by TChris

Before President Bush tears down Abu Ghraib to build his promised "modern, maximum-security prison," the Iraqi authorities should visit some U.S. supermax prisons and ask whether that's what they really want.

Prisoners have called them "torture chambers" where they are subjected to flagrant human rights and civil liberties violations and appalling psychological and physical abuses. In a lawsuit filed by Ohio prisoners at the state's supermax prison in Youngstown in 2002, inmate Keith Garner bluntly told a judge that the conditions at the prison were "like being in a tomb."

Reform begins at home. It's one thing to replace an old building with a new one; it's another to treat prisoners humanely. President Bush said that Abu Ghraib doesn't reflect America; but it does reflect America's prisons. The story of Abu Ghraib should lead American reporters back home.