In Fallujah the depravity of the mujahideen is revealed, with the discovery of nearly 20 torture chambers and slaughterhouses: Blood, knives, cage hint at atrocities.

Acting on information from a man who claimed to have escaped from militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s network, the U.S. military over the weekend inspected a house where intelligence officers believe hostages were detained, tortured and possibly killed.

A banner for Tawhid and Jihad—the name of al-Zarqawi’s organization until he changed it last month to Al Qaeda in Iraq—was recovered Saturday from the home, as were several black face masks, volumes of documents, handcuffs and two long, apparently blood-stained knives, military officials said.

The site is among nearly 20 found in Fallujah where insurgent atrocities are believed to have been committed. Maj. Jim West, intelligence officer for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said Sunday that some of the sites appear to have been used to hold Western hostages and others to torture or kill local people who disobeyed insurgents. …

As the Marine officers visited the two houses Sunday, accompanied by a few reporters, they carried maps, documents and photographs that itemized materials found in earlier inspections. While intermittent gunfire rattled nearby and the occasional thunder of arms caches being destroyed by American forces could be heard, the group viewed the homes in jaw-clenched silence.

The house most closely linked to al-Zarqawi, which contained the Tawhid and Jihad banner, is the last in a jumble of four homes in a neighborhood where Fallujah melts into the desert. Three empty bottles of whiskey were dropped beside the front walk, and a pair of the type of black gym shoes worn by many insurgents was in the doorway beside a black ski mask.

Inside, a black banner bearing Arabic writing was taken off a wall in an empty room. Translated, it read “There is no God but God” and “The Organization of Tawhid and Jihad.”

In the darkened hallway beside the empty room was a stained area where the informant told U.S. forces that captives had been tortured, said Maj. Lawrence Hussey, intelligence officer for the 7th Marine Regiment.

Thick nails protruded from the wall. A dirty black mask with holes cut for the eyes and mouth was on the floor beneath the stairs Sunday.

These monsters were also working on chemical weapons:

On a counter in the apparent bomb factory were a disassembled hand grenade, rubber gloves and numerous bottles of chemicals. “This one says potassium cyanide,” said an Egyptian translator employed by the Marines. At that point Sunday afternoon, he was the only one who could talk. Sodium cyanide, he continued reading. Sulfuric acid. Hydrochloric acid.

Eventually, Chief Warrant Officer Lee Fair, of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, said quietly, “Anyone that knew what they were doing could put these things together and make something very dangerous. Looks like [in the next room] they were trying to put crude weapons together.”

In that room, a hooded gas mask lay beside a large glass box, as did gloves, a carton of blasting caps and beakers full of chemicals. The floor was littered with broken glass and concrete chips blown out of the walls during the attack.