Latest Abu Ghraib Horror: Nerf Torture

Documents obtained by the New York Times show that U.S. interrogators at Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison devised a diabolically gruesome new tactic to abuse innocent Iraqi terror suspects: Nerf torture.

"One of the M.P.'s took a Nerf football and threw it at the detainees," Specialist Roman Krol, a reservist with the 325th Military Intelligence Battallion, revealed to Army interrogators who grilled him about the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the Times said Saturday.

The Nerf football and other Nerf toys are foam rubber objects designed to protect small children who play with them. One of the most popular - the Nerf bat - is routinely used by 4-year-olds to beat the daylights out of each without a hint of pain or injury.

In an apparent oversight, the Geneva Convention makes no mention of protecting POWs from abuse by Nerf toys.

Revealing another despicable tactic that's sure to have Democrats on Capitol Hill demanding accountability, Kroll told investigators that "another M.P. threw water at the detainees."

"I had never seen anything like that before," the stunned soldier added.

In an even more sinister development, U.S. M.P.s appear to have been able to persuade some Iraqi detainees to abuse themselves without any physical or psychological intimidation whatsoever.

According to the Times, Sgt. Neil Wallin told investigators that he had seen "a video in which a prisoner known to smear himself with his own feces repeatedly banged his head against the wall 'very hard.'"

It's not yet clear how U.S. guards were responsible for the prisoner's self-inflicted injuries, but the Times hinted in an accompanying editorial that ultimately the blame for all of the Abu Ghraib abuses rests with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is preparing for what the paper described as "an influx of compensation claims" by abused Iraqi terror suspects.

So far at least, Abu Ghraib's Nerf torture victims have yet to file any legal claims.

Editor's note: