May 24, 2004

• simple: because so many soldiers have digital cameras, and it's fun to take weird pictures with digital cameras. but you won't be seeing many more.
• i've only seen like 3 of them. Not that I want to see them necessarily, but why are there hundreds of articles and only about 3 pictures? Can anyone post all the pictures?
• Evil: it's all a psy-op directed from high up, to pour more gasoline on the bonfire. Sheer stupidity: a few sadistic SOBs flaunting their hunting throphies. Internal turmoil: some crisis-of-conscience whistleblower, or factions within the army/government/intelligence community taking shots at each other. Take your pick.
• my ex-husband is breaking a bunch of iraq photo stuff for the washpost. most of the photos are either too sexual or too grotesque and add nothing more to the story, that's why they're not out there. the washpost editors carefully chose the pics with those issues in mind.
• I dunno, I think too grotesque and too sexual would add more to the story. Maybe it would limit the "they're just blowing off steam" spin of the Ditto-right? Limiting them to 'safe' pictures also limits the heat on Bush, Rumsfeld, et. al. for what they have to "clean up", IMMO More to the point, why hasn't someone posted them all somewhere? Like iraqprisonerabuse.com or something?
• also from an online chat with washpost ed len downie: Los Angeles, Calif.: Disturbing to say the least and I too was moved to tears. But I wonder, why all the photos and videos you have obtained are not made available to those who want to see them. I understand they may not be suitable for general publication, but why can't you make them available on a separate site or link? Many of us do not want the information or images we see to be sanitized on our behalf. Leonard Downie Jr.: This is something we are discussing, and I don't know what we will decide.
• this blog claims to have a prison abuse video. it may just be the same one at washpost, i haven't watched this one yet.
• I could imagine some of the photos taken as part of the prisoners' humiliation: lying naked on the floor, being pointed at and then having your picture taken for anyone to see. But the photo of the hooded prisoner is redundant by that logic, because we don't know that he was aware he was being photographed. Maybe it was just that the prison guards were a group of people who were likeminded, or egged each other on, or took initiative from one another to take pictures of their own. One person takes photos, a couple others say, "Hey, that's a good idea," and whip out their cellphones to do the same.
• "Quoting a Pentagon source ... the damning photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were taken with camera phones. "Digital cameras, camcorders and mobile phones with cameras have been prohibited in military compounds in Iraq," it said. Damn, you'd think these idiots could make a halfway decent attempt to make it look like they're NOT hiding stuff.
• The Sy Hersh stories in the New Yorker clarified this issue: The government consultant said that there may have been a serious goal, in the beginning, behind the sexual humiliation and the posed photographs. It was thought that some prisoners would do anything—including spying on their associates—to avoid dissemination of the shameful photos to family and friends. The government consultant said, “I was told that the purpose of the photographs was to create an army of informants, people you could insert back in the population.” The idea was that they would be motivated by fear of exposure, and gather information about pending insurgency action, the consultant said. If so, it wasn’t effective; the insurgency continued to grow." Also discussed here.
• I read somewhere that a number of the photos on the cds are of consensual sex between the solidiers. It's not something people really want to talk about, but given that a lot of the torture was also sexual, what the hell was going on in that prison? It doesn't seem to be simply a case of torture in the name of fighting terrorism. There was something else in the climate, don't you think?
• Forks: That doesn't explain the whole story, seeing as many of the people in the photos were hooded.
• Regardless of the photos, I believe that this goes on all the time without our knowledge of it. I don't doubt for a minute that it is a case of the government saying 'Do what you have to do to accomplish the goal, just don't tell us what you did'. If the government doesn't know the particulars, look how easy it is for them to say they knew nothing of it.
• from latest washpost story: Prisoners posed in three of the most infamous photographs of abuse to come out of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were not being softened up for interrogation by intelligence officers but instead were being punished for criminal acts or the amusement of their jailers, according to previously secret documents obtained by The Washington Post.
• You know, more than once I've seen Dateline or the local news where they have video of some stupid kids videotaping themselves vandalizing a house, or beating on their friends - it's not SUPER common, but it's not shockingly UNcommon. When people do things like that, they often record them. Serial killers leave clues and keep records or mementos of the crimes they've committed, even though they're supposed to be so smart - they must realize this will help them get convicted. (Okay, serial killers are usually totally off their rockers, but you get my drift.) People consistantly document their crimes. Maybe because they don't think they ever will get caught. Maybe because they're proud of them. I mean, it's not the same thing, but look at Capturing the Friedmans. Some of that stuff, you have to wonder why they videotaped it - it didn't make them look good and it's not something they would want anyone else to see, or even watch again themselves. I mean, now you're getting into bigger issues like why people blog, or do anything that records their life (for others to see) in a potentially negative way. I think it's somewhere around the whole, "Can't seem to stop ourselves" thing.
• Susan Sontag wrote about the photos (and the culture that produced them) yesterday, and David Abromovitch responded today - in the Guardian, that freedom-hating commie rag for yogurt eating hippes who drink the blood of Jewish babies. Or is that the Daily Telegraph? I get so confused ...
• Thanks for the Sontag link quidnunc. The more I read about how other countries view the US, the more ashamed I am to live here. So how cold does it really get in Canada?
• first one to link / post all the pictures wins.
• you won't be seeing many more Did Rumsfeld ban Iraq camera phones?
• the CNN gallery. It's javascript pop-up, dunno if that will work . . /interactive/world/0405/gallery.iraq.prison.abuse/ is the URL-ish part of it . .
• dang.
• The might not be any more photos, but we can all own the T-shirt (NSFW)