The United States has been subjected to a double-whammy of international criticism this week. First, the Abu Ghraib photos shown only to members of the US Congress that were too horrible to show the public finally made their way  to the airwaves, print and Internet. Yes, they were even worse than the written descriptions of them. Nor could the timing have been any worse, coming on the heels of the recent Muhammad cartoon scandal that has poisoned already badly strained relations between the West and the Muslim world. Second, the United Nations came out with its strongest words yet  on the Guantanamo Bay prison camp for suspected terrorists, describing the treatment of inmates as "torture" and calling for the facility to be closed.

In Germany, the two developments are seen as being closely related because they deepen the impression that the administration of US President George W. Bush is one that endorses and even encourages torture. In editorials, most newspapers on Friday call for Guantanamo to be closed -- at once and forever.

"These photos once again globalize the revulsion and anger towards America," writes the center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung. "Now, Washington is reflexively laboring to condemn the offenses as those of 'a few soldiers'. But the official expressions of shame are becoming curiously routine -- is it a looped tape recording?" As bad as the photographic indictment may be, there is not much new about it. Even Bush-critical newspapers in the United States have agreed on that -- that's why they've printed them in the back of the newspapers rather than on the front page. Journalism ethics are being used to defend newspapers against the objection by critics they didn't want to dish up the worst facets of America's nightmare for breakfast. The same is true for videos al-Jazeera shows to the world showing terrorists decapitating Western hostages. "Even German papers resist printing everything that Internet surfers can find with a search and a few clicks."

But there's no doubt the photos will provoke renewed hatred against America in the Muslim world, the paper continues, and as terrible as it may be, this could soon wind up costing the lives of a few more US soldiers in Iraq. For his part, Bush is is aware that the second flood of images from Abu Ghraib will raise doubts among his own citizens about American policies. But beyond Abu Ghraib, the Süddeutsche Zeitung argues the bigger problem is Guantanamo. As attention is again directed at Abu Ghraib it overlooks the "lasting scandal, protested over and over again by the United Nations, that 500 terror suspects have been incarcerated for years without trial. The US Congress may have succeeded in passing a general ban on torture and abuse last year against resistance from the White House. But at the same time the senators and members of congress agreed to refuse almost every type of legal protection to the 'enemy combatants'." It concludes: "The criticism is as old as the latest pictures from Abu Ghraib: American needs to learn again that it must even treat its worst enemies in harmony with its own values and the constitution."

The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also sees the need to close Guantanamo as one of principle. "The new photos from the jail at Abu Ghraib, in which prisoners are morally humiliated, bodily injured and likely tortured by American personnel, are a play back of 2003," the paper writes. "Only now you can see more precisely -- and in the worst sense of the word -- grapically imagine the conditions." For a long time, we've also known about the conditions of prisoners detained at the Guantanamo camp. "The difference between the two cases is, to be courteous, that in Iraq the case involved excesses that political leaders and the highest military leaders didn't even know about," the paper opines. "For political reasons, however, Guantanamo has become of place of strongly diluted rule of law." The demand that the camp be closed is a question of principle, and it requires no inspections of the camp. "But both cases have one dramatic commonality," the paper concludes: "They are warping and clouding the image of America in the Islamic world and they are thwarting Washington's efforts in the countries there where it is trying to spread democracy."

The camp at Guantanamo has now existed for five years, notes the left-leaning Berliner Zeitung. "And for five years, the world has permitted a Western democracy to breach and disregard everything that democracies should be protecting as their most essential characteristic," the paper comments. Guantanamo appears less often in the news these days and when it does, the news is quickly forgotten. But the prisoners are still being held there, illegally, it reminds readers. There are now trials and no verdicts. The US is obviously relying on its power and the idea that people will get used to (Guantanamo). But, the paper concludes, "it's high time that Guantanamo be closed and it's good that the United Nations now agrees."

The right-wing daily Die Welt sees in the release of photos a great misfortune. The images give the impression that the West has become morally corrupt at a time when it is trying to spread democracy in the Muslim world -- and this will just aggravate tensions. "Those who have viewed the photos of tortured Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, which were withheld until now, can understand why US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sought to hinder their publication in April 2004," the paper's foreign editor writes. "The photos, which were already known, damage the legitimate war on terror because -- just like Guantanamo -- they take away from the values for which the West is attacked. In the stirred up atmosphere of recent weeks, news of the new images will roll through the Arab-Muslim world like a sandstorm." It's easy to get the impression from these images that the "war on terror" is a dirty one. Because of these images and information that has come out of Guantanamo, it is also easy the get the impression that the United States, which operates under the alias of morals and democracy, is actually exercising base human instincts. But that's not true, and the West proves this everyday, the paper writes. "It was the US that initiated an investigation after the (first) photos were released," the paper notes. Then it produced a report that about criminal activities by American troops that ultimately led to their imprisonment. And it was the British who were outraged by a video of UK troops beating Iraqi prisoners. And it was the Europeans who, in the cartoon fight, asked themselves almost to the point self-denial what mistakes they had made.