The aftermath of the newly exposed prisoner abuse scandal by US troops in Iraq is overwhelming.

A videotape was posted on an Islamic website on Tuesday showing Nick Burg, a US telecommunications businessman working in Iraq, being beheaded by an al-Qaida-affiliated group.

The video that demonstrated the whole process of the beheading of a live human being is a horrendous act in today's civilized world.

The men in the video who undertook the decapitation of Berg said the killing was in retaliation against the intolerable misconduct of US guards in Abu Ghraib prison.

Since the pictures were made public in late April that Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison were mistreated by US soldiers, including being stacked naked in a pyramid, attacked by a dog and forced into simulated sex acts, the US military has been a target of condemnation worldwide, especially in Arab countries.

The abuse incident has also provided new ground for Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network to launch a long-advocated crusade against their largest foe.

The video was posted one day after US President George W. Bush gave his strong support to embattled Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The hawkish secretary of defense, who spearheaded the US-led war in Iraq without legitimacy or United Nations endorsement, is under strong pressure to resign for the prisoner abuse and his failure of leadership. Bush and Rumsfeld both defended the abuses in Abu Ghraib as only individual behavior by a handful of US soldiers which did not reflect US military policy.

But that has not calmed down rising indignation at home and abroad.

More released and unreleased pictures of inhumane treatment of prisoners in other US-controlled detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan have all shown that the organized mistreatment of prisoners has often been a prevailing phenomenon.

Prisoners of war (POWs), just like civilians, should enjoy deserved dignity. That is clearly set out in the Geneva Convention.

That those responsible will be brought to justice, as Bush and Rumsfeld promised, should by no means be a satisfactory answer to the victims and the whole world over this scandal.

Not only the grassroots-level personnel, but also the top military leaders should be held directly accountable for the astonishing systematic abuses of prisoners.

It would be awkward for Bush to discharge Rumsfeld. Firing him is equal to admitting wrongdoing in the way the Iraq War has been handled.

But Bush's unmasked praise of Rumsfeld amidst the prisoner abuse scandal is indeed distasteful, just as he feels distaste over the exposed pictures of abuses.

"Thank you for your leadership. You are courageously leading our nation in the war against terror. You're doing a superb job.

You're a strong secretary of defense and our nation owes you a debt of gratitude," Bush told Rumsfeld at a Pentagon meeting.

Bush's words not only appeared faint in the face of the current US predicament in Iraq, but also trivialized his apologies to the abused victims.

(China Daily May 14, 2004)