Mon, May 3, 2004 12:01am ET

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Hannity & Colmes guest compared U.S. soldiers' maltreatment of Iraqi POWs to "frat hazing"

Two days after CBS's 60 Minutes II first broadcast photographs of U.S. military police posing and smiling next to naked, hooded Iraqi prisoners of war, Hannity & Colmes hosted a guest who compared the maltreatment of the Iraqi POWs to "frat hazing." On the April 30 broadcast of FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes, former U.S. Army sergeant and former interrogation instructor Tony Robinson stated that "frat hazing is worse" than "what [was] happening in these pictures":

ROBINSON: Well, one thing that needs to be understood, is that there's also an impact on the torturer. ... Now, I use the word torture, but that's not what's happening in these pictures.

HANNITY: What is it?

ROBINSON: I've seen -- I've seen worse than this at -- frat hazing is worse than this.

HANNITY: So in other words, this is not a big deal? What should the punishment be if these guys in fact are found guilty of whatever is going on over there, whatever is going on?

ROBINSON: Well, it's not torture. If it was, they'd be accused of torture. They're accused of maltreatment. I'm not making excuses for them.

The April 29 edition of The New York Times gave the following account:

In one photograph obtained by [60 Minutes II], naked Iraq prisoners are stacked in a human pyramid, one with a slur written on his skin in English. In another, a prisoner stands on a box, his head covered, wires attached to his body. The program said that according to the United States Army, he had been told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted. Other photographs show male prisoners positioned to simulate sex with each other.

—A.S.

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