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Abused orphans found in Baghdad

Abused orphans found in Baghdad: "BAGHDAD — One photograph shows a skin-and-bones boy lying on a bare floor, leashed like a dog to the pink bars of an unoccupied crib. Another shows boys curled naked on the ground, one of them smeared with human waste.

The scenes were ghastly. But almost as jarring was the response of an Iraqi government minister called upon Wednesday to explain how a state-run orphanage in the capital could have kept two dozen children in such conditions.

Proving that not even orphans are off-limits to the political sniping that permeates life here, the minister of labor and social welfare accused U.S. troops and the media of exaggerating the situation and distributing the photographs for political gain.

'Are they really concerned about how well the children are treated in that shelter, or is it just propaganda for their alleged kindness?' Mahmoud Mohammed Jawad Radi said to reporters after the U.S. military released the photographs."

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