Making friends

Talabani is pissed. I would be too. After all, he's trying to be a hand-picked president of a ruined country and has to deal with the further messes the hand-pickers are doing.

New images of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison prompted Iraq's president to condemn his close ally the United States on Thursday, demanding harsh punishment for "savage crimes" as Iraqis seethed over more humiliation.

In unusually strong language, Jalal Talabani was critical of Washington as the new images were digested by Iraqis and other Arabs already enraged by insulting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad which were published in European newspapers.

"We have condemned these savage crimes. We reject that a civilized country allow its soldiers to commit these ugly and terrible crimes," Talabani told reporters.

"We demand very harsh punishments against the perpetrators."