Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: U.S. Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners Threatens American Image Abroad: 5/05/04
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june04/prisoners_5-05.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What have U.S. soldiers been accused of doing to prisoners in Iraq?

2. What graphic images have the news media been showing recently?

3. To which foreign media outlets did President Bush recently grant an interview?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What images were released last week that have caused problems for the U.S. government?

U.S. officials are trying to control the fallout over graphic images released last week of American military police abusing Iraqi prisoners in a notorious facility near Baghdad that once housed Saddam Hussein's torture chambers.

2. What do the images depict?

The graphic images, which were first broadcast on CBS television, show a hooded prisoner with wires attached to his body being threatened with electrocution. A second image shows smiling U.S. guards standing over naked prisoners piled on top of each other.

3. What has been the international reaction to the images?

The controversy over the images and allegations of physical and sexual abuse at Abu Ghraib has caused a furor in the Iraqi and other Arab media, and foreign officials have accused the Americans of being hypocrites for claiming to liberate Iraqis then abusing them.

U.S. embassies in Europe, South America and the Middle East have asked the Pentagon for help in responding to criticism in their host countries, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

4. Why has the president been criticized as part of this controversy?

But many in Congress and in Iraq have criticized the top U.S. leadership for not cracking down on the abuses earlier and for only reacting after the photos were published, months after the actual incidents.

"If you wanted to write a script or a scenario as to how you undermine the credibility of the United States in the Middle East today, you couldn't have done a better job," Hisham Melhem, a correspondent for the Beirut newspaper As-Safir, said on Monday's NewsHour. "I think one could argue if you have any illusions about winning hearts and mind in Iraq and the Arab world for that matter, you should forget that."

5. What international document protects prisoners of war?

Prisoners at Abu Ghraib are protected under the Geneva Convention, a document signed by 47 countries including the United States that outlines the rules of war and occupation. Because of this, the soldiers responsible for the abuse could be charged with war crimes.

6. What else protects prisoners in U.S. military custody?

The Uniform Code of Military Justice, the American armed forces' criminal laws, also prohibits the abuse of prisoners in military custody, according to Georgetown University professor and retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Gary Solis.

Discussion Questions (more research might be needed):

1. How do you think the military should punish the soldiers who abused and humiliated the Iraqi prisoners? Should they face criminal charges or just lose their jobs? Why?

2. Should the responsibility for the charges fall only on the soldiers directly involved or should officers in charge of the military in Iraq, including Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. commander in Iraq, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld be held accountable too? Why or why not?

3. One member of the Arab media has said this event will further damage the image of the United States in the minds of the Arab world? Do you believe that? What can the United States do to lessen the impact of the negative publicity?

Send your answers, in essay form, to extra@newshour.org for possible publication!