The Pentagon's Secret Stash - Abu Ghraib photos

[UpInArms]

http://www.reason.com/0504/co.mw.the.shtml

The images, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress, depict "acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman." After Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) viewed some of them in a classified briefing, he testified that his "stomach gave out." NBC News reported that they show "American soldiers beating one prisoner almost to death, apparently raping a female prisoner, acting inappropriately with a dead body, and taping Iraqi guards raping young boys." Everyone who saw the photographs and videos seemed to shudder openly when contemplating what the reaction would be when they eventually were made public.

But they never were. After the first batch of Abu Ghraib images shocked the world on April 28, 2004, becoming instantly iconic—a hooded prisoner standing atop a box with electrodes attatched to his hands, Pfc. Lynndie England dragging a naked prisoner by a leash, England and Spc. Charles Graner giving a grinning thumbs-up behind a stack of human meat—no substantial second round ever came, either from Abu Ghraib or any of the other locations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay where abuses have been alleged. ABC News broadcast two new photos from the notorious Iraq prison on May 19, The Washington Post printed a half-dozen on May 20 and three more on June 10, and that was it.

<snip>

It's not for lack of trying, at least from outside the government. Aftergood, for example, sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the Defense Department on May 12, asking generally for "photographic and video images of abuses committed against Iraqi prisoners" and specifically for the material contained on three compact discs mentioned by Rumsfeld in his testimony. The Defense Department told him to ask the U.S. Central Command, which sent him back to Defense, which said on second thought try the Army's Freedom of Information Department, which forwarded him to the Army's Crime Records Center, which hasn't yet responded. "It's not as if this is somehow an obscure matter that no one's quite ever heard of," Aftergood notes.

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[sui generis]

1. this administration has to go

and inevitably it will. Some day it will be prosecuted for war crimes. It has taken us well over fifty years to get almost all of the nazis and government officials who signed off on the atrocities of the holocaust, and you can be sure that if this place is worth living in in fifty years that eventually many of these people in power today will see some form of justice.

[gordianot]

2. That is true, but I doubt they will go quietly.

As much as they deserve to be frog marched in shackles.

[MountainLaurel]

3. Me either

I'm reading a book about the end of the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic (OT: yet ANOTHER cruel and sadistric dictator kept in place with the support of the United States!), and the bloodshed only increased after Trujillo's assassination. When Bush is finally ousted, how bad is it gonna get?

[Roland99]

5. If only.

There's nothing I'd love to see than the Propagandist and his toadies up on trial.

[LibertyorDeath]

4. They would have us believe this is an aberration

"NBC News reported that they show "American soldiers beating one prisoner almost to death, apparently raping a female prisoner, acting inappropriately with a dead body, and taping Iraqi guards raping young boys."

It's SOP IMO