which had been completed in March. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also failed to read the report until after the scandal broke in the media.

By then, of course, it was too late.

Myers, Rumsfeld and their staffs failed to recognize the impact the scandal would have not only in the United States, but around the world.

If their staffs failed to alert Myers and Rumsfeld, shame on them. But shame, too, on the chairman and secretary, who failed to inform even President Bush.

He was left to learn of the explosive scandal from media reports instead of from his own military leaders. . . .

This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential ? even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war.

WASHINGTON - Almost 10,000 prisoners from President George W. Bush's so-called war on terror are being held around the world in secretive American-run jails and interrogation centres similar to the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison.

Some of these detention centres are so sensitive that even the most senior members of the United States Congress have no idea where they are.

From Iraq to Afghanistan to Cuba, this American gulag is driven by the pressure to obtain "actionable" intelligence from prisoners captured by US forces.

The systematic practice of holding prisoners without access to lawyers or their families, together with a willingness to use "coercive interrogation" techniques, suggests the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib now shocking the world could be widespread.

Iraq has become a holding pen for America's prisoners from 21 countries, according to a report from the international campaign group Human Rights Watch.

The US military is keeping prisoners at 10 centres, most of which were used by Saddam Hussein's regime. The total in January was 8968, and is thought to have increased.

Prisoners are being held from, among other countries, Algeria, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and Yemen.

A report in the Washington Post has revealed that up to 8000 Iraqi prisoners are being held at Abu Ghraib, the jail west of Baghdad also known as the Baghdad Central Correctional Facility or BCCF, and nine other facilities inside Iraq.

It is impossible to know for sure because the Pentagon refuses to provide complete information.

A full year after "mission accomplished," Brahimi is the third Mr. Fix-It the United States has put its faith in, and the Bush administration is betting heavily?or at least hoping weightily?that the 70-year-old Algerian is the proverbial charm. Jay Garner, the first pick for cleanup man, lasted only a month. Garner's replacement, L. Paul Bremer, lasted longer (he's still there, in fact), but Bremer's ideas for how to transfer sovereignty to the Iraqis kept getting vetoed by Grand Ayatollah Sistani. So, now it's up to Brahimi to concoct a Sistani-approved way out of the mess.

Is he up to the task? He's certainly got the r?sum?. For a decade, Brahimi has served as the U.N.'s paratrooper of peace, descending on war-torn hot spots and attempting to institute diplomatic solutions. His most notable successes took place in South Africa, where he oversaw the 1994 elections that made Nelson Mandela the country's first democratic president, and in Afghanistan, where he helped to construct a new government after the United States defeated the Taliban in 2001. Brahimi's track record isn't perfect, however. Here's how the Los Angeles Times summed up his two years in Haiti, from 1994 to 1996: "Though his immediate objectives were achieved?military despots were forced out; a democratically elected president was sworn in?Haiti today is still a political shambles, riven by corruption and violence." Hey, we'll take it!

Brahimi's mandate in Iraq is much smaller than the ones given to Garner and Bremer as U.S. administrators, and his diplomatic record suggests that he'll be able to craft a solution that's acceptable to most of the squabbling parties. Maybe he'll even be able to do it in the next two weeks, in time to meet his self-imposed deadline to name the members of the transitional government by May 30, in order to give them a month to prepare to take over.

As an Algerian, Brahimi knows what an anticolonial insurgency looks like?what it can do, good and bad, to a society. His diplomatic career began during Algeria's struggle for independence, when he was the National Liberation Front's representative to southeast Asia from 1956 to 1961. But he also knows the dangers of Islamic radicalism. Brahimi served as Algeria's foreign-affairs minister from 1991 to 1993, and during that time the Algerian government canceled elections out of fear that Islamic theocrats would win them. A civil war ensued?one that's still ongoing?and Brahimi is said to consider the episode a stain on his career. Surely he doesn't want to be seen as contributing to a sequel in Iraq.

"The best that can happen to you is that no one notices what you do," Brahimi told the L.A. Times before he began his 1994 Haiti mission. But instead of going unnoticed, Brahimi's actions over the past month have resulted in a torrent of criticism, mostly from conservatives who supported President Bush's Iraq invasion. To state their beefs broadly, Brahimi's critics argue that he's an anti-Israel Arab nationalist and Saddam apologist who at best has good intentions but no credibility with Iraq's Kurds and Shiites, and who at worst actively favors the Sunnis. Most frequently cited as damning is Brahimi's silence, as an official with the Arab League from 1984 to 1991 and later as Algeria's foreign minister, during Saddam's massacres of those Kurds and Shiites. "Mr. Brahimi hails from the very same political class that has wrecked the Arab world," savaged Fouad Ajami in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal. "His technocracy is, in truth, but a cover for the restoration of the old edifice of power." Michael Rubin, an American Enterprise Institute fellow and a former official with the Coalition Provisional Authority, echoed Ajami last month in the National Review Online, writing, "As Iraqis discover and excavate new mass graves every week, there are constant reminders of Brahimi's silence."

What especially tweaks Brahimi's critics is that he has used his current perch to criticize Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government and the Bush administration's support for Sharon. Most notably, Brahimi told a French radio station last month, "There is no doubt that the great poison in the region is this Israeli policy of domination ? as well as the perception of all of the population in the region, and beyond, of the injustice of this policy and the equally unjust support ? of the United States for this policy." When asked by ABC News about his comments, Brahimi didn't back down, saying, "I think there is unanimity in the Arab world, and indeed in much of the rest of the world, that the Israeli policy is wrong, that the Israeli policy is brutal, repressive, and that they are not interested in peace no matter what you seem to believe in America."

Fortunately for President Bush, he appointed Brahimi to negotiate a solution in Iraq, not in Israel and Palestine. And as much as Brahimi's statements enrage supporters of Israel, they're not particularly relevant to his ability to carry out the president's mandate. In fact, Brahimi's statements might help him with those Iraqis who are suspicious of him as a tool of the Americans.

There isn't much time for Brahimi. Like the Coalition Provisional Authority, Brahimi is scheduled to vanish from Iraq on June 30. Those close to him say it's because he's tired, that he has promised his family a much-needed vacation. That's surely the case. But it's also true that Brahimi knows a lost cause when he sees one. In 1999, while trying to negotiate an end to Afghanistan's civil war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, Brahimi threw up his hands and went home. "I have tried everything I know, and it hasn't been of much use," he said.

It took two years and another war before Brahimi returned to Afghanistan to clean up another mess. This time, he's got six weeks.

This afternoon, Colin Powell, whose State Department is taking over the Iraq portfolio from the Pentagon-created CPA come July 1, echoed Paul Bremer's statements on whether we would leave Iraq. In a press conference, Powell addressed the issue of withdrawal, saying, "Just to make sure I'm not ducking the hypothetical ... and causing any confusion, were this interim government to say to us, 'we really think we can handle this on our own; it would be better if you were to leave,' we would leave." What's going on here?

No one in Washington passes up the opportunity to duck a hypothetical. Powell appears to really be backing Bremer up. Furthermore, Powell was flanked by the foreign ministers of Britain, Italy, and Japan -- what remains of the Coalition of the Sort-of Willing -- and they agreed, too. Said Jack Straw: "Were [the Iraqis] to ask us to leave, we would leave." Added Japanese FM Yoriko Kawaguchi: "We would go back to Japan if requested." All of the principal foreign-policy ministers of the coalition are saying they can see themselves pulling their forces out of Iraq in short order.

The real question here is if Powell's trial balloon -- or Bremer's -- comes with Bush's approval, tacit or otherwise. Granted, Powell isn't the most plugged-in member of the administration. But Bush and Karl Rove can read the polls. They can see that public support for the war is collapsing, and taking Bush's prospects for reelection with it. Bush has repeatedly said we will stay the course in Iraq -- even though he exhibits not a hint of leadership over what that will mean -- but his favored formulation about the duration of our commitment is "as long as necessary, and not one day more." Could it be that Bush is considering whether that not-one-day-more might be closer than he's previously acknowledged? It's not like Bush hasn't put his political interests ahead of the nation's. Remember when Bush signed on to the November 15 Agreement, which locked us into this June 30 deadline for transferring power? He didn't do that because Iraqis had significantly increased demands for political authority -- he did it because the U.S. took several weeks of pronounced, dramatic casualties in the insurgency, such as the downing of Black Hawk helicopters, and he saw what images like those would mean in an election year.

Consider the Secretary of State, General Colin Powell, realistically the only possible candidate for statesman within the Bush Administration. In the final analysis, what is an honest, intelligent and decent man, a man of conviction to do when confronted by such arrogance -- posturing as competence -- as that of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, always Powell?s nemesis. Rumsfeld is increasingly a proven over-reacher whose formalized self-importance has the country mired in a nightmarish death trap no one yet knows how to actually exit. Bush pointed the way to Iraq and Rumsfeld led America?s Armed Forces there, where they are dying daily in a mission poorly conceived to begin with, still misunderstood, and even more horribly planned.

The proof of the dismal and incompetent planning -- beyond the unanticipated general rebellion still growing a year after "Mission Accomplished" -- is in the photos of deviant sexual physical and mental abuse of Arab men and women by young American men and women soldiers. This is a stain so deep and glaring on the American military that no amount of apology or transparent court proceedings can adequately restore or cleanse it. Rumsfeld?s military and mercenary consultants working as interrogators and intelligence gatherers may not and should not escape prosecution; intelligence officers needed to be trained and managed. In Iraq, this president picked a war with no clear purpose beyond striking a completely unrealistic blow for an idealized democracy. It is a war whose goals seem as elusive now as they were ill-conceived in late 2002 and early 2003.

As the only would-be statesman in the shoot-from-the-hip Administration of George W. Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell must be reeling in frustration and indignation. At some points in the trajectory of apologies and fence-mending to which poor Colin Powell has been relegated since the Iraq fiasco began, the hero general must have wondered with just what kind of people he has found himself associated, if not surrounded. The national icon of Desert Storm and later political hope for many Americans who still sympathized with his potential for representing integrity and intelligent moderation in government, is clearly one victim of the radical Bush administration. Certainly, Secretary Powell?s heretofore highly credible stature and exemplary career has been seriously diminished by his participation, defense and support of the decisions that have resulted in the fiasco that is present-day Iraq. . . .

Colin Powell?s greatest asset, his unflinching loyalty and duty to chain of command, has now become his greatest liability. As good soldier, the still popular general must know that he has traveled the extra thousand miles for this Commander-in-Chief; but duty and what can be salvaged of his honor now dictates a decisive departure. Commander-in-Chief Bush made a huge wrong turn in his conduct on the war on terror by invading Iraq. It was just one of several potential approaches and the facts now clearly reveal it was the wrong one -- premature, unnecessary, vengeful without a realistic purpose -- and in one long year, it has turned America from true world leader into the world?s superpariah -- a shameful result of arrogant bravado over pragmatic deliberation. . . .

We appeal to Secretary Powell to summon the courage and make a principled decision about his continued association with an administration that has so badly misinformed and misguided the American people. Several years ago Powell abandoned the opportunity to chart his own course, choosing not to run for the Presidency himself, but instead return as a subordinate within another Bush administration. As a result, a tremendous opportunity was lost both to Colin Powell himself, who could have promoted pragmatic policy ideas based on his own valuable and worldly life experiences, and to the country, which could have benefited greatly from his leadership. Instead, during these intervening years witness Secretary Rumsfeld publicly mocking the "Powell Doctrine" on military strategy (Powell was of course correct) and yet Powell himself making the Bush administration?s now discredited case against Iraq before the UN Security Council and the world.

Only an active global diplomacy based on hearing the prescriptions of other countries can prepare and deploy willing alliances that can subdue terror tactics. Only a U.S. president intent on seeking a just solution for the Palestinian people can hope to stabilize the Middle East. Colin Powell must know this. His strategic circle is encouraged to consider an ethics-based decision to depart the State Department -- say, for a major think-tank or a university presidency -- before the election. Such a move would go a long way toward signaling to the American people that scrutiny of leadership is of essence at this dangerous time in history. Policy refinement internationally and nationally is sorely needed if American leadership would again be welcome around the globe.

WASHINGTON, May 15 ? Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and one of his top aides authorized the expansion of a secret program that permitted harsh interrogations of detained members of Al Qaeda, allowing these methods to be used against prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to an article in The New Yorker.

The article, by Seymour M. Hersh, reported that Mr. Rumsfeld and Stephen A. Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, approved the use of the tougher interrogation techniques in Iraq in 2003 to extract better information from Iraqi prisoners to counter the growing insurgency threat in the country.

Mr. Hersh's account, to be published in the May 24 issue of the magazine, said that the expansion of the "special access program" allowed authorities in charge of Abu Ghraib to engage in degrading and sexually humiliating practices. It was posted on Saturday on The New Yorker's Web site.

"According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials," Mr. Hersh wrote, "the Pentagon's operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq."

Mr. Hersh's reporting focuses new attention on an important question in the prisoner abuse scandal ? whether senior military or civilian officials ordered the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners. Mr. Rumsfeld, who has apologized for the abuses, has said that they were carried out by lower-level forces without the approval of senior commanders.

The article suggested that Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Cambone had, in effect, shifted the blame for the abuses away from top civilians at the Pentagon to lower-level military police guards who are facing disciplinary proceedings in military courts.

On Saturday, officials in the Bush administration disputed several of the critical details of Mr. Hersh's article. They said that they were aware of no high-level decision to use highly coercive interrogation techniques on Iraqi prisoners.

A military official who worked in Iraq on detention issues said on Saturday that a covert task force of military and intelligence officers had operated in Iraq, but that it had appeared to limit its contact with the jailers at Abu Ghraib.

The official said that the covert operators worked out of their own highly secret and well-guarded compound in Baghdad, where they held captives incommunicado and questioned them for relatively short periods of time before turning them over to the jailers at Abu Ghraib.

"They had their own mission," the official said. "They picked up their own people. They were operating under their own rules. So we had nothing to do with that. It would have been a huge security violation for anyone else to be in there."

The official said the group was no longer working in Iraq.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- America's inmate population grew by 2.9 percent last year, to almost 2.1 million people, with one of every 75 men living in prison or jail.

The inmate population continued its rise despite a fall in the crime rate and many states' efforts to reduce some sentences, especially for low-level drug offenders.

The report issued Thursday by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics attributes much of the increase to get-tough policies enacted during the 1980s and '90s, such as mandatory drug sentences, ``three-strikes-and-you're-out'' laws for repeat offenders, and ``truth-in-sentencing'' laws that restrict early releases. . . .

There were 715 inmates for every 100,000 U.S. residents at midyear in 2003, up from 703 a year earlier, the report found.

The nation's incarceration rate tops the world, according to The Sentencing Project, another group that promotes alternatives to prison. That compares with a rate of 169 per 100,000 residents in Mexico, 116 in Canada and 143 for England and Wales.

Russia's prison population, which once rivaled the United States', has dropped to 584 per 100,000 because of prisoner amnesties in recent years, the group said.

The U.S. inmate population in 2003 grew at its fastest pace in four years. The number of inmates increased 1.8 percent in state prisons, 7.1 percent in federal prisons and 3.9 percent in local jails. In 2003, 68 percent of prison and jail inmates were members of racial or ethnic minorities, the government said. An estimated 12 percent of all black men in their 20s were in jails or prisons, as were 3.7 percent of Hispanic men and 1.6 percent of white men in that age group, according to the report.