The Coming Abu Ghraib Blowback

As you might recall, the apparently worst photos from Abu Ghraib still haven't been released. A judge has ordered the military to give them up, but the administration is still fighting:

Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a statement put forth to support the Pentagon's case that he believed that "riots, violence and attacks by insurgents will result" if the images were released.

Now, of course he's got a stake in portaying the photos in the worst light before they're released. But they do appear to be quite nasty. When senators looks at them last year, Bill Frist
said that compared  to the released Abu Ghraib photos,  "They go beyond that in many ways in terms of the various activities that are depicted." Mark Pryor, a Democrat, called them "almost overwhelming."

So maybe Myers is right. Maybe there will be riots. But apart from the argument about what to do now, it raises a question: Why didn't the government just release photos back when the scandal  broke?  It would have been the photo equivalent of a document dump. Instead, we have a second-wave scenario: Time has passed, Abu Ghraib has receded a bit into memory... and now thanks to the administration's genious P.R. strategy, there's a good chance it will be landing on Page One again.

P.S. As somebody who has frequently argued  that the torture scandal has been underplayed, I support it landing on Page One again. The issue is in what form. And the photos are just about the most inflammatory form  out there. Let me put this another way: In a slightly better world, the administration would have  come clean  from the beginning. That would have included, among other things:  1) quickly releasing  the photos 2) an independent commission to dig into the widespread detainee scandal. The latter would have generated countless headlines, but I doubt any riots.

Comments

[!]

One of things about it is that there are apparently videos in that collection, according to Seymour Hersch.
It is one thing to have still images ( a thousand words and all that). It is another thing to have moving images and (you'd have to assume) sounds.
From what I've read in published reports about the rest of the photo documentation is that none of it is less shocking than what was seen by the Public last year. Heinous is a word which comes to mind.

[C-Low]

The release of Photo's movies is more important than the hundreds of US troops who will die as a result. Not to mention the hundreds if not thousands of new Jihadi's that will be born and of course the thousands of innocent civilains that will be killed at thier hand all around the world as a result.

But hell anything that makes Bushitler and the evil big satan excuse me that is arab I mean capalist pig imperialist America look bad. right

My main problem with you anti-war people is this. The war on terror which is a war against a radical sect of Islam that believes everyone should live by thier rules or die Period. They declared war on us long ago (dont give me the capalist instusion oil crap I like living in the 21st century just as much as you and the muslims standard of living have not done bad on our steady flow of green backs for such oil we found set up drilling then gave to their gov's we havnt had occupation free oil for the homeland since the 40's and Britian at our urging gave up her empire, your not ready to go back to the 18th century working the farm with a mule watching your mom die of malaria everything runs on oil and even if we had a new magic source of power it would take at least 10+yrs to retool the nation even with gov funding) we tried to ignore them but every attack starting in 93' on got worse with more and more casualties up to 9-11. Now at that point Bush decided (the american people Demanded) to try something new take the fight to them stop them from killing us by killing them. Bush's idea: take the fight to the radicals in thier heart land kill or capture them while freeing the modedrate muslims so they can control their radical sects. Is it a crazy idea maybe but hell of alot better than scorched earth, or conversion to Islam worldwide, or accepting the death of our family at the will of our enemy, because some of us cant stomach what it takes to stop him.

Why is this not only in our interest but also the moderates and at the same time should be the goal of the people who value human life and innocents like the anti-war claim. Simple that if we fail in this attempt and the radical islamist win and we cant fight the radicals in a conventional war and the moderates dont stand up and do what moderate christians do to the radical christians and keep them in check. Well it is just a matter of time before the radicals will get WMD and when that happens they will use is and I dont care who is in the president the Republicans/Democrats whatever with a couple hundred thouasand dead civilians America will demand the death of our enemy by any means when it is US or THEM human nature will choose us and on that day more Muslims and innocent civilians will die than ever before in history we will see things like the outlaw of the Muslim religion that will of course alienate the moderates but hell after all of the major population centers are glass mines it wont matter anyway concentration camps for the muslim here who wont rebuke thier religion ect.... Everyone in the world needs to come together and fix this problem a EVEN hundred thousand dead mulims today will be a shadow fo the future if radical islam a sore that has been festering for over 3decades is allowed to pop. The only answer will be amputation and that is very very very ugly.

If we lose and have to make this unthinkable thinkable it will be the end to our way of life the standards of decency all of the humanitary beliefs will have to be left and torn up and I believe we will never be the same. But at the same time I have no doubt that the US even as weak as we have become and self hating we wont just allow anyone kill us at will. Answers always come back to the unthinkable if you know a better way say it. And dont try to tell me that if we just leave the middle east. Not to mention the fact of the oil that makes the west's way of life possible, but once the radicals consolidated the ME how long would it be before they expanded Spain, Southern Russia, Balkans, N. Africa, Rest of Africa, were is the red line or do you just propose convert. By the way Southern Sudan shows what happens when expansion is done by Radical Islamist. 2million christians and we are still counting Dafur (black muslims and tribal africans).

Its time for the western world to put our differences aside and fight a enemy that if he wins will have no problem with killing both of us outright. Hell even the US and Soviet Union got along long enough to take out the Nazis damm.

[!]

C-low, that was close to unreadable. You've outdone the bible for the longest sentence ever. Though, the poets who did the grunt work for King James at least didn't run on with their sentences.

Punctuation is the key, man. Use it and people will read what you write.

I will respond to your claim that anti-war people don't get it though.

Sure, it is a war of ideas. In part, that is another reason why you should learn to use puncuation in your posts. The post you wrote reads as a confused screed.

Pertaining to the release of whatever the Pentagon doesn't want to release:

Gee. One of the things that has been beaten into our heads is that this, America, is still a free society. Democracy works. Freedom is envied by extremists. IF those things are still true then the mechanisms of government should still work under the framework of the Constitution, right?
You and far too many people look at every little occurance, current and past, through a prism of political tactics. You seem to be willing to ignore the fact that the mistake of acting out that which was photographed and videotaped is dismissible because of the harm which would theoretically be done by releasing the images. Well, guess what, bub, the harm was done before the shutters snapped. If you can't recognize that as fact then I don't know what to tell you.

If say, any of this stuff that happened at Abu Ghraib happened on American soil and by, say, priests, you'd be outraged and would call for dismantiling the entire institution of the Catholic church, would'nt you? But, the thing is unlike that hypothetical we are fighting in Iraq for the Iraq's freedom.

The insurgency that exists there did not exist before the invasion. The situation which currently exists did not exist before the invasion. The acts were commited before the shutter snapped, bud. Which is worse documentary evidence or the acts which precipitated them?

At this point in history, it seems like the entire reason why Iraq was invaded was based upon the same political tactical thinking that you employed above. That would explain a lot about why it didn't go as smoothly as almost everyone, pro-and anti-war, thought it would go.
I for one thought that it would take less than a month to depose Hussein, capture the army and start bringing the troops back. I'd bet money that you along with most folks believed the same. (We did it before and we'll do it again) So what happened? Well, we're soaking in it. Bad politics was put above good policy. That is why there is a mess on our hands right now.

Finally, on the point of fighting them over there so we won't have to fight them here:

PUH-lease.
Our society is the most well-armed in the world. You can bet dollars to donuts that if such a thing happened that black and latino gang members would fight side-by-side with red necked Klansmen and hippies with baseball bats to make sure that the enemy is defeated. That argument you and the Prez dispense is just a crock. And, you have to realize that. If you don't. Whew. No wonder things aren't going well.

[Randy Paul]

You know I don't believe that they have ever given the proverbial shit about public opinion on this in the Arab world. With the support for the war melting like an ice cream cone would this August, I really think that they're more concerned about keeping this from the soft section of the country that has been lukewarm about the war and upon seeing something horrifying, would move forthrightly agains the war.

[croatoan]

In an even better world, the abuse would never have happened in the first place.

Failing that, everyone in the chain of command from Rumseld on down should have been dishonorably discharged for failing to prevent the abuse. (At a minimum; I believe that the abuse was ordered from the top, but even if it wasn't, everyone in the chain of command failed to prevent it.)

From the transcript of Seymour Hersh's July 2004 ACLU keynote speech on the unreleased material:

"Some of the worst things that happened that you don’t know about. OK? Videos...The women were passing messages out saying please come and kill me because of what’s happened. And basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children, in cases that have been [video] recorded, the boys were sodomized, with the cameras rolling, and the worst above all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking."

[DCF]

I have to supress a chuckle when I see people painting our activities in Iraq as having anything to do with an ideological battle against Islamism.

If it were, why on earth did we invade a secular Baathist nation? If our cause was to fight radical Islamism, wouldn't it have made more sense to invade an Islamic state, like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, or Iran? I probably shouldn't suggest such things...I'll bet the PNAC guys are preparing their phony grounds for war as we speak.

The Bushies have fooled lots of people, some more than others. They would have us believe that, because we invaded a country and created a situation that fostered radical Islamism in that country, it's the radical Islamism that we were fighting in the first place.

Well, I suppose after the 9/11, terrorism, and WMD claims have all been discredited, the Bushies have no choice but to put the next best spin on their mistake.

ge3t a life